1. Build a Service Desk Continual Improvement Plan
Teach your old service desk new tricks.

2. ANALYST PERSPECTIVE Where do we go from here?
Service desk managers often learn the hard way that standardizing their processes is only the start of the service quality journey. Quality service desk processes are not only difficult to build, they’re also difficult to sustain. Service managers who steward mature processes often find themselves stuck at the top of the mountain with no idea how to survive there.
There are three things you can do to put in place improvements that stick: engage, engage, engage. Engage executives; engage informal leaders; engage service desk analysts. Not only will each group have insights that could make or break the service desk improvement, but engaging them will also get them to buy into the process. Ultimately, it will sustain the change process, and help ensure you don’t tumble back down the mountain.
Sandi Conrad,
Senior Director, Infrastructure Practice Info-Tech Research Group

3. Our understanding of the problem
CIOs who need to instill a culture of continual improvement in their IT organization.
IT directors who want to review the strategic direction of their service desk.
Managers of mature service desks who want to make gains in service desk effectiveness, timeliness, and customer service.
Set a strategic vision for the service desk.
Conduct a service desk audit to identify your strengths and weaknesses.
Identify and prioritize service desk initiatives to improve the service desk.
Set measurable targets for improvement initiatives.
Design a service desk improvement project that sustains and cements change.
Measure and monitor progress to ensure initiatives achieve the desired outcome.

4. Executive Summary
The ideal service desk offers prompt and cost-effective service that improves service availability, resource use, and productivity. In reality, however, IT managers must work hard to maintain and improve service quality or risk performance deterioration over time.
Lean into incremental improvements. Mature service desks with the capacity for change are ideally situated to respond to shifting business priorities.
It’s easier to climb Mount Everest than to stay there. Without continual service improvement, sustained service desk quality will be temporary. Organizations need to put in place an ongoing process to audit, enhance, and sustain the performance of your service desk whatever your process maturity.
Even service desks with a high degree of process maturity must contend with business priorities that change over time in order to sustain operational excellence.
Without the right leadership, commitment, and processes, improvements in service quality can be difficult to sustain.
Continual service improvement is not only a development plan, but also an organizational culture. The goal is to embed a process of continual improvement in target service desk processes that enhances capabilities and improves service quality over time.
Build a continual improvement plan for the service desk to review and evaluate key processes and services, and manage the progress of improvement initiatives. The plan should develop a vision for the service desk, review its architecture, set measurable targets for improvement initiatives, identify relevant initiatives, and manage their progress.
The service desk continual improvement plan is an ongoing process. As one improvement cycle ends, the next cycle begins, which allows the service desk to keep pace with changing business requirements.

5. Our Approach to the Service Desk
Info-Tech Research Group’s approach to service desk optimization focuses on building essential best practices
Extend
Facilitate the extension of service management best practices to other business functions to improve productivity and position IT as a strategic partner.
Improve
Build a continual improvement plan for the service desk to review and evaluate key processes and services, and manage the progress of improvement initiatives.
Info-Tech’s
Service Desk
Methodology
Standardize
Build essential incident, service request, and knowledge management processes to create a sustainable service desk that meets business needs.
Lean
Build essential incident, service request, and knowledge management processes to create a sustainable service desk that meets business needs.
Our Approach to the Service Desk
Service desk optimization goes beyond the blind adoption of best- practice frameworks.
Info-Tech’s approach focuses on controlling support costs and making the most of IT’s service management expertise to improve productivity.
Do the projects sequentially
or in any order.
Select and Implement
Review mid-market and enterprise service desk tools, select an ITSM solution, and build an implementation plan to ensure your investment meets your needs.
Consolidate
Build a strategic roadmap to consolidate service desks to reduce end-user support costs and sustain end-user satisfaction.

6. Put the basics in place before you embark on a service desk continual service improvement initiative
What is continual service improvement?  
Continual service improvement is a proactive approach to service desk management. It involves measuring the effectiveness and efficiency of people, processes, and technology to:
Identify areas for improvement.
Adapt to changes in the business environment.
Align the IT strategy to organizational goals.
A continual improvement process helps service desks move away from a reactive approach to service improvements, which focuses only on fixing problems as they occur.
First things first.
Make sure the basics are in place before you embark on a continual improvement initiative.
Putting in place a continual improvement process for your service desk will improve operational costs and end-user satisfaction, but only once you have consistent incident management and service request fulfillment processes.
Info-Tech Research Group’s Standardize the Service Desk blueprint can help you assess the current state of your service desk, and build consistent processes to support a tiered service desk and a single point of contact for IT services.
The standardize project will help:
Compare current service desk practices against best practices.
Put in place consistent processes for:
Ticket handling
Incident management
Service request fulfillment
Develop a knowledgebase to improve first call resolution and end-user satisfaction.

7. Implement a continual improvement plan to improve the performance of the service desk and consolidate your gains
Implementing a continual improvement plan for the service desk:
Motivates action to make immediate improvements to key target areas.
Adapts service desks to changes in the environment.
Addresses issues proactively.
Demonstrates a commitment to service improvement.
Identifies opportunities for improvement, and measures progress on your initiatives.
Focuses the service desk on providing value to its end users.
Why implement a continual improvement plan for the service desk?
Time
Improvement
Quality
Standards
Continual
improvement
Standardization

8. A continual improvement plan is the most effective initiative you can implement to increase end-user satisfaction
Improved business satisfaction:
Deliver service to the enterprise with confidence.
Channel incidents and requests through a single point of contact.
Escalate incidents quickly and accurately to the right business function.
42.1%
On average, end users who were satisfied with service desk effectiveness rated all other IT services 42.1% higher than dissatisfied end users.
Fewer recurring issues:
Tickets are created for every incident and categorized correctly.
Reports can be used for root cause analysis.
38.0%
On average, end users who were satisfied with service desk timeliness rated all other IT services 38.0% higher than dissatisfied end users.
Increased efficiency / lower cost to serve:
Use FAQs to enable end users to self-solve.
Use a knowledgebase to troubleshoot once, solve many times.
Cross-train to improve service consistency.
Project Benefits
Empower other business functions to provide effective, timely services that meet business needs at a lower cost.
Follow the steps in this project blueprint to guide non-IT partners through the process.
Enhanced demand planning:
Trend analysis and reporting improve service providers beyond IT through the ability to forecast and address the demands of the business.
Source: Info-Tech Research Group, 2015; N=19,349

9. Key Project Deliverables
Project structure
Key Project Deliverables
A service desk assessment (Excel) to assess the maturity of key service desk processes.
A continual service improvement plan (Word) for service desks to organize the project.
A service desk continual service improvement roadmap (Excel) to keep track of all improvement initiatives, prioritize opportunities, break down selected projects into steps, and track your progress.

10. CASE STUDY Executive Brief Case Study – CERN Industry Source
Scientific Research
Journal of Physics: Conference Series
CERN Computing Centre
The European Organization for Nuclear Research is one of world’s largest centers for scientific research, hosting thousands of visiting scientists from around the world. The IT Platform and Engineering Services (PES) group provides batch, interactive, and specialized services to the staff at CERN.
Continual Service Improvement Cycle
The PES group at CERN set out to initiate a continual improvement plan in order to:
Advance the use of ITIL best practices.
Develop a knowledge-sharing culture within the group.
Decrease ticket volume and average resolution time.
Results
After running the program for two years, the PES group increased the percentage of tickets solved by level-two teams from 25% to 43%.
The use of a support structure that allowed for knowledge exchange was critical to project success. The team holds weekly improvement meetings with key stakeholders, and identifies and communicates effectively any necessary training and documentation needs.
The case study continues in step 3.
The Continual Service Improvement Cycle
included the following components:
Decide what should be measured
Decide what can be measured
Gather data
Process data
Analyze data
Present and use the information
Implement corrective action

11. Info-Tech offers various levels of support to suit your needs
Guided Implementation
“Our team knows that we need to fix a process, but we need assistance to determine where to focus. Some check-ins along the way would help keep us on track.”
DIY Toolkit
“Our team has already made this critical project a priority, and we have the time and capability, but some guidance along the way would be helpful.”
Workshop
“We need to hit the ground running and get this project kicked off immediately. Our team has the ability to take this over once we get a framework and strategy in place.”
Consulting
“Our team does not have the time or the knowledge to take this project on. We need assistance through the entirety of this project.”
Diagnostics and consistent frameworks used throughout all four options

12. Build a service desk continual improvement plan
1. Focus
2. Build
3. Run
Best-Practice Toolkit
1.1 Determine goals and objectives
1.2 Identify critical success factors
1.3 Conduct service desk assessment
2.1 Prioritize improvement initiatives
2.2 Build CSI action plan
3.1 Monitor progress
3.2 Measure outcomes
Guided Implementations
Determine the goals of the continual improvement plan, and align them to organizational goals and strategy.
Identify critical success factors for the project, conduct a service desk audit, and review the results.
Brainstorm and prioritize continual improvement initiatives for the service desk.
Draw on the prioritized list of service desk initiatives to build a continual improvement plan and strategic roadmap.
Build a plan to communicate progress, promote the benefits of the projects, and reflect on lessons learned.
Onsite Workshop
Module 1:
Focus the continual improvement plan
Module 2:
Build the continual improvement plan
Module 3:
Run the continual improvement plan
Phase 1 Outcome:
Continual service improvement plan goals aligned to organizational goals.
A service desk maturity baseline.
Phase 2 Outcome:
A continual improvement plan for the service desk.
A strategic roadmap for the continual improvement plan.
Phase 3 Outcome:
A communication plan to promote the benefits of the project and communicate changes to various stakeholders.

13. Workshop overview Day 1* Day 2 Day 3 Day 4 Day 5 Activities
Preparation
Confirm workshop scope. Send agenda to workshop participants.
Analysts review service desk organizational structure.
Analysts conduct a ticket trend analysis on ITSM tool data.
Workshop Day
Determine organizational goals and objectives of continual service improvement plan.
Identify critical success factors.
Conduct service desk assessment.
Prioritize service desk improvement initiatives.
Build continual service desk improvement action plan.
Build a process to monitor progress and measure outcomes.
Develop a communication plan.
Reflect on lessons learned.
Deliverables
Workshop scope and agenda.
Comparative analysis of current service desk structures against best practices.
Ticket trend assessment, including ticket volume, and most important incidents and service requests.
List of organizational goals, related IT goals, and goals for the continual improvement program.
List of critical success factors, key performance indicators, and metrics.
Service desk assessment tool.
Continual service improvement register including matrix to prioritize initiatives.
Continual service desk improvement plan.
Continual service desk improvement roadmap.
Communication plan.
* Day 1 is conducted off-site

14. Use these icons to help direct you as you navigate this research
Use these icons to help guide you through each step of the blueprint and direct you to content related to the recommended activities.
This icon denotes a slide where a supporting Info-Tech tool or template will help you perform the activity or step associated with the slide. Refer to the supporting tool or template to get the best results and proceed to the next step of the project.
This icon denotes a slide with an associated activity. The activity can be performed either as part of your project or with the support of Info-Tech team members, who will come onsite to facilitate a workshop for your organization.