Hi. I am Debbie Ingram, Senior Manager of Market Strategy for Numara® Software.  Part of my role is to represent the voice of our customers in the market. I talk to our customers constantly about the real world issues on their minds in managing their IT organizations and delivering services, including how they’re using automation and IT processes to solve these issues.  Like many of my colleagues at Numara Software, I have been in the b-to-b software market and working with customers for over 15 years.  My goal with this blog is to share with you some of the thoughts and insights I have learned from our customers, including where they’re finding both success and bumps in the road as they move forward in this challenging economic time.

The Change Management Balancing Act:                                                                    
Getting To It, Staying Current and Getting It Right    

Outages are up. Staff Members are tasked with more than what’s humanly possible. Your budget just got cut again. Communication is slipping. Users are not being reasonable and sometimes going maverick and doing their own things. Management is pushing for more controls on users, how resources are used, and status  reports. Sound familiar? The balancing act challenge…. What’s critical for the business yet feasible with the resources available today

Getting Back to Managing Change

The importance of change management processes and formalizing them in an organization seems to continue to increase as time goes on. Our economic constraints today could remain tight in the IT environment for quite a while. I hear our customers talk about their struggles with getting to implementing or advancing their change management processes as they’re working to deliver services with less than what they’re used to. They also have the added challenge of pressure over them to find new ways to continue cost reductions and demonstrate their value to the business in ways they never had to before. At the same time, unexpected changes are causing them added pain as they’re faced with the clean up and answering to management at times about why they didn’t know about them. Staying on top of it all is an increasingly difficult situation and they’re turning to automation to help them when it’s possible.

How Will You Know If You’ve Done Too Much or Too Little?

I’ve been hearing about the need to really spend the time to understand what changes are the most critical around the business, not just in IT, and understand initiatives or projects coming up in other parts of the business that could directly or indirectly cause a change impact to IT. It seems that, in some cases, not enough time is spent on this key element of the process to make change management align with the overall business. What’s happening around you in the business outside of IT that could potentially cause unforeseen gaps, outages, or unplanned costs?   If thinking about this is not done up front, it will get done later and cause delays and frustration.

I’ve also heard stories recently from customers around “lessons learned in implementing change management processes”. Some customers have implemented baseline change and approval processes and found that things are still missing – forcing them to reassess their process after a few months. Then, they have implemented additional changes and controls to expand a wider net of control. I’ve also talked to customers who have implemented aggressive, complex change processes upfront and had to regroup shortly after they have seen that it was just too much for the business to bear. Some have found that with the reality of our economy today and reduced resources around the business, in and beyond IT, they can’t sustain these deep processes now, the business goals have changed, and they have to regroup.

Compliance: Turning Up the Heat on IT

Compliance with internal and external governance requirements has driven many customers to build automated audit trails and reporting to demonstrate compliance and help show their value in minimizing risk to the business. Audit requirements seem to be getting more complex as senior management and financial groups are more involved in IT and creating strong tracking has become increasingly critical.

The Path to Better Control

Start with identifying what’s changing without you – now - and what’s impacting your ability to do your job. From there, determine what’s impacting the business the most – especially what’s causing increased or unexpected costs or slowing down operations in some way within the business.

Some customers are turning to the ITIL® service lifecycle approach to ensure that they are implementing a standardized set of change processes with their incident and problem management, even IT asset management in some cases. They like to process value that ITIL brings with a standard set of terminology and processes for full a full change management lifecycle.

The take away I’ve gained from these discussions is that managing change is a constant, evolving process which can be daunting, but it can be done effectively and there is hope. It seems that the most successful implementations are the ones where change processes are implemented in stages, with constant checks on the results of the current stage, measurement on what’s working and what’s not through reports and auditing the results, and rechecking the business needs before moving to the next stage.

For More Information About Managing Change:

• “Six Strategies for Managing Change”: Change Management Tips Article from Numara Software
• ITSM 101: Change Management Processes article on SearchCIO.com by George Spafford, an industry expert and principal consultant on business and IT operations.  Posted: Jul 14, 2009

Hey there,

I am Matt Dircks, VP of Product Strategy for Numara® Software.  My team and I are responsible for surveying the market, meeting with customers, assessing competitors, and turning all of that input into an actionable product strategy.   I have been fortunate to be in the business-to-business technology market for over 22 years and always find the process of determining what customers want, need, and find valuable both intellectually interesting & extremely challenging.   It is equal parts art, science, intuition, compromise, sooth-saying, and common sense.

One of the interesting aspects of product strategy is that you get exposed to a lot of software vendors at industry conferences, analyst reports, trade shows, blogs, press releases etc.   While I am usually able to learn something, there are always some vendors that can easily be characterized as “overstating the obvious as revolutionary” or “confusing spin with substance.”   Recently, I began seeing & hearing references from a number of vendors across different markets referring to how the “economic conditions”  has been a revelation with respect to how do business or treat customers.  Being a bit of a smart-aleck & a tad bit sarcastic, I thought I would share my  “Top 3 Homer Simpson “Doh’s”  when it comes to software vendors & the economy

• Doh #1   “…with the economic downturn, customers are really looking for high value software solutions” – Really, no you’re kidding right?    The strange thing I have always found in talking with customers is that they are ALWAYS looking for value & practicality from their business software.   Whenever my team & I get into discussions regarding product strategy at Numara Software, most of the time we settle the debate by asking ourselves if it solves a real problem for customers in a practical manner or is it just really cool technology that we are essentially doing because we can.   Technology vendors should really understand that a customer’s desire for value is not limited to whenever the economy is down or when budgets are tight, and  should not forget that basic truism when the economy invariably improves. 
• Doh #2 “…with the economic downturn, customers can’t afford expensive deployments or lengthy implementations …” – You usually hear this one from larger software companies that generate as much or more revenue from the implementation & deployment of their software as the software itself. In  theory, this sound bite always plays well, but in reality it often-times means that the vendor is reducing consulting rates to keep their services people busy rather than reducing complexity or increasing the underlying usability of the product.   While we do have implementation consultants here at Numara Software,   we feel strongly that customers should be able to get value out of our products without requiring services.  That means continuously looking at ways to reduce complexity and improve user experience - without limiting the power and flexibility of the software.   Focusing on improving usability and reducing complexity isn’t something new or unique for Numara Software, and I don’t think it is something that you only do when the economy is down or when business is tight.
• Doh #3 “… with the economic downturn, we are seeing increasing pressure to better align IT with the needs of the business…”  - Another illuminating insight here, right?  I see this one a lot in press releases and new product announcements from various software vendors.  Maybe these organizations are recent start-ups or forgot the lessons from the internet boom/bust when the IT function had a lot of latitude in defining projects and had a bit more budget autonomy.   Businesses today rely upon technology to varying degrees, but doesn’t it straddle the “naïve/obvious line” to think that businesses haven’t been working to align IT in support of the business goals for some time.

The reality is that customers are always looking for ways to solve real problems in a practical, flexible and cost-effective manner.  Those needs didn’t magically appear due to the economic downturn, and that desire will not disappear into the ether when the economy improves.

While it is always poking fun at other technology providers,  I also know there are always many things that we can improve upon at Numara Software and we strive to keep getting better.  I look forward to developing an ongoing dialogue here, so please post any questions, concerns, suggestions, or  email me directly at matt.dircks@numarasoftware.com.

Suggestions for future blog topics?  You can use the “Comments Section” below, or email me at matt.dircks@numarasoftware.com.

Hi. My name is Michele McFadden and I am the Director of Product Management for the IT service management solutions, including Numara® FootPrints® and Numara Track-It®,! at Numara® Software.  I’ve been working with our customers around the world and product development for about 10 years. My team and I  work with customers, sales, marketing, development and prospects to gather and prioritize requirements and define product vision to provide the best customer experience for service management.

Service Management Product Management Team Blog:

Inside Service Management – Where the Numara Software Product ManagementTeam shares insights  into the product management process for Numara FootPrints  and  Numara Track-It! , what we’ve learned from our customers, and our thoughts on the IT Service Management industry.

The “Use What You Have” Consolidated Service Desk

Welcome to our first blog entry! My team and I are excited to share our insights into the product management process here at Numara Software with you. Our chief goal as product managers is to understand our customers’ needs and translate them into better products. Over the coming months we’ll discuss our product planning process, what we’ve learned from our customers, our thoughts on the pragmatic and practical approach to ITIL® service lifecycle management, and much more.

One of the clearest messages we are hearing from our customers and prospects is that they are looking for value in their service management tools and processes. Now more than ever, we are faced with having to do more with less, both as individuals and as organizations. Whether it’s a family taking a relaxing “staycation” at home this summer, or an organization auditing their tool licenses to see what is really being used, the mantra of the day is to “use what you have”.  So how does that translate into service management?

Most organizations have an IT service desk tool for tracking incidents, problems and service requests from their employees. But can a service desk tool be repurposed to track the same kinds of requests for other departments? The ITIL® (IT Infrastructure Library) set of best practices for IT Service Management defines a service desk as the single point of contact for all IT-related requests. The same benefits of a service desk for  IT – centralization, automation, self-service, reporting – could be applied to lots of other departments that receive requests: Human Resources, Compliance, Customer Complaints, Training, Facilities Management, etc.

Here at Numara Software, we have the good fortune to work with thousands of customers who are amazingly creative in configuring their service desk products. Both of our flagship service desk solutions, Numara ®FootPrints® and Numara® Track-It!® ,   offer the opportunity to track different types of requests: Numara FootPrints through the "project" concept – discreet workspaces for different functions that all tie together, and Numara Track-It! with easy customization of the category fields and security policies. We have everything from biomedical companies using our products to track clinical engineering projects to townships tracking parking permits. Here’s a video case study from one of our ingenious customers on his creative uses of Numara FootPrints throughout the organization.

There are obvious benefits to using one tool for multiple purposes. The IT department typically has to evaluate products for different departments on a regular basis. By recommending a tool that’s already in-house, the organization can save time, effort and the cost of evaluation, implementation, additional hardware, etc.  And by sharing the same tool, it’s easy to automate workflow between related processes and get consolidated reporting.  Over on ITSMWatch.com, George Spafford recently published an article on this topic with more detail on the benefits of a "shared services desk" and tips for success.

Of course, if the tool is too hard to configure, then IT becomes the "configurer" (and potential bottleneck) for every new implementation. But if business managers can be empowered to manage their own process with minimal training and no programming, then the burden on IT is reduced, allowing them to focus on maintaining the infrastructure that keeps the business humming.

Not every process lends itself to automation with a flexible service desk tool.  Sometimes purpose-built tools are a better fit, and offer a substantial enough increase to productivity to make them worth the investment. What many of our “power” customers do is to automate a few high visibility processes for different areas of the business, and then allow other departments to request a new project when a need arises. Often they find if they can automate at least 80% of what was once a manual or multi-step process without custom programming , then the implementation has a high chance of success.

Have you had success with a consolidated service desk? Do you have other ideas for doing more with less in IT? Suggestions for future blog topics? We’d love to hear from you! You can use the “Comments Section” below, or email me at michele.mcfadden@numarasoftware.com.