HDI

HDI Higher Education Forum Meets in the Hoosier State

The HDI Higher Education Forum group met this week, July 14-17, 2008 in Bloomington, IN at Indiana University in the Indiana Memorial Union Biddle Hotel & Conference Center. One of the unique things about the HDI Higher Education Forum meetings is that they are hosted on the members' campuses. This HDI Forum group has been together for about 4 years and during this timeframe we have visited 2 to 3 campuses each year. It is an amazing opportunity to see and tour all of these amazing colleges and universities.

The HDI Higher Education Forum is one of our largest HDI Forum groups. Members in this group include the following organizations:

Abilene Christian University

Baylor University

Boise State University

Brigham Young University

Calvin College CIT Dept

Central New Mexico Community College

Colorado Mountain College

Fairleigh Dickinson University

Hobart and William Smith Colleges

Indiana University

Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health

Marquette University

McGill University

New York University

Saint Joseph's University

Southern Methodist University

Texas Christian University

Texas Tech University

University of Akron

University of California, Davis

University of California, San Francisco

University of Dayton

University of Oklahoma

University of Saskatchewan

University of South Carolina

University of Utah

University of Wyoming

Western Carolina University

During this HDI Higher Education Forum meeting, the group discussed many topics as they associate to the people, processes and technologies within their support organizations. These topics included Team Dynamics, Asset Management and Budget Forecasting using LanDesk, Campus-Wide Back-up Systems, and Project Management within the help desk. We also had a roundtable style open discussion about technology within the support center. During this open discussion, members of this group shared information about their project management tools, Google email, supporting Linux at the Help Desk, supporting Macs due to the ever increasing popularity of the Mac computer, and finally k-Killing-off password reset calls.

This group takes time during each Forum meeting to share their successes with one another through sessions called "Celebrating Successes". During this meeting, several members shared their successes. Some of these success stories included:

• Mark Stinson from the University of California Davis shared his story about the evolution of his support center from a Mom and Pop Help shop to an ITIL-based service desk
• Anne Vail from Western Carolina University shared her story in choosing and implementing new issue tracking software

One of my favorite sessions during this meeting was an experiment that will now become a permanent session during each and every Higher Education Forum meeting. This new session will be called "Solve My Problem". Three Forum members volunteered to describe an issue that they are facing within their environment. Once the issues were described, the group broke-out into smaller teams to brainstorm different solutions to the issues. Then each team presented their solutions to each issue. This was an excellent session that provided real answers to real issues. Each person with the issue is walking away with multiple ways to solve the issue. This is truly the Forums in action!

I will leave you today with some photos from the meeting. Photos below were taken by Bill Vriesema from Calvin College. Thanks Bill!

Thanks for blogging with me!

Leslie Cook, HDI Forum Program Manager

The More the Merrier!

The 2008 HDI Practices and Salary Survey is up and collecting data!

If you have had a chance to peruse the 2007 Practices and Salary Survey results you have found that much of the survey is broken down by support center size, industry, and type of support (i.e., internal/external/blended). We have had a great response from this added benefit to the report. We have also had feedback saying you want more of it. This is great! We love to know that you are looking at and using data to drive decisions in your support centers!

In order to do this we need you! More participation in the survey gives us more options on how to analyze and report the industry’s data. We need a certain number of surveys in each demographic in order to report the results for that area. So if you would like to see the 2008 Practices and Salary data sliced and diced for your demographic we need to hear from you in two ways:

1- Respond to this blog by letting our research team know how you would like to see the data broken down. For example, is there a certain industry to which you want to be able to compare your support center? If so, on which metric(s) would you like to compare? Let us know!

2- Take the survey! Follow the link below to take the survey AND send the link on to others in your demographic categories. Maybe this year we can report the results not only for the IT support industry, but at an even more meaningful level for YOU! Complete the survey by July 21st:  www.thinkhdi.com/takethesurvey2008

Bonus – in addition to adding value to the 2008 results, all survey takers will receive a free copy of the 2008 report, AND be entered into a drawing for a Tom Tom Navigation System!

Feel free to submit any comments you may have about the HDI Practices and Salary Survey. We are always happy to hear from you! ~ Jenny Rains, Research Analyst, HDI

Strategic Advisory Board Applications

Thank you to everyone that submitted an application to participate on the HDI SAB in 2008. We received nearly 200 applications and the qualifications are impressive. It is a privilege to have the “luxury” of such a large and deep pool of talent to choose from.

I just wanted to share with you the process. I look at the current makeup of the Board to make sure we have representation that reflects the HDI Membership overall. For example, I look for a strong mix of small, medium, and large support organizations, representing internal, external, blended, in many different vertical segments, with a sprinkling of vendor, consultant, and media representation.

It’s something of a “recipe”. The idea is to make sure we get input from all of the constituencies of the HDI membership. As the current members roll off, I want to make sure I fill the slots in a way that maintains the balance needed to insure an SAB that covers all of the important trends and issues that impact our support industry.

It is an extremely difficult decision but often made easier by the type of organizations we need to represent the industry. There are so many great individuals that I would love to add to the Board even though their industry sector is already represented, but we need to keep the Board to a workable number of people. The larger it is, the more difficult to manage.

I will be contacting the people that will fill the board this year in the near future, but I wanted to take this moment to thank each and every one of you for making yourself available to our industry and HDI. Thank you so much for your support and I look forward to providing valuable information based on the recommendations of the SAB and you.

To all you do!

Regards,

Rich Hand

Executive Director of Membership

A beautiful day in Charleston, SC

The second week of HDI Forums brought me back to this beautiful city on the east coast.  The first week I joined the HDI Financial Forum as the met with Pete McGarahan to discuss managing Sev 1's and Sev 2's.  The entire day was dedicated to learning more about how service level management is a key process for governing the daily management of Sev 1's and Sev 2's.   Prioritization must be based on both Urgency and Business Impact.    Sev 1's are critical to the business and require timely escalation both functionally and hierarchically.  Dinner that evening was outstanding as we enjoyed a wonderful meal at Magnolia's followed by an evening at the Roof Top Pavilion. On our second day we met with Rae Ann Bruno to discuss how to manage the remote support staff.   More companies are beginning to leverage home employees to augment their support staff.  This provides increased flexibility in scheduling, access to a broader talent base, and a foundation for business continuity planning.   The benefits do not come without the challenges of managing remote employees.  Keeping them a part of the team and keeping them informed are just two challenges.  The forum discussed a number of challenges and how to overcome them. In the afternoon, I had the pleasure of joining the HDI Government Forum and hearing Rae Ann talk about the other side of the remote story, the employees.   The group discussed some of the challenges and solutions of support employees that are now remote and mobile.  The wireless support demands are growing and are demands the support organization must be prepared to handle.   While I was joining this forum, the HDI Financial Forum was meeting with Rich Hand to discuss the trends in the support industry.    My final day with the HDI Financial Forum was spent with Joel Ramseyer.  Joel led the group in discussing issues around on boarding of new employees.   The scope was focused on the services offered by the support center to enable the company to efficiently on board new employees, as well as off boarding. During my second week in Charleston, I delivered a full day workshop on Knowledge-Centered Support for the HDI Retail Forum.  There is a lot of interest in knowledge management and learning about the best practices in knowledge management was considered a big win for all in attendance.  This one day workshop was a consolidation of material from the HDI Knowledge Management Foundations: KCS Principles three-day workshop.  The focus was on understanding the core processes. The next day I joined the HDI Support Center Leadership Forum.  After spending the previous day with Rae Ann Bruno in a more structured deliverable, this day was a facilitated roundtable discussion.  The attendees were invited to propose discussion topics.  Whoever proposed a topic then framed the discussion and what they wanted to get out of it.  The team voted on the topics and the top two topics were "Knowledge Management" and "Executive/ BU Management Dashboards"    We tackled the reporting topic first and everyone shared in what they are currently reporting.  We quickly discovered there was no common thread and that this was a valuable learning experience.  While ideas were shared and captured, the key learning was each company needed to report what was important to their senior management and that we could not create a template for all companies to follow.   We also agreed that everyone would bring a copy of their executive report to the October meeting along with a summary of their business objectives.  There will be a follow-up discussion at that meeting. The topic of knowledge management filled the room in the afternoon with questions, answers, ideas, and thoughts to contemplate.   Some of the members shared their challenges and were given advice by others.  I think this was the most valuable portion of the discussion, learning what others would do if they were faced with your challenge.   Since the topic was knowledge management and something I am closely familiar with, I was able to share some ideas with the group based on industry best practices.  I also challenged some of their thinking as they shared an overview of their current implementations.  Knowledge management continues to be a topic of interest that the group wants to discuss in a future meeting. Leslie Cook did an outstanding job of bringing together 8 different HDI Forums over two weeks to the small coastal town of Charleston, SC.  The weather was in the 90's and the humidity was high.  All in all, a wonderful event in a beautiful city with outstanding weather.    Nicely Done. Rick Joslin HDI Executive Director of Certification & Training

Another Week of Forum Meetings in Charleston, SC

We had another great week of Forum meetings! The following HDI Forum groups met June 9-12, 2008 in Charleston, SC:

• Retail Forum
• Insurance Forum
• Support Center Leadership Forum
• ITIL Implementation Forum

With all these groups combined, we had about 50 people attend this week's HDI Forum meetings.

Each group chooses their own topics for each meeting, which allows each Industry or Topic-Specific Forum group to really discuss topics that are important to them and their organization. This week's meetings lead to some great discussion on a wide variety of topics.

The HDI Retail Forum group discussed the following topics:

• Implementing Knowledge Management
• Self-Service Best Practices
• Staffing Models
• Trends and What's on the Horizon for Support

The HDI Insurance Forum group discussed these topics:

• ITIL Implementation: A Discussion on Core ITIL Processes and What is Different in ITIL V3
• Merger/Acquisition Support Strategy
• Help Desk Consolidation
• Remote User Support

The HDI Support Center Leadership Forum group discussed the following:

• Customer Satisfaction Processes/Feedback Methods
• This group also took some time to share their processes and procedures amongst the group. HDI representative Rick Joslin facilitated a round table style dialogue on best practices for processes and procedures. The group discussed what has worked and what has not worked in their environments.

The HDI ITIL Implementation Forum groups discussed:

• Developing a Return on Investment (ROI) analysis for our ITIL initiatives - Gaining Executive Buy-in by Speaking their Language
• Creating an ITIL Roadmap; including where to start, what process areas to focus on first/next, creating a project plan, reasonable timeframes to implement a process, and what to do if you project stalls
• This group also continued working on their individual action plans to keep them on track upon their return to the office

If the HDI Forums sound interesting to you, please learn more about the Forums by contacting me at 719-268-0338 or via email at lcook@thinkhdi.com.

Nice blogging with you...

Leslie Cook, HDI Forum Program Manager

It’s a Wrap!

The Law Forum wrapped up its meeting in Charleston, SC, on Thursday morning with a presentation from Rae Ann Bruno on Working as a Team with Second Level.  Rae Ann provided terrific insights on ways to move communication forward with the other IT teams the support center interacts with.  The presentation was lively, interactive, and informative.  The members broke out into two groups to do some brainstorming and then came back together to learn from each other.  Finally, we wrapped up with a discussion about topics for the next meeting before everyone had to depart, leaving Charleston’s southern charm to return to their respective homes and businesses.  I feel comfortable saying that everyone went home with some great memories of learning, sharing, building relationships, and having a lot of fun doing it :)

Pat Albright, Manager, Support Center Certification & Assessment, HDI (aka HDI Law Forum Facilitator)

Wrapping up a Great Week of HDI Forums

A great week of HDI Forum meetings are coming to an end today...

I just want to take this time to thank the members of the HDI Healthcare Providers Forum, Government Forum, Law Forum, and Financial Services Forum for their commitment to their groups. We experienced some wonderful sharing and learning opportunities this week and had a great time building our relationships even deeper....not to mention the fun time we had each evening during dinner and hanging out!

I have personally built some great relationships with many people in each of these groups, so it is always a sweet sorrow to say goodbye after each meeting, but I look forward to seeing you all again during our next meetings that will take place October 14-17, 2008 in Miami, FL.

See you all soon! Safe travels to your home.

Nice blogging with you....

Leslie Cook, HDI Forum Program Manager

It's balmy and cool in Charleston!

The Law Forum is meeting in Charleston, SC, this week along with the Financial, Government, and Healthcare Forums.  The people in these groups are as cool as the weather is balmy!  How exciting it is to be surrounded by such an intelligent group of support professionals.  I'm here as the HDI facilitator for the Law Forum and my role is to ensure a great customer experience for them.  Yesterday, Joel Ramseyer of Diagonal Service, Inc., introduced development of a Service Catalog to the group.  The discussion was lively and flexible and the evaluations showed the group was highly satisfied with what they learned.  Later, we enjoyed a fab dinner at Magnolia's Upper Level and my group was recognized (shall we say) as one of the most lively of all the groups!  (I swear I was not the instigator of all that liveliness!)  Today, Pete McGarahan (aka Rock Star) provided the Law Forum group with an overwhelming amount of information on the topics of Performance Measurements of Help Desk Analysts and Flow of  Information from all Members of IT.  We enjoyed another fab dinner at the Southend Brewery and, again, my group was quite lively :)  (Take note that I was at another table so their liveliness cannot be attributed to me!)  Tomorrow, we will have a half-day session and then folks will head to the airport for various destinations, no doubt wiser and happier for the experiences shared and friendships made or strengthened here.  Having spent my last practitioner days as the Manager of End User Services for a national law firm, I enjoy my time with this group so very much and it is refreshing to hear about the challenges and opportunities in the real world of support today.  Keep blogging...

Pat Albright, Manager, Support Center Certification & Assessment, HDI (aka HDI Law Forum Facilitator)

A Quick Note on the HDI Forum Meeting in Charleston SC…

The government forum taking place in Charleston SC (along with Finance, Law, and Healthcare) is in its third day and we have had a couple of great sessions! Buff Scott III of propoint Solutions kicked off with a full day of CMDB with a lot of ITIL V2 & V3 discussion mixed in. As always, the group had many discussions that added great value to the day.

We finished the day at one of the restaurants that is on the list of “1000 things you must do before you die” Magnolia’s. It was to die for! Great food, conversation, laughs (Government forum and Law Forum members were in competition for the most and loudest laughs!)

We started Wednesday with MiKael Blaisdell discussing how to purchase a Case Management System successfully. It generated great discussions around technology purchasing, knowledge management, and process. He shared some great insights into the vendor community.

In the afternoon Rae Ann Bruno is going to talk about supporting the wireless workforce. Rae Ann is always a great presenter well received by the forum groups. While I’ll be facilitating a strategic conversation about what the Support Center will look like in 2011. Always a fun discussion if you like to think outside the current paradigms.

Tonight we head to Southend Brewery for another great meal to get us ready for the final wrap up on Thursday.

The forums are a great opportunity to get away from the day to day, and expand your mind and knowledge. I always enjoy these meetings and the value is priceless! Thank you to all the forum members for helping to move our industry forward as a respected profession. You are leaders in this great movement!

Rich Hand

Executive Director of Membership

Southern Hospitality Collides with HDI Forums

Today was the kick-off for another round of HDI Forum meetings that are taking place in Charleston, SC...a city rich in history, tradition, and southern culture.

The following Forum groups are meeting this week, June 2-5, in the Historic Downtown District of Charleston, SC at the Doubletree Guest Suites.

• Financial Services Forum
• Government Forum
• Healthcare Providers Forum
• Law Forum

With all these groups combined, we had about 75 people attend this week's HDI Forum meetings.

I am facilitating the HDI Healthcare Providers Forum group today. We dug right in with a discussion on "Training Support Center Staff: Training Across all Levels of Support". Rae Ann Bruno, one of HDI's Faculty Trainers, is leading this workshop this morning. The objective of this workshop is to learn all aspects of developing training programs by building a customized, high-level training plan. The group started this discussion by listing their biggest challenges they face regarding training their staff. These challenges include:

• Getting their staff off the phones long enough for training sessions
• Experience base within their staff to understand the training
• Getting their staff engaged
• Training across shifts
• Retention...retaining the knowledge
• No training budget
• Balancing expectations of the trainer and the group being trained
• Keeping up to date with the user
• Willingness from 2nd and 3rd level to train
• Training not part of the plan

The first activity of the day was to break into smaller groups, each group taking several issues from the above list, to come up with solutions/best practices to face these issues. Each group came up with a comprehensive list of items to tackle each of these issues. This was followed by many other activities that kept the group interactive throughout the morning...learning ways to help train their support staff. Each member of the group walked away from this session with many tangible items that they could take back to their organization to implement ideas discussed.

  I am looking forward to this evening....all of these Forum groups will get together for dinner at Magnolia's. Magnolia's is on the "1000 Things to do Before you Die" list and is American cuisine with a down south flavor....real southern comfort food.

More to come this week....keep any eye out!

Four more groups will meet next week, June 9-12, in Charleston.

Nice blogging with you...

Leslie Cook, HDI Forum Program Manager

Photos in this blog are courtesy of the Doubletree Guest Suites in Charleston, SC.