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

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.

Higher Education Forum Meets at SMU

I am with the HDI Higher Education Forum group today here in Dallas, TX. This group was able to get together for a one-day meeting right before the 2008 HDI Annual Conference & Expo, because one of their member's, Southern Methodist University (SMU), was kind enough to host a meeting on their campus...

...And oh what a beautiful campus it is. It is March 8, 2008 and the grass is already green here, the birds are singing, and there are many flowers blooming all over campus. It makes me miss home, which is a small town north of Dallas. I have lived in Colorado for 10 years now and the grass and flowers in Colorado never bloom this early...we are preparing for at least another month of snow.

So, back to the Higher Education Forum...

The group planned a mixed agenda for today, so we could fit in as much content as possible for a one-day meeting (during the normal Forum meetings, the group meets for 3 full days). This morning we heard from four different members (University of Akron, Baylor University, Indiana University, and Boise State University) about the newest and hottest technology they are using, including centralized service desk tools, self-service knowledgebase tools, remote control and chat support tools. These members showed us demos of these tools, discussed recent implementations of these tools and shared successes and challenges they have faced during their implementations.

Next, we were able to take a tour of the campus, where we took a group photo, and we heard from our host, SMU, about how they run their support organization, as well as about some current challenges they are facing.

This afternoon, the group will hear from Phil Gerbyshak. Besides being the Vice President of the Help Desk at Robert W. Baird & Co. Inc., Phil is the Midwest Regional Director of HDI Local Chapters, the President of the Brew City (Milwaukee) HDI Local Chapter, and is HDI's community leader here on the HDI Blog. During this HDI Higher Education Forum meeting, the group requested that Phil present his presentation called "The Million Dollar Pizza: How One Bad Customer Experience Can Cost You a Million Dollars or More!". Phil presented a version of this presentation during an October 2007 HDI SPIN web seminar. Phil will present a customized version of this presentation for the Higher Education Forum group, so the discussion is interactive and specific to the higher education environment.

The group will wrap-up the day with a roundtable discussion focusing on 2008 Newest and Hottest Technology Trends. Specific items of discussion will include: Emergency Communication Tools, Vista SP1/XP SP3, Wireless Security, Phone, Handheld, and PDA Support, and lastly Enterprise Printing.

The HDI Higher Education Forum group will next meet on July 14-17, 2008 in Bloomington, IN at Indiana University. Watch for a future blog on what took place during this meeting.

Nice blogging with you...

Leslie Cook

HDI Forum Program Manager

December 2007 - HDI Executive Forum

The HDI Executive Forum met during December (2007) in San Francisco, CA to wrap up the year of meetings that included other locations like Amelia Island, FL and Whistler, BC. This elite group is specifically for IT service and support directors and executives from larger support organizations (50+ support staff). The members of this group are thought-leaders in the industry and when they get together they break boundaries for new ways to create support excellence.

Over the last year, the HDI Executive Forum took time as a group to discuss what the support organization would look like in 2010. Their findings were summarized in an Issue of The Muns Report and a special Focus Book that takes a comprehensive look at these findings.

In this, the first Focus Book of 2008, the HDI Support Center Leadership Forum, the HDI Executive Forum and the HDI Strategic Advisory Board met, discussed and identified the most prominent trends support managers and IT executives will encounter in the next three years. These groups identified 14 trends that will transform the way IT support is delivered and managed and made some policy-setting predictions that will impact everyone from the Tier 1 analyst to the CIO.

• Some of the topics include:
• Supporting Mobile Users
• Impact of Home Technology
• Impact of Public Infrastructure
• Changes in Customer Expectations
• The Google Mentality
• IT Organizational Changes
• IT Metrics
• Sourcing Trends & Vendor Management
• Knowledge Centered Support – Growth in both Acceptance and Adoption

Check out the Focus Book titled, The Support Center in 2011: A Report on the Future Trends Facing the Support Industry.  It should be available on the HDI Website by March of 2008.

Learn more about this Forum or HDI's other vertical industry or topic Specific forum groups.

November 2007 - HDI Higher Education Forum

In November 2007 the HDI Higher Education Forum (HEF) met in Albuquerque, NM at Central New Mexico Community College. This group is unique, because they take turns hosting the Forum meetings on each member’s university or college campus. This group has toured many campuses over the last several years. Some of these campuses include: Columbia University, McGill University, Calvin College, University of South Carolina, Colorado Mountain College and University of Nevada Las Vegas.

During each Higher Education Forum meeting, these members not only cover topics of importance, but they get the opportunity to tour each others’ support organizations and campuses. Each support organization and campus they tour, they learn something new, something that they can take away and possibly implement within their own organization…this is invaluable to the members of this Forum group.

Higher Education Forum members showing their

school pride at the UNLV meeting in May of 2007

HDI Forum Trip Report - Colorado Springs, CO - October 2007

“What a time we had!”

It took place in Colorado Springs in October of 2007.  Eight of the eleven HDI Vertical Industry Forum groups converged in HDI's hometown for three days of networking, education and debate about the challenges facing the support organization today.

Since the Forum groups met in Colorado Springs, HDI was able to provide our Forum members with a unique experience. So, the first evening of the event, we split the groups up for a team building exercise: a scavenger hunt, followed by a networking reception at the HDI headquarters. The scavenger   hunt starter at the historic Antlers Hilton hotel in the heart of downtown. Forum members received clues that lead them to specific places around downtown Colorado Springs. Each group had to work together to find each place, each place they found lead them closer to the HDI offices, where a fun evening of networking was waiting.

During the three days of the event, all Forum members met with their specific Vertical Industry Forum group for learning and sharing activities, where they covered topics such as Knowledge Management, Staff Motivation, Service Level Agreements, ITIL Implementation, Supporting A Remote Workforce, Staff Training, Metrics, the list goes on and on. Each specific Vertical Industry Forum group has the opportunity to choose their own topics for each meeting and because these groups bring together peers from the same industry, each group is able to tackle a topic with their own issues and challenges in mind.

During the HDI Forum events, members not only learn how to create IT service and support excellence by working with subject matter experts and their peers, but they also get a chance to step away for the office for networking activities. During each evening of the event, Forum members get together for dinner and for a chance to unwind from their full day of brainstorming and workshop-style meetings.

During the second evening of the October 2007 Forum event, all Forum groups got together to take an adventure…first stop: bus tour through the Garden of the Gods, where we were able to stop and get a group photo of all the Forum members followed by entertainment and dinner at the world renowned Broadmoor Hotel.

During the second evening, activities were more low-key, with Forum members breaking into groups for dinner at either Sonterra Grill or Phantom Canyon.

No matter what the group is doing, whether they are hard at work during their Forum meetings or having fun during dinner activities, they continue to address the issues most important in their specific IT service and support environments.

Learn More about this or the rest of HDI’s vertical industry and topic specific forums.

Groups that met during this Forum event: Financial Services Forum, Government Forum, Healthcare Providers Forum, Insurance Forum, Law Forum, Retail/Restaurant/Hospitality Forum, and Support Center Leadership Forum.

Where Participation Takes Shape and Ideas Take Hold

Join an elite peer group of senior-level IT support professionals. HDI Forums are strategic groups of leaders who meet several times per year to network, exchange ideas, discuss support center issues and challenges, and share benchmarking ideas with peers who work in similar industries or share similar responsibilities.

A Few Benefits of Forum Membership

• Face-to-face meetings with world-class presenters and subject matter experts
• Discuss industry-specific topics with your peers
• Customized training programs developed by Forum members and HDI
• Validation of IT support processes
• Case studies and lessons learned from other institutions

Need more information?

• Submit a request for more information or to start a Vertical Industry Forum.
• Email forums@thinkhdi.com.
• Call 800.248.5667

Join one of our Forums

Vertical Forums

• Executive Forum
• Support Center Leadership Forum
• Financial Services Forum
• Insurance Forum
• Government Forum
• Retail Forum
• Healthcare Providers Forum
• Law Forum
• Higher Education Forum

Topical Forums

• Knowledge Management Forum
• ITIL Implementation Forum