1. The biggest reason to use a Knowledge Base program is to keep track of software problems. Almost all offices have three dynamics to their software: Operating System, Productivity Software, and custom built software for your business. Entrusting all your business computers to all of this software is indeed a brave move. A Knowledge Base program allows your employees to enter detailed information on a variety of software topics including; how-to(s), program errors, settings and options, hardware settings, and many others.

2. A Knowledge Base program is perfect for storing… well, knowledge. Quite often your office will have an employee who has been with the business for several years and then suddenly submits their two week notice for a variety of reasons. This employee takes all of his/her knowledge with them. This leaves other less informed employees to fill their shoes. Not an easy task. It doesn’t need to be that way any more. With a Knowledge Base program, an employee can be required to make at least one entry a week. If you have 5 employees, that is 260 entries in your Knowledge Base per year!

3. How does one define knowledge? A Knowledge Base can be basically anything you desire. Quite often we have contact information, vendor information, and policies and procedures stored in hundreds of files over the whole hard drive; or worse, papers all over the office. A Knowledge Base makes it easy to have all that information in one place. If the Knowledge Base has a robust search engine; a search can be completed in a few seconds.

4. Customer Relations. A Knowledge Base can improve customer relations. Customers can now have advanced knowledge of polices and procedures and well as product and service pricing, and with a quick response from the employee.

5. More accurate answers. Often, you simply give up trying to find the information and take your best guess at what you think the material contained. While this may be acceptable to you some of the time, it may not be acceptable to the customer or client you are talking to.

6. Improve Office productivity. The same employee that had the “out of paper” error message found out from the Knowledge Base that he/she needed to re-install the printer driver. This saved the employee twenty minutes out of the work day.

7. Beat the competition. The competition may have never even considered using a Knowledge Base program in the office. By having this basic idea and software in place, you will be able to work smarter, save time, and save money. The competition will be left in the dust!

Bonus Tip:

Research the best Knowledge Base software for your business. Knowledge Base(s), sometimes called Knowledge Management comes in many different flavors. Check out the vendors! Make sure they have a free demo or product information on their website.

Author Bio
Author: Brandon Doyle
www.doylesoftutah.com

Since 1989, the OGC has issued a series of books on ITIL. Each of the books covers a topic of IT service management.

The core ITIL process have basically stayed the same since v1, however the way they are put together has evolved to meet the ever-changing needs of the organization.

Since v3 was introduced in 2007, many IT service managers have wondered about the key differences between v2 and v3.

For one thing, the library has been consolidated to five new books, each dealing with a phase of the service lifecycle. In ITIL v3, the concept of IT service delivery has been expanded from the day-to-day operations of those services to the following five phases of the service lifecycle:

• Service Strategy: Developing and implementing service management as a business strategy.

• Service Design: Designing the right IT services to support the business strategy.

• Service Transition: Transitioning the new system to production.

• Service Operation: Developing effective services to support operations.

• Continual Service Improvement: Continuing to improve IT services.

For another, while v2 is organized around process, v3 is centered around service and helping IT provide value to the business. Version 3 calls on IT to develop, design and expand IT services based on what’s best for the business. Version 3 is more about making IT a business partner, rather than just a department that provides the technology to support the business. One benefit of v3 is that it closes the gap between the IT organization and the business. In v3, the success of the business depends on its relationship with IT.

Although v2 talked about using IT to save money, it focused on how much the IT services cost, rather than the return on investment realized by integrating IT services with the business needs.

Version 2 also focused on the best practices for incident management, change management, capacity management and configuration management to help companies improve and standardize their data center operations. But while v2 told organizations what to do, it really didn’t explain how to do it. And for some, that just wasn’t good enough.

Version 3, however, provides more specifics on how to reach the goals advocated in v2, including offering examples of various business cases. What v3 does is integrate the different ITIL components much better than v2, making them all equally important.

Version 3 is also less complicated and more easy to understand than v2. Additionally, organizations can customize it to meet their specific business needs. And because v3 provides more structure than v2, organizations can incorporate other best practices and standards like Six Sigma.

ITIL v3, therefore, is a change in mindset from v2. It provides the framework for IT to work more closely with the business so it can design and develop the appropriate services to move the business forward efficiently and effectively. Version 3 is about integrating IT services with the business for the good of the business.

One of the keys to managing change is creating a Change Advisory Board, or CAB, which will help a business balance the need for the changes with any inherent risks. The members of this board will give the change management team the input necessary to help you make the best decisions for your company.

The job of the CAB is to review and prioritize any potential changes, keep track of the change process, and provide feedback. The board will also make sure that all the stakeholders including IT, security and business analyze the changes. The board will help ensure that the changes are implemented without disrupting your customers’ operations.

But once the CAB is established, what can be done to ensure that the board’s meetings are as productive as possible?

For one thing, the Change Manager, who convenes the meeting, must make sure that someone from the essential departments in the company are at the meeting. The Change Manager, who is responsible for change management, serves as the leader and facilitator of the CAB. If board member disagree about how best to prioritize changes, the Change Manager can resolve those disputes.

The CAB must meet on a regular, published schedule, typically weekly, to authorize changes. Hold meetings at a time that is convenient for board members. But they should be held at the same time and same day every week for consistency’s sake.

No one in the company should schedule a meeting that conflicts with the CAB meeting. And, if at all possible, CAB meetings should not be cancelled. Decide whether every board member needs to attend every meeting. Members new to the board should receive an orientation before they begin. The orientation should include the board’s bylaws, work plans, and descriptions of their roles on the board.

In order to make the meeting run smoothly, the topics for discussion should be distributed to each member of the board before the meeting. Too much time will be wasted if the members are required to review this information for the first time at the meeting.

These topics include:

• The requests for changes that have been submitted

• Minutes of the last meeting to be reviewed

• Updates of the status of changes that the board has already approved

• Review of the changes that have already been completed

Taking part in a Change Advisory Board requires members to listen to the ideas and opinions of other members. And they should discuss those ideas and opinions before making any final decisions. Sometimes it’s hard to work together as a group but here are a few tips to help board members feel more comfortable with one another and become a cohesive board:

• Ensure board members know each other’s names and a little bit about each other

• Encourage all board members to participate in the discussions and brainstorming sessions

• Ensure that each board member respects the opinions of fellow board members

In order to keep the CAB meeting moving forward as efficiently as possible, the Change Manager has to take charge and own the meeting. He must let members know he plans to keep the discussion on topic and on time. Having a clock nearby lets members know he values their time. Keeping to the schedule of agenda topics, and setting a time limit for each agenda item, will also help the Change Manager keep the meeting on track. If the members start to discuss something that’s not on the agenda, the leader must refocus their attention to the task at hand.

For the meeting to be most productive, the Change Manager has to be sure to get input from all the board members. He should treat all board members with respect and not immediately reject ideas or opinions he believes are worthless. And he must not impose his opinion on the group.

Before the meeting ends, the Change Manager should ensure that all the board members understand the next step or steps. Additionally, he should ask members if they thought the meeting was useful and stayed on track and what could be done differently at the next meeting. He could also follow up with board members individually to gain insight into his meeting strategies.

Finally, the Change Manager should ensure that the appropriate people understand what happened at the CAB meeting and what decisions were made. In addition, the Change Manager should have a system in place to track the board’s decisions and what, if any, tasks individual members agreed to undertake so he can follow up with them to make sure things are proceeded as scheduled.

First, because IT service management software can be used for logging in tickets as well as high-end CRM systems, you have to clearly define your company’s needs. Typically, small businesses don’t need the most complicated and expensive products. On the other hand, the most basic software might not have all the features you need to operate your help desk effectively. After you determine your needs, you should set your company’s goals and then establish a list of requirements that the IT service management software must meet.

To help you determine which vendors offer the software to meet your company’s needs, you should ask people in companies similar to yours what works for them and what doesn’t work. You should ask what level of support the vendors offer and how good the vendors’ training programs are. Find out if the training is provided in your location or the vendor’s location.

And you should make sure there’s sufficient product documentation, or other self-service capabilities, so you can save money by not constantly relying on assistance from the vendor. However, you should also ensure that your software provider has a 24-hour toll-free hotline so you can get the assistance you need when you need it.

In addition, select a system that is quick and easy to install and deploy. It should also include an installation wizard to guide you through each step of the set-up process. And the software should be user-friendly.

It’s important to select software that you can customize for your specific business needs and that also gives your employees access to customize it and/or make changes. You don’t want to have to pay the vendor to customize the software for you. When you’re doing your research, also check to see if the vendor will charge extra for licensing, maintenance, implementation and training.

Finally, ask the vendors if their products have reporting systems built-in to them so you can analyze the information in order to develop more effective and efficient processes.

While this is a good definition for someone who understands the vernacular of ITIL, it isn’t easily understood by the layman. Let’s dissect the definition and put it into terms the general population can understand. The IT Service provider is the organization that has been hired by the Customer to perform a service, for example, answer calls. The service level agreement is the document, which can be a few brief lines or it can be a hundreds of pages, which describes each service level target(s). These service targets are based on the customers business needs. For example, if Large Corp. sells their products worldwide, they may have a need to have a call center that is available 24×7. This one business objective, call center available 24×7, could produce multiple service level targets such as:

Call Center is available to take calls 99.99% of the time each month.

No more than 5% of calls will abandon each month.

99% of all incoming calls must be answered within 30 seconds.

All of the service level targets must be agreed upon by both parties. Once both parties agree to all of the service level targets, they are assembled into the Service Level Agreement document. The service level targets will each have a description that identifies the expectation, how it will be measured and penalties, if missed. For example:

Call center must answer all incoming calls within 30 seconds

Measurement period: 1 month

Report(s): ASA Report 101 – monthly

Penalty: $10,000

The SLA is a joint goal between the IT Service Provider and the Customer. Although penalties do reduce costs and they do send a strong signal to service providers to improve their service, neither you nor the service provider “win” if an SLA is missed. Think of an SLA as a shared goal.

It should be noted that the term Service Level Agreement is used in many companies when discussing agreements between two internal groups, such as the Procurement Department will process all purchase requests by the Engineering Department within 5 business days. Technically, per ITIL, this is not a Service Level Agreement, but instead an Operational Level Agreement.

CUSTOMER: I submitted a ticket to have someone map a new printer to my laptop, but nobody has come by or called me back.

HELP DESK:  I am sorry to hear that but we are busy with a network outage, it may be awhile before somebody comes by to assist you in your request.

CUSTOMER: Can you give me some timeframe on when to expect a visit from a technician?

HELP DESK: It all depends on when we get the network outage repaired; it could be then next 5 minutes or the next 5 days.

CUSTOMER: It is no wonder your area is referred to as the helpless desk. CLICK! 

Unfortunately, the above conversation is all too familiar in many help desks across the world because expectations are never set with customer. One way of setting expectations with the customer, even before they call or write, is to establish Service Level Objectives, such as:

Ultimately, service level objectives will benefit the help desk in a number of ways such as:

From my perspective, the survey data shows that again the key factor is to obtain that key CIO or VP of IT to deliver a keynote project kick-off speech. I was at a client recently in which we were brought in to implement HP ServiceCenter to align with their Incident Management process. As a general rule of thumb we let our client do the initial kick-off note to their user base and project stakeholders. The project manager asked the VP of IT Service Management to give a small keynote on their vision going forward with Incident Management. The speech did not contain any of the ITIL jargon, nor did it contain any details about how the project was completed. The key ingredient was “Who” gave the speech and by showing their endorsement of the project the project team was able to get the stakeholder support it needed to become a successful project.

As this survey notes, the implementation of a CMDB has become a crucial part of IT operations. Your enterprise’s success in change management relies on a CMDB built with best practices and scalability in mind. Providing a keynote speech by an upper management executive won’t solve all of your project needs but it certainly will get your project off on the right foot. Waging corporate politics half way through the project to get sign off on a test case is not a project risk any project manager wants.

In Conner’s session, Federating Configuration Management Databases, he discussed some of the importance placed on a CMDB to describe what parts of the business are managed by IT. Conner stressed that IT organizations should push forward to become integrated components of the business rather than a cost center. He also stated that companies will always federate there data sources. Using the analogy of the United States governing it’s states in showing how a Master CMDB governs the underlying data sources.

In Flores’ workshop, an Actionable Service Catalog, he discussed some of the benefits an enterprise can take by putting forward an IT Service Catalog for the business users. He likened the IT Process owner to that of a product manager. Someone that describes the framework and develops requirements from the business to hand off to the delivery team or “Engineering.” One of his keynote take aways for the workshop was that, “We have to set expectations because if we don’t they will.” In this message he was referring to the end-users of the catalog and how Web 2.0, Google, Amazon, and other technologies will shape expectations placed on the business’ IT department in the coming years.

Overall, I was impressed with the vendor displays, however, since it was a smaller conference I think they could have pushed all of the sessions into one days rather than two. Most of the sessions seemed to be more of a pitch for their vendor’s products, although, it was good to get their perspective on the future of IT Service Management.

When CBS buys CNET they aren’t just getting a bunch of unique hits from new users of the site, they are getting a loyal fan base that has used the network of sites for 5-10 years. Content providers provide a medium for online advertising that surpasses the search advertising providers. Search advertisers focus on placement of banner sized ads whereas a content site maintains a visitor for a longer exposure and advertisements can be embedded within the articles or as splash pages. CNET was bought by CBS and more companies in the space are certainly left to be bought.

A recent Tech Crunch Blog Article stated that AOL might be on the map for software giant. The article goes on to tell that Time Warner is looking to sell the ISP and that the corporate culture of AOL would match Microsoft’s culture better than Yahoo. I argued in a comment that Ask.com might return a better return on investment for Microsoft. Ask has a Search Advertising department that has not been able to compete with Google or Yahoo, however, many unique hits utilize the search engine along with it’s content network on the About.com network. I feel that Microsoft should make a move to acquire not only just a search engine but also a content network that will engage the audience and produce better return for search advertisers. AOL would make a good fit as well, however, Microsoft may have to pay a premium.