Chessington, 11 September 2012. According to service management company Sunrise Software, todays Service Managers have a crucial role in supporting the business in the face of continuing consumerisation and even gamification of IT. In a white paper published today, Sunrise Software states that Service Desk managers should embrace the changes brought about by the rapid changes in consumer technology. They need to support such trends as bring your own device (BYOD), gamification of business software, harness social media, and the newly emerging phenomena internet of things, by introducing innovative new services and promoting flexible, collaborative ways of working. Not only must Service Desks provide more proactive services, but even aim to become more predictive.
The Service Desk has come a long way since its humble beginnings as a helpdesk that was supported by a simple call logging tool. The implementation of best-practice frameworks such as ITIL have revolutionised the way that many other business divisions across the organisation approach their relationship with both internal and external customers, and how they go about developing new services. However, as the pressure to squeeze budgets and to do more with less continues, Sunrise Software has noticed a definite trend towards companies taking a more pragmatic approach to ITIL, with the result that they are moving away from purely technical functionality toward service-centric applications.
Geoff Rees, Sales Director of Sunrise Software, commented, New ways of accessing technology and business applications such as Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) and Cloud are already changing the way that companies approach the delivery of services. Without the upfront costs associated with on-premise software solutions, business departments are now able to choose their own systems with little input from the IT department. This is supporting a faster, more response, service-centric approach as line-of-business departments are less constrained by technology. However, while departments can take more control of the applications they use, they still need support for their desktop and other computing devices in order to access these SaaS or Cloud services.
Mobility combined with the growing consumerisation of IT, and the emergence of the internet of things which allows a far great number and all manner of devices to communicate and interoperate, present additional challenges and the Service Desk needs to develop new services that enable greater and wider connectivity. People now expect to bring their own devices to work with iPhones, iPads, Androids and Blackberrys becoming the norm. In fact, industry analysts predict the number of BYOD users will double by 2014, at least 50% of enterprise email users will rely primarily on a browser, tablet or mobile as their major means of connecting to the corporate network, and by 2015 mobile application development projects for smartphones and tablets will outnumber native PC projects by a ratio of 4 to 1.
For the Service Desk in particular, this means that employees will no longer accept access to cut down, basic user interfaces. Geoff Rees added, Dont be surprised to see like and dislike increasingly become a built-in feature of tomorrows user interfaces. The app generation growing up with constant access to the the Internet where communicating by Facebook and Twitter are second-nature are tomorrows IT directors and security officers and will be well placed to adapt the concepts of their more open and collaborative social media reality to the business world.
In fact, social media is a huge commercial opportunity that cannot be ignored. The Service Desk needs to embrace social media as the ideal platform to increase customer engagement, protect the corporate brand and ultimately generate new revenue streams.
Geoff Rees concluded, Fundamentally, the Service Desk is all about process management but it can, and should, combine process with more creativity, openness and collaboration. Service Desk managers need to embrace new technology and new ways of working so that they are able to move from a position of controlling everything to a more collaborative way of working, that delivers the service that their customers, both internal and external, demand. This will enable the Service Desk to address their customers changing business requirements and enable them to flourish in a mobile, social media world where all things are connected.