Knowledge Centered

Support & ITIL

But I thought ITIL didn’t have a
Knowledge Management Process?

HDI NE
March 23, 2007 John Custy
March 23, 2006

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Agenda

ITIL and Knowledge Management

Knowledge Centered Support (KCS)

Implementing KCS when Practicing ITIL

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About JPC Group

Focused on the four cornerstones of IT Service and
Support:
 People
 Process
 Technology
 Measurement

Five practice areas:
 Training
 Certification & Assessments
 Services Architecture
 IT Service Management (ITSM) best practices
 Knowledge Management

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Training/Workshops

ITIL - Awareness, Foundations, Practitioner, Manager

HDI Faculty
 Customer Support Representative - CSR
 Support Center Analyst - SCA
 Support Center Team Lead - SCTL
 Support Center Manager - SCM
 Support Center Director - SCD
 Knowledge Centered Support - (KCS)

Service Level Management

Listening Skills

Problem Solving and Troubleshooting Skills

Sourcing Alternative

Staffing and Scheduling Models
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Best Practices

Information Technology Services Management (ITSM)

ITIL & ISO/IEC 20000

Business Process Re-Engineering

Operational Assessments

Alignment of Objectives, Key Performance Indicators (KPI)
and Operational Metrics

Process Optimization/Assessment

Customer Satisfaction Programs

Support Center Consolidation/Optimization

Services Strategy Assessment/Development

Globalization Issues for the Support Center

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What Customers Expect

IT Service levels required by the business

Stable or Improving trends in Service Quality

Sense of Urgency

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Challenges

Decreasing Budgets

Increasing SUPPORT Increasing

Demand ORGANIZATION Complexity

Rising Costs

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Top Ten Reasons For ITIL & KM
10. Need to respond and resolve incidents faster
9. Resolutions are more complex
8. Providing different answers to the same question
7. Support analysts suffering from burnout
6. Less time for training, more training needed
5. Answering the same questions over and over
4. Opportunity to learn from customers’ experience
3. Need to improve first contact resolution
2. Enable web based self-help
1. You must lower your support costs!

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The Concepts of KCS

KCS is a methodology and a set of practices and
processes that focuses on knowledge as a key asset of
the support organization.

KCS seeks to:
 Create content as a by-product of solving problems
 Evolve content based on demand and usage
 Develop a KB of our collective experience to-date
 Reward learning, collaboration, sharing and improving

KCS is not something we do in addition to solving
problems…

KCS becomes the way we solve problems

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ITIL and Knowledge Management

ITIL does define a knowledge-base and when

to use it
 Incident Management uses the knowledge (known
error) data base as the incident lifecycle
 Problem Management is responsible for the
content

Two processes in Problem Management
 Problem Control
 Error Control

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ITIL and Knowledge Centered Support

ITIL identifies what needs to be done but

doesn’t specify how to do it
 Problem Management only deals with Known
Errors

KCS provides the methodology on how to
organize and collect the data so it all works

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Incident Control (Lifecycle)
Ownership, Monitoring, Tracking and Communication Incident detection and recording

Classification and initial support

Yes A Yes
Service Request Service Request
or Change? for a change?

No Submit Request
No
For Change
Investigation and diagnosis
Service Request
Procedure
Resolution and recovery

Incident Closure

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 Incident Matching

Incident / Problem Integration

Problem I
Seen this
No Before? Yes Incident I

Create New
Incident II
Problem, Link Incident Known
Error
Link Incident to Incident III
Problem/Known Error
(or Incident) Problem II
RFC
Incident IV

Incident V

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Problem Management Integration
Capacity
Capacity
Incident
Incident // Management
Management
Incident
Incident Management
Management Problem-KE
Problem-KE
Database
Database Availability
Availability
Management
Management

Incident
Matching
Problem
Problem Management
Management
RFC
Configuration
Configuration
Management
Management
Database
Database
Configuration
Configuration Release
Release
(CMDB)
(CMDB) Change
Change Management
Management
Management
Management Mgt.
Mgt.

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KCS & ITIL Fulfills Stakeholder
Needs

Customer
 Increased confidence in support
 Improved response from support
 Speed, accuracy and consistency

Analyst
 Personal empowerment and recognition
 Improved confidence
 Broadened expertise

Organization
 Improved effectiveness/efficiency
 Evolving resources and expertise
 Improved relevance and loyalty
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How To Get There

Process Maturity Assessment

 Assess all appropriate processes

Identify Implementation Roadmap
 Education
 Assessment
 Managing
 Organizing
 Optimizing

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Continuous Service Improvement
Program (CSIP)

Process driven – customer focused

4 E’s
 Efficiency
 Effectiveness
 Equity
 Economy

Need Top-down, Bottom-up approach
 Have bottom-up interest

Need Dramatic, Visible Impact
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Management Commitment

Vision, Mission
 Organizational (business)

Identify measurements
 What
 How

Accountability

Rewards & Recognition

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Managing

Document Process Maturity/Capabilities
 ITIL PMF, CobIT, GMM, etc.
 Identify Customer expectations
 Conduct Gap Analysis
 Evolution or Revolution

Document Customer Wants/Needs
 OLA/UC need to be identified
 Other constraints

Document Gaps
 Improvement takes time …

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Organizing

Best Practices vs. Current Practices

 Understand resource constraints
 What approach is appropriate?

Evaluate and Test
 Involve teams

Implement
 Measure change

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Optimizing

Measure new processes

Identify any gaps

Audit to verify adherence to process

Ongoing tuning

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What is Needed

Leadership commitment

Sense of Urgency

Guiding Coalition

Vision & Strategy

Communications (What is changing)

Empowerment

Short-Term Wins

Cultural acceptance

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 QUESTIONS?

John Custy
JPCGroup@verizon.net
617.536.9225

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