Biogs and Case Studies: Effective CSI to drive down the cost and improve the efficiency of IT Seminar

Adam Poppleton - Brightoak Consultancy

Adam is an experienced service management consultant with a background in IT, project and service management in public and private sector organisations. He sits on several industry committees including itSMF, BCS, ISM and the BSI's ISO20000 committee and has frequently presented on service management topics at regional and national events.

"Potential big benefits from quick wins with IT Service Management"

There are many opportunities for cost saving naturally built into ITSM but sometimes some of them are forgotten or overlooked in the overall effort to 'implement' it. Looking across ITIL and other useful models, this presentation will pick out a few practical steps that can achieve good, and quick, returns.

Main Takeaways

Key areas to focus on in order to extract maximum benefit from ITSM with low financial outlay;
How to track and measure success against those key areas.

John Windebank - Oracle

John is a Principal Solution Architect at Oracle Corporation, specialising in ITSM strategy. He joined Oracle through its acquisition of Sun, initially working at Sun as Service Director - Telco.

Outside of Oracle, John is highly active within the ITSMF community, spending many years on the ITSMF-UK's Management Board. He currently holds the role of International Director.

"Using IT Service Management to Eliminate Unused IT Infrastructure"

Most IT infrastructures contain some devices that have largely been forgotten, often the remnants of past upgrade/consolidation. Taking a forensic ITSM driven approach to eliminating IT "orphans" can deliver significant cost savings. This session investigates how ITSM can be a potential blocker or enabler to the elimination of orphan devices.

Main Takeaway Points

Almost all IT infrastructures contain "orphans".
These orphans represent ITSM failures, but, once identified, represent significant opportunities for IT cost saving.
Your approach to ITSM can be a blocker or an enabler to the identification and elimination of this redundant IT capacity.

Martin Neville - Audit Commission

Martin was introduced to this thing called Service Management 10 years ago and hasn't stopped going on about it since. He is Head of Service Management at the Audit Commission, a UK government agency and is also Chair of the itSMF UK Public Sector Special Interest Group.

"People: your most important asset but the most difficult to maintain"

The Audit Commission IT function has been reduced by half in the space of a year, whereas the output expected of them has been reduced by less than a quarter. We know we will be abolished in the relatively near future but we don't know when, so everyone left knows that they will be losing their jobs before long. Budgets are only allowing for activity to keep the lights on and the wheels turning, no developmental activity, no training unless necessary to keep us going.

Issues presented:

Fewer people means there are fewer places to hide. If someone isn't pulling their weight it will be more apparent.
More multi tasking is necessary, so breath of knowledge and adaptability is prized over depth and detail. This does not sit well with many of the detail geeks.
Fewer people and a more technical bias means that customer service skills are more stretched. There is less of a buffer between the geeks with no social skills and your users.
Team boundaries begin to blur rapidly. This can lead to turf wars between teams.
As team boundaries blur, line management becomes more difficult.
Fewer people means that you cannot provide the cover previously afforded.

Main Takeaway points

Breadth of skills is more important in smaller teams
Line management is still essential (more so even) and should not be overlooked
Money is not the only way to motivate people. Think outside the box and you'll be surprised at the results.

Robert Stroud - CA Technologies

Robert Stroud serves as vice president Strategy & Innovation and the Service Management, Cloud Computing and Governance Evangelist at CA Technologies. Robert also serves as an International vice president of ISACA and was the former chair of the COBIT Steering Committee and is part of the Framework committee. Robert also formally served on the itSMF International Board as Treasurer and Director Audit, Standards and Compliance, the itSMF ISO liaisons to multiple working groups, an author, blogger and highly regarded public speaker

"Efficient, effective and "just enough" Service Management to deliver business value!"

Is your implementations of service management developing into a long term initiative or a vague 5-year vision? Are resources being consumed at a greater rate than savings being realised and when the processes are implemented is the organization falling back into the same old "hero" behaviours once the first disaster hits? Our discussion will introduce you to the development of your service management program that is structured with defined beginning and end and leverages the resources released to fuel the program.