Video: Managing Change: How to Win Friends and Influence People

A decent presentation given at Dreamforce 2009 that goes through some practices on Managing Change within an organization. Specifically when your implementing new technology, processes, and strategies within your org. The presenter sounded nervous and sounds like he has no experience implementing change himself! :-)

Video: iCloud - A Free Virtual Desktop

Your Virtual Computer in The Cloud. Free service that enables you to access a linux based desktop in the cloud at no fee. 3 Gigs of file space, media player, Instant messenger, and more. This service works great using a PC and Internet Explorer. Mac users with Safari will have to wait. Mac users with Firefox will experience clunky performance and browser issues.

customer service 2.0 web 2.0 service delivery and support it 2.0

Video: Marci Reynolds Reviews The 8 Categories of Sales Operations

A great summary defining Sales Operations as it relates to your internal Sales efforts. The 8 Categories Marci defines here are:

Sales Strategy Design and Planning
Measurement
Compensation and Quota
Training & Sales Communication
CRM and Tools
Territory Design
Contests
Lead Generation

One thing I would add here are any Sales related Marketing efforts. Quite often they are disconnected, and the more aligned they are the more successful the Marketing campaigns and Sales efforts will be. Visit Marci's blog at Sales Operations Blog.



customer service 2.0 web 2.0 service delivery and support it 2.0

5 Steps To Implementing ITIL

Five Steps to Implementing Itil

Publish at Scribd or explore others: Technology service support

I finally found an embedable version of this document that was published a while back but it gives you a great overview on how to go about implementing I.T.I.L practices in your organization. The 5 step approach covers the following:

Step 1 - Process Workshops - Document existing processes.
Step 2 - Conduct a Gap Analysis - Identify where you are and where you want to be.
Step 3 - Create a Roadmap & Plan - Identify what you want to do first, prioritize, and plan.
Step 4 - Act & Measure - Establish Key Performance Indicators, Measurements, and Targets and ensure they align with the business.
Step 5 - Establish Process Governance - What are your ongoing governance policies, procedures, and activities to ensure that your ITIL implementation stays in place.





customer service 2.0 web 2.0 service delivery and support it 2.0

The 25 Best Alternatives To Your Enterprise Applications & Functions

2009 Budgets are in and for many who oversee the Operations and IT Budget, you are probably challenged to reduce your capital budget by at least 40% lower than what you originally put in. As the pressure to cut continues, you may want to rethink about the software vendors you have selected to introduce into the Enterprise, or even think about replacing your legacy Enterprise applications with more cost effective open source or lower cost alternatives.

Still not convinced about Open Source or Lower Cost Alternatives? Well according to Gartner, approximately 85% of companies surveyed are already using Open Source Applications in 2008. The other 15% surveyed have plans to incorporate Open Source Strategies within their Enterprise in 2009. Whether your a small business, or you are looking to minimize costs - attached are some of the most cost effective applications on the market that can easily replace some of your more expensive Enterprise solutions and functions.

Productivity Software

Open Office - An excellent and free alternative to the expensive Microsoft Office Suite. The suite contains out of the box functionality that even Microsoft's Office suite does not ship with like the ability to convert files to PDF.

Customer Relationship Management

Sugar CRM - A highly recommended CRM package that comes in a Free, Hosted, or Enterprise version.
Open CRM - A U.K Based CRM Company that claims to provide free licenses to those who use it.

Knowledge Management Vendors

OmniStar Kbase - A PHP based External or Internal Knowledge Management Software.

I.T Service Management/Help Desk Systems

O.T.R.S - The Open Source Ticket Request System that claims to be I.T.I.L certified. Save yourself 1/2 million dollars per year over investing in ITSM systems like Remedy or HP applications. This system includes many features to manage customer telephone calls and e-mails. The system is built to allow your support, sales, pre-sales, billing, internal IT, helpdesk, etc. department to react quickly to inbound inquiries. For a full list of Help Desk ticketing systems, click here.

Track It Web - Also Claims to be I.T.I.L Certified, Open Source, and significantly lower cost.

Jira - A flexible web based bug tracking, issue tracking, task tracking, and project management software solution.

Project Management

BaseCamp - I was just recently introduced to this application, and it seems like a great tool for collaborating on projects over the web with remote teams, vendors, developers, and co workers located in different locations.

ActiveCollab - Another open source tool that is also compatible with iPhones.

eRoom.Net - A hosted collaborative solution that provides mid sized businesses with world class collaboration software in a hosted environment.

Content Management Systems & Community Software

Alfresco Open Source Content Management - Open Source Content Management for your web site, Intranet, or all of the above.

OpenCMS - Another Content Management application with great promise, and free to utilize.

Web Analytics

Google Analytics - By far one of the best free analytic dashboards for your web site.

Get Clicky - This is Google Analytics, plus realtime results, and an iPhone friendly interface to track you web traffic remotely.

JS Kit - A free tool that enables you to incorporate reviews, ratings, and commenting functionality on your eCommerce site or Blog section of your web site and report on it.

103 Bees - Find out how customers are getting to your website. This tool focuses on analyzing search terms and questions that people are querying for prior to getting to your web site. It's a great tool for understanding your customers and for identifying new market opportunities.


Community & Forum Software

vBulletin - Probably the best in class Forum software out today. A small license fee, and some configuration and your up and running.

Dolphin Community Software - Build your own Community sites using this low cost open source platform.

Ning.Com - Geared more towards hobbyists, music enthusiasts, and entrepreneurs - this free platform provides an array of easy to use and deploy community features for your web site.

Audio & Web Conferencing

DimDim.Com - A great audio and web collaboration tool. Best of all it is free.

Yugma - Another decent and free web collaboration and conferencing solution.

Open Source Telephony Systems

Digium - This company offers telephony applications based on Open Source software that integrates with PCI telephony interface cards. The cost of their tools significantly lower than other vendors like Avaya, Nortel, and all the others.

Open Source Network Applications

Zenoss Inc. - This company provides network, server, and application monitoring solutions in the United States and internationally. The company offers Zenoss Core, Professional, and Enterprise solutions that monitors IT infrastructure, including networks, servers, virtualizations, and applications, as well as provide configuration management, availability management, performance monitoring, event/log management, and automatic remediation services.

Server Software

Linux - This is the obvious platform these days, but I thought I would put it up anyway. According to a new Gartner study, About 52% of the companies surveyed are already using open-source server software and another 23% plan to use it within the next 12 months. However, Linux as an operating system for the desktop is much less established in enterprise use, with 39% of respondents in the Gartner survey currently using it and another 22% expecting to use it within the next year. Many of the vendors provide free distributions or are at significantly lower cost to some of the most complex tasks or functions that run your Enterprise today.

Database Software

MySQL - The best and most cost effective choice for a free SQL/Database environment that needs to be hosted in the cloud.

customer service 2.0 web 2.0 service delivery and support it 2.0

CIO's Love Video Conferencing But Don't Get Wikis

An interesting read was recently released that surveyed CIO's indicate that they love Video Conferencing, and Online Training - but they don't have any plans for Virtual Worlds and Wikis. The survey interviewed 1,400 CIOs by staffing firm Robert Half Technology. The results are as follows:

* 67 percent have no intention of using tagging software;
* 72 percent aren’t going to use blogs;
* 74 percent don’t get the wiki thing;
* And 84 percent have no plans for virtual worlds.

I am quite surprised that they don't embrace wikis since it is used today in many areas of IT for projects, tracking bugs, and updating knowledge. With the popularity of Virtual World's like Second Life which has a lot of commerce opportunity, was also another shocker.


customer service 2.0 web 2.0 service delivery and support it 2.0

Video: Computer Telephony Integration with Remedy

Here is a demonstration of Computer Telephony Integration using Syntellect Technology with BMC Remedy Software. We are currently utilizing this technology at Premiere Global Services and it is certainly helping reps to be more productive.

Bulletproof Your Business Case

No matter when or how you prepare your business case, there will be a sinister, uninvited stranger in the room when you present it for review. You can't bar him from the meeting. You can't prevent him from speaking to everyone present.

Know for certain that he will be there and he will be working against you. He "comes with the turf," whenever you project future business results. His name is The Credibility Question. He is the moving force behind questions like these:

• How do we know that we'll actually see the projected results?
• How do we know that you compared different options for action fairly?
• What's the likelihood that results turn out differently from what you have predicted?

Such questions are inevitable when you project ROI or other business case results. You are predicting the future, after all. (For a complete introduction to business case projections, see the whitepaper Business Case Essentials or the eBook Business Case Guide). When a business case fails to achieve the desired outcome—funding or project approval, for instance—it is often because the author was surprised by the questions or answered unconvincingly. How well you anticipate and address the issues they raise can make or break the case.

The uninvited stranger is not easily neutralized, however, if you wait until you complete and present the case to think about him for the first time. The key to scoring high on credibility is to build in "bulletproofing" as you build the case.

Reveal Your Methods
If you have ever read or written scientific research reports of any kind, you know that most science "cases" have the same structure:

• There is a statement of theory, hypotheses, and the problem or issue in view.
• Later in the report come the results of the experiment or field study.

But that much alone does not establish the validity of the results or "make the case" for the author's conclusions. Other people trained in the same science need to know how the results were obtained, in order to decide whether or not they mean what the author says they mean. Thus, science reports include a "Methods" section presenting the author's assumptions, experimental protocol, testing conditions, and so on.

For exactly the same reasons, a business case report needs to explain how cost and benefit items were identified and how their values were estimated. This means:

• Defining the case subject fully (not just naming the subject).Indicating specifically whose costs and benefits are included, over what time period (scope and boundaries of the case).
• Explaining the rules for deciding which cost items are appropriate (usually through a cost model).
• Presenting the rationale for legitimizing benefits (explaining how the action contributes to business objectives and why reaching those objectives has value. For more on legitimizing benefits, see the whitepaper "Soft Benefits in a Hard Business Case or the Business Case Guide).

Build in Cross Functional, Cross Organizational Input
Important actions in a complex business environment usually have consequences that cross boundaries of all kinds: organizations, functions, budgetary categories, management levels, and more. The business case analysis of these actions gains credibility when it has cross-functional, cross-organizational input from knowledgeable people in each of the areas impacted.

Contributors from outside your own immediate group can help you fill in the cost model, legitimize benefits, and estimate the cost or value of different impacts with an authority that you cannot achieve on your own or with just your own people.

Transfer Ownership
Getting business case input from people outside your own group also builds credibility in another way: it creates a transfer of ownership. People who work on something and contribute to its design naturally develop some sense of ownership for it. The business case coming up for review is no longer just your case. It is their case as well.

Ideally, your group of contributors will even include stakeholders and potential decision making recipients for the case. Because they helped build it, they understand the rationale and logic behind it better than anyone who simply reads the report. People who work on something usually do not want it to fail.

Design for Credibility
You can add credibility through other case-building steps as well, by:

• Explaining which assumptions behind the case are most important in controlling predicted results (this is sensitivity analysis).
• Reviewing what has to be managed or controlled in order to bring about the expected results (in other words, identifying critical success factors).
• Estimating the likelihood of getting other predicted outcomes, if important assumptions change (this is risk analysis. Read more about risk analysis in Newsletters 47-49, "Can you ever be Certain?).
• Showing, where possible, that your approaches to "costing" or "valuing" have been validated in previous experience.

In brief, none of the credibility-building steps above comes about by accident. Credibility will be there only if it is planned and designed into the case in a process that begins as soon as soon as it's known that a business case is needed.

Take action by learning more in a business case seminar or read The Business Case Guide.

Marty Schmidt
24 June 2008
mschmidt@solutionmatrix.com
www.solutionmatrix.com

10 Ways To Explain Things More Effectively

10 Ways To Explain Things More Effectively
By Calvin Sun

In the course of your work, you may sometimes need to explain technical concepts to your customers. Having them understand you is important not only for technical reasons, but also to ensure customer satisfaction. The ability to explain things clearly and effectively can help you in your career, as well. Here are a few tips to help make your explanations understandable and useful.

#1: Keep in mind others' point of view
You've probably seen the famous illusion that looks like either a young woman or an old woman. Two people can look at that same picture, and they can have opposite views of what they're seeing. Keep this idea in mind when explaining a concept. Something that might be perfectly understandable to you might be incomprehensible to someone else. Don't be the person customers complain about as using "geek speak."

#2: Listen and respond to questions
It's easy to become annoyed when someone is asking questions. However, try to resist that reaction. A better attitude is to be happy that the other person is interested enough to ask questions. To minimize confusion and misunderstanding, try to paraphrase or summarize a question before you answer it. This step is particularly important if you're in a group setting, and you've just taken a question from someone in the audience. Repeating the question for the entire group helps everyone better understand your answer.

#3: Avoid talking over people's head
When you explain things to people, do their eyes glaze over? Chances are it's because you're talking over their head. Symptoms of such behavior include the use of jargon and acronyms. Remember, the people you're talking to probably lack your specialized knowledge, so you should use readily understandable terms.

The same goes for acronyms. They're important, but if you use them, define them in "longhand," followed by the acronyms in (parentheses), so that everyone's clear. Doing so avoids the scenario of situation normal, all fouled up (SNAFU).

Even within IT, the same acronym can mean different things. For example, both "active server page" and "application service provider" have the acronym ASP. A story from the Vietnam War era further illustrates this point. A young woman brought her boyfriend home to meet her father, a retired military officer. The woman was nervous because the boyfriend was a conscientious objector. When the father asked the young man to talk about himself, the latter replied, nervously, that he was a CO. The father clapped the young man on the back and congratulated him, thinking the latter was a commanding officer.

#4: Avoid talking down to people
Avoid the other extreme as well. Don't insult people by assuming that they're only as intelligent as a three-year-old. An attendee at one of my communications training classes described it aptly as "Barney communications."

Greek mythology has references to two monsters, Scylla and Charybdis, who sat on opposite sides of a narrow strait of water. If a ship sailed too close to Scylla, it was destroyed and the sailors eaten up. If the ship sailed too close to Charybdis, it was destroyed by a whirlpool that Charybdis created. The ship had to go right between them to survive. Follow that same principle with your customers: Make your explanations neither too complicated or too simple.

#5: Ask questions to determine people's understanding
The people you're talking to shouldn't be the only ones asking questions. You should be asking questions as well, to make sure they understand. Your questions can be open ended, which gives people a chance to provide detailed information, or they can be closed ended, which generally calls for a simple yes/no response. In either case, asking questions tells people that you're interested that they understand.

#6: Focus on benefits, not features
What's the difference? A feature is some inherent property of an object. A benefit, on the other hand, is a way the feature helps a person. For example, one of the features of a Styrofoam cup, because of the material used, is insulation. Someone who's planning a party probably doesn't care how the cup provides insulation. That person is more interested in the fact that such a cup keeps hot things hot and cold things cold.

In the same way, try to focus on benefits of technology rather than features of technology. This distinction becomes more important the higher the level of the person you're talking to. The CFO probably has little need to know about the specific commands and steps involved in setting up database mirroring. That person will want to know, however, that such a practice reduces the chances of data loss.

#7: Use analogies to make concepts clearer
An analogy involves explaining an unfamiliar concept in terms of a familiar one. For example, in drawing an analogy between a firewall and a bank teller, you could say that people don't just go directly into a bank and take money out. They go to the teller and identify themselves; the teller makes sure they have enough money; and then the teller gives them the money. Similarly, a firewall ensures that people who want access to a system really are permitted to have that access.

When choosing an example for an analogy, first figure out the general principle you're trying to explain. Then, choose something from real life that illustrates that principle. Say, for example, that you're trying to explain memory leaks. Suppose you conclude that the principle involved is that of taking without giving back completely. An example/analogy might be the consequences of pouring a cup of pancake batter into successive measuring cups, or the consequences of lending money to your brother-in-law.

#8: Compare new concepts to familiar ones
Another illustrative technique is to use a familiar or existing product as a comparison. If you're explaining a new release of a software product, the comparison is easy. Simply discuss the additional capabilities it has over the previous one or how key features are different. If the person hearing your explanation is also an IT person and is familiar with different or older technology, try explaining in those terms if you can. For example, when explaining thin clients, consider a comparison to the old 3270-type terminals that IBM once used for connection to mainframes.

#9: Use the concepts of subsets and supersets
Brooklyn is a subset of New York City, because all of it is a part of that city. Conversely, New York City is a superset of Brooklyn, because the former contains, in addition to all of the latter, other boroughs as well. These concepts are helpful in describing, for example, a "lite" versus a "professional" version of a software product. If the latter does everything the former does, plus more, it truly is a superset of the former, and the former is a subset of the latter. Be careful, though: If the "lite" version does even one thing that's missing from the professional version, there's no longer a subset/superset relationship.

#10: Confirm that your explanation makes sense
Once you've finished explaining your point or answering a question, ask a final question yourself. Make sure the people who heard your explanation truly did understand it. Consider asking them to give you the explanation in their own words, just to double-check.

Post Project Review Survey

The Post Project Review process consists of activities performed by a project team at the end of the project’s life cycle (or at the end of significant phases of work) to gather information on what worked well and what did not, so that future projects can benefit from that learning.

Post Project Reviews are generally done at the end of any significant project or portion of a project. A project that runs longer than a year may conduct Post Phase Reviews at the each of each significant phase, for example, so that lessons are captured while they are still easily recalled. This process might be used with a project that completed some time ago, but for which the lessons were not gathered.

The project review process is the most effective mechanism for improving project management practices and actual project results. A timely, comprehensive review of project performance can reveal so much. This Project Review Survey is a complete resource for project performance feedback and analysis.

How To Develop an IT Change Management Program

Here is a great article on how to develop an IT Change Management program. The article reviews risks, politics, and successes one can encounter when rolling out such a program.

Links To Customer Segmentation, ITIL, and Service Best Practices on The Web

Here is a guide of compiled links on the Internet that focus on Customer Segmentation Strategies, IT Service Management, ITIL, and Customer Service. Click here to check out all the articles and links, or review some of the highlighted articles below:
The Power of Customer Segmentation
ITIL What is It?
4 Steps to a Killer Loyalty Strategy
Online Customer Communities
Plus over 10 articles more