Ownership of data

Good communications

SLA targets

The SLA targets for overall incident-handling and resolution times need to be agreed with the customer s and between all teams and departments – and OLA/UC targets need to be coordinated and agreed with individual support group s so that they underpin and support the SLA targets.

Examples of these can be seen in the section on metric s above (see section 6.2.5).

The lines of communication between the outsourced Service Desk and the other support groups need to work very effectively. This can be assisted by some or all of the following steps:

• Close physical co-location
• Regular liaison/ review meetings
• Cross-training tutorials between the teams and departments
• ‘ Partnership ’ arrangements when staff from both organizations are used jointly to staff the desk
• Communication Plans and performance targets are documented in a consistent manner in OLAs and UCs.

In cases where the Service Desk is located off-shore, not all of these measures will be possible. However, the need for training and communication of the Service Desk staff is still critical, even more so in cases where there are language and cultural differences.

This will be covered in more detail in ITIL complementary publications, but, as a rule, outsourcing companies who offer off-shore Service Desk solutions should take the following into account:

• Training programme s focused on cultural understanding of the customer market
• Language skills – especially the understanding of idiomatic use of the language in the customer market. This is not so that the Service Desk staff sound like natives of the customer’s country (that type of insincerity is very quickly detected by customers), but to facilitate better understanding of the customer and the better to appreciate their priorities
• Regular visits by representatives of the customer organization to provide training and appropriate feedback directly to the Service Desk management and staff
• Training in the use of the customer organizations tools and methods of work. This is especially effective if similar training materials are presented by the same instructors as those used by the customer organization.

Clear ownership of the data collected by the outsourced Service Desk must be established. Ownership of all data relative to users, customers, affected CIs, services, incidents, Service Request s, changes, etc. must remain with the organization that is outsourcing the activity – but both organizations will require access to it.

Data that is related specifically to performance of employees of the outsourcing company will remain the property of that company, which is often legally prevented from sharing the data with the customer organization. This may also be true of other data that is used purely for the internal management of the Service Desk, such as head count, optimization activities, Service Desk cost information, etc.

All reporting requirement s and issues around ownership of data must be specified in the underpinning contract with the company providing the outsourcing service.

Дата добавления: 2014-12-23