White Paper

Flexible Service Desk

Automation:
Delivering Quality Service
Without Complexity

Michele McFadden
Director of Product Management

Numara Software

November 12, 2008

 White Paper
Flexible Service Desk Automation:
Delivering Quality Service Without Complexity
Introduction Organizations today are also under pressure to achieve
This paper discusses how you can deliver quality service to your compliance with standards and regulations, such as Sarbanes-
internal and external customers without complexity by using effective Oxley (SOX), SAS70, HIPAA, FISMA, the FDA’s 21 CFR Part 11
service management automation and known best practices. IT and others. Many organizations also institute internal governance
and support organizations today are under pressure to offer more initiatives that require controls as well. Achieving regulatory
services efficiently and effectively with even quicker response compliance requires documented processes and controls,
times. Customers demand high availability of services and expect including full audit trails, and can consume numerous resources.
lightning fast responses to their requests and problems. A proactive approach to compliance tracking through an effective
change management strategy will help eliminate manual and
All of this needs to be accomplished with available resources and decentralized tracking processes, which are time consuming and
budget. Today’s current economic conditions add to the challenge with often inaccurate.
likely resource constraints or reductions, but service demands continue
to increase in spite of this. The reality for many organizations is that things may be falling
through the cracks in one or more areas or processes just aren’t
The service desk has transformed into the single point of efficient, and they spend more time being reactive than proactive.
contact (SPOC) for a variety of IT service and support requests The support organization
throughout the organization. IT groups are now held to the same needs to solve for this to
customer satisfaction requirements as the external customer-
facing organization. The service desk is the critical area where
keep pace and align with
the business. So how can
“IT service desk tools
internal and external customers form their impressions about how the service desk, the single continue to be the focal
well the service organization is run and how effective it is (or is point of contact with the point of an IT organization’s
not) in providing great service. Users are accessing the service organization for IT, adapt and strategy to deliver service
desk through numerous communication channels, to submit their keep up with changing needs? and support. The increasing
incidents and service requests for prompt resolution. The support
complexity of the IT
organization needs a single, centralized system of collecting,
environment, the pressure to
managing, routing and reporting on all issues to deliver service
reduce costs and the drive
well, reduce duplication of effort, and eliminate unnecessary costs.
to align IT resources with
To keep pace with the seemingly endless stream of support business priorities continue
requests and achieve excellence in the customer experience you to fuel the IT organization
deliver, today’s service desks must be flexible and scalable to be to improve the people,
effective. They need to incorporate practical automation solutions processes and technologies
that help agents keep pace with and effectively manage service of the service desk.1
delivery. To introduce better control, achieve optimal performance
levels and cut costs, many organizations are embracing industry-
“David Coyle
based best practices and methodologies, such as the Information Research Vice President
Technology Infrastructure Library® (ITIL®) framework. ITIL Gartner®, Inc.

processes continue to evolve, and this provides another challenge

for the support organization to manage while simultaneously
delivering services to the organization.

1. Magic Quadrant for the IT Service Desk

November 4, 2008
David M. Coyle and Kris Brittain

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Consolidated Service Desk Automation: How It
Will Improve Service Delivery and Quality
Many organizations are working with service management tools
that are expensive to maintain and difficult to manage. Sometimes
poor service quality alone from solution vendors is enough to send
support teams out on a quest for a better way. When these tools are
no longer meeting the needs of the organization or just too expensive
to keep, organizations are looking to other options to achieve their service
delivery requirements and align support with the business.
While numerous options are available in the market today for
service management automation, a comprehensive and flexible
service desk management solution can give you the best value
to improve service delivery and quality when you centralize,
automate, and integrate multiple support processes together in a
single system.
A consolidated service desk gives you a practical approach to
bringing different processes together across IT and other areas
of the business. When you integrate and centralize all aspects
of service delivery in one system, agent workflow is streamlined,
resources are accessed more easily, and customer problem
resolution gets faster. Users can access a consolidated service
desk system through numerous communication channels, day and
night, to submit their incidents and service requests for prompt
resolution. Agents can get a total view on all service requests and
statuses and make better decisions on how to simultaneously
address them all with the same quality of service in a timely
manner and meeting required service levels where necessary.
A comprehensive, centralized service desk solution based on
proven industry best practices can help you address:
• Centralized service management: effectively manage service
delivery for internal and external customer support with
centralized management of all multichannel incident, problem
and service requests throughout full life cycles
• Workflow management: automate in-depth workflow
processes, business rules, quick process templates, and
complete audit trails. Manage multiple workflow scenarios for
different business functions, products, groups and locations.
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including complete audit trails to achieve compliance with
organizational and governmental policies
• End-to-end request management: offer a centralized catalog
of services to improve the customer experience and customer
incident resolution with self-service online 24/7
• Knowledge management: speed problem resolution with
automated knowledge management for agents and customers,
incorporating knowledge center standards (KCS)for the
knowledge lifecycle
• Service level management: ensure customer service level
agreements are achieved with effective tracking and monitoring
• Customer surveys: gain critical client feedback with automated
customer surveys
• Mobility and synchronization: deliver excellent service
anywhere, anytime with real-time mobile access
• Measurement and effectiveness management: report on
trends, productivity, and performance for continuous service
improvement
• Extended business process automation: automate numerous
business processes and functions, such as IT service desk,
external customer support, facilities management, compliance,
human resource tracking and more
Agents will be more productive with practical and flexible tools
that remove complexity and learning curves, help them ramp-up
quickly, prevent requests from falling through the cracks, and
enable them to improve the quality of service they deliver – 24/7.
When agents have such a service desk system in place, they’ll have
more time to engage with customers who need direct assistance
and their time will be used more efficiently. Organizations can also
reduce costs using a single, centralized system that not only tracks
and manages service desk processes, but also tracks and manages
additional processes throughout the organization.

• Cost management: reduce costs when you maximize agent

and user productivity

• Email management: streamline email management with

extensive two-way email automation

• Simplified ITIL implementation: quickly implement vital ITIL

V3 service lifecycle management processes

• Change management and compliance: control and manage

change and approval processes throughout the organization,

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Flexible Business Process Automation anywhere? Can it be done quickly and with the resources
One very clear way to reduce costs is to address the needs you have in place?
of numerous groups, departments, and business processes 3. What resources will be required to achieve all of this?
through a single tracking and automation platform that centrally Do you have appropriate staff members in place now to
manages multiple business processes. One solution, Numara® properly support this process? Can you afford the staff time
FootPrints®, gives you the unparalleled flexibility to do this. By required to manage each solution and take them away from
using a single, centralized system to track and automate multiple other processes?
IT and business processes, you can streamline the workload for
4. How easily will it be to get users, technical and non-
your IT staff and provide your employees and external customers
technical, up and running? Will training be required?
with a consistent experience managing their requests throughout
the organization. You will also increase data sharing and promote 5. Does the solution dynamically integrate with your critical,
collaboration and synergy between business groups. existing systems, such as your corporate directory and how
will you maintain and synchronize updates?
Using built-in, pre-configured templates, you can create separate,
partitioned “projects”, each with their own database instance. 6. How easily can you generate productivity and trend reports
Each project can have its own customized look and feel, to get the right data to make better decisions? Does this
fields, workflows, reporting and more. Incident escalation and process require programming?
consolidated reporting enable seamless integration between 7. What will be involved to configure this solution to adapt it
processes for a more holistic view of the business. now, at initial implementation, and later when you need
to make changes? How frequently do you expect to make
ted Service Desk changes? Will it involve programming or consulting?
Consolida
8. Do you have adequate funds for this in your ongoing
IT Service Customer
Management Service Center Compliance
Tracking
budget? If not, will your implementation become stale or
Corporate (ex: Sarbanes-Oxley,
Service Desk IT Governance, slow down the business?
etc.)
311 Citizen
Development and
Bug Tracking Response Programs Another key consideration is to look at how you can use the
Flexible and Adaptive system’s workflow engine beyond the service desk to help
Facilities Service Management Architecture Clinical
Management Engineering standardize tracking processes, reduce costs and decrease the
One Centralized Solution
number of tools IT needs to manage.
for Multiple Proceses
Human Resource Complaint
Management Management
So, how do you remove complexity and long implementation
IT Resource Training cycles when you choose a service desk automation solution?
Management Management
IT Event Consider a solution that provides 100% web-based technology and
Outsourcing Management
pre-configured workflows, but still offers you the ability to make
Busine easy customizations – and do it yourself without programming.
ss Process Automation
When you implement a web-based solution, users will have easy
access from anywhere – without the need for client software. This can
Removing Complexity from Service Desk
reduce time and effort spent on deploying, updating and maintaining
Management
clients in the field. Solutions that offer a “no programming” approach
Many service management tools in the market today offer various
to configuration and customization get you up and running quickly and
capabilities, but they often come with extensive configuration
gain fast ROI on your investment. Product upgrades can also be
requiring programming, high operational costs and lengthy
fast and enable you to retain your configuration.
implementation cycles. This may not be apparent when you take
a first look. As you compare solutions, it is important to consider Options for both on-premise installations and a hosted service can
just how practical and flexible your solution needs to be to realize often be found with a 100% web-based solution. Each alternative
the service management automation you want to achieve. has its benefits. Security issues, resource constraints, frequency
of upgrades, and the effort to manage the solution are all
1. What will each solution require for implementation, day-to-
considerations in selecting the right option for your organization.
day administration, customizations, upgrades and ongoing
changes?

2. How complex or easy will administration be for each tool

you consider? Will it be web-based and easy to access from

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Practical ITIL V3
The ITIL framework of best practices has been adopted by more
organizations worldwide than any other standard for IT service
management. The IT Infrastructure Library outlines a service
lifecycle approach to IT operations in supporting the business.
Whether you are just beginning to
formalize your IT processes or are
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solution that will help you to take the processes you need quickly,
speed workflow and get you into live use fast.
The right service management solution will help you reduce
the complexity and time required to implement ITIL processes
by providing built-in templates, menu driven customization and
workflow that can be tailored quickly and easily to meet your needs,
without programming, long consulting engagements, or extensive

“There is an industry desire

fully embracing ITIL to align IT with
your business, Numara FootPrints
technical skills. It can be done and done in a short time frame.

to have better management offers unmatched flexibility and Versatile and Powerful Business Workflow
data to aid in IT service painless implementation, without Automation
support analysis. Influenced the overhead found with other How will you customize the solution you choose? Be sure to
by process methodologies solutions. understand exactly how it can be done with the tools you are
such as ITIL, IT service and considering and what’s involved. If it requires programming or
Moving from understanding the ITIL
support organizations have long consulting engagements, your changes will not be quick
processes to applying them in your
acceded that they can derive and they may require unexpected costs. Consider a solution
real world business environment
greater value when the data that you can easily configure without programming to adapt it to
can be a daunting task and many
and processes from these your organization’s own identity with customized logos, colors,
organizations have struggled
modules are integrated.2 fonts and language(s), along with customized fields, workflows,
and even abandoned projects
“ because resources ran out or IT and reports, and more. When you have this flexibility, individual agents
David Coyle support groups hit a wall. ITIL V3 can also tailor the look and feel of their own personal space for
Research Vice President improved usability.
Gartner, Inc. processes focus on service lifecycle
management and they can be All workflow automation is NOT created equal. Workflow automation
implemented individually at a pace is the key to making sure incidents, problems and changes are
that meets your business’ feasibility. As there are several dozen routed, escalated and resolved efficiently and correctly. An
ITIL V3 processes, it’s important to find a solution that zeros in effective solution will give you extensive automation options
on practical, rapid ITIL V3 enablement for the vital processes that to ensure that a complete audit trail of all work is tracked
support the demands of your customers. Ultimately, you need a automatically. This allows you to learn from past performance to
improve service delivery. Be sure to deploy a tool that offers you
numerous automation options for virtually every need without
any programming or database administration. Truly comprehensive
Service Strategy and Design workflow automation will give you the ability to create templates to
quickly generate common incidents and requests, including subtasks,
Service Portfolio Management define auto-routing of incidents and requests to agents or teams
Service Catalog Management
based on extensive criteria selection, create escalation rules
Service Level Management
and workflows that support flexible criteria and actions for
notifications, create parent/child relationships, move assignments
Service Transition Service Operations between projects, perform external actions and much more.
Service Asset and Incident Management Strong security in a service desk solution can ensure confidential-
Configuration Management Problem Management ity, prevent changes from being made without the proper author-
Change Management Request Fulfillment ity and retain a complete audit trail for compliance purposes.
Release Management Event Management Roles-based access ensures users only see the data they are sup-
Knowledge Management posed to see. A truly secure solution is one that supports Secure
Socket Layer (SSL) an Internet protocol (seen as HTTPS: in a
URL) designed to encrypt the information passing between the
Continual Service Improvement
user and a system. Support for Secure LDAP and Password Reset
Service Reporting capabilities are other hallmarks of a secure solution.

2. Magic Quadrant for the IT Service Desk

November 4, 2008
David M. Coyle and Kris Brittain

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With dynamic, real-time access to your service desk by simply
using the web browser on agents’ Microsoft® Windows® Mobile®,
RIM® Blackberry® and Apple® iPhone® smartphone devices,
agents are no longer restricted to a PC or email to interact.
Customer Web Portal
Numara FootPrints Business Rules Automation
Service Desk Problem Change & Service
(Incident & Request Management Release Portfolio
Management) Management
Service
Service Asset & Configuration Management (CMDB) Catalog
Whether they are in the office, on the road at a customer site,
or in transit, agents can stay connected to your services desk,
making them more responsive and productive, helping your
support team solve customer problems faster.
Improving the Customer Experience
Whether you are dealing with internal customers, external
customers or both, customer expectations are increasing and will
continue to do so. When agents are dealing with constantly rising
volumes of requests, customers are seeking immediate service
24/7 and budgets are getting cut, how do you deliver high-quality
service to every customer? Automation can help you extend your
capacity and improve the customer experience.
When you give your customers flexible choices – around the
clock – to submit their requests and even solve them on their
own from anywhere through a web browser using simple-to-use,
intuitive resources, you’ll save agents time, reduce live interaction
on repetitive requests, and reserve their time for problem
resolution that truly requires their skills in direct assistance. Choose
3. Magic Quadrant for the IT Service Desk
November 4, 2008
David M. Coyle and Kris Brittain
6 p: 813.227.4900 • f: 813.227.4501 • NumaraSoftware.com
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a solution that will enable you to give your customers the option
of submitting requests via email, the web, and wireless PDAs that
automatically generate and route incidents to the right teams.
A solution that offers an adaptive customer self-service portal that
can be embedded into your own web site will help you streamline
your customer support and save agents a great deal of time. A
consolidated service desk solution can also provide you with the
ability to dynamically access to the latest customer contact records
in your existing SQL or LDAP-based corporate directory. Another
component of a practical service desk management strategy is
to integrate knowledge management that allows both agents and
customers to access FAQs, proven solutions and knowledge bases
24/7 to speed up issue resolution.
An integrated service catalog of all the services your support
organization offers can help you to provide a “friendly face of
IT” to your internal and external customers and demonstrate the
value of your processes to the business. Customers can easily
access a web portal to view services, submit requests, and submit
requests for new services. When everything is integrated, it gives
you the ability to integrate data across incident/problem/change
management. It also enables better reporting, a better overall
view and ultimately better support. Reports can be generated to
monitor what’s used by the business and what’s not.
One of the key considerations in a solution that helps you
improve the customer experience is flexibility. Will it enable you to
adapt your customer-facing processes easily to meet the specific
needs of your business? What will it take in terms of staff, extra
costs, and time to do it? Look
for a solution that enables
you to work from pre-existing
templates to save you time “
A trend for IT organizations,
and adapt the solution – so as to remain more flexible
on your own – without and have a quicker return
programming or extensive on investment, is to perform
consulting engagements. little to no customization, run
more “out of the box” and
rely more on best-practice
workflows and templates,
rather than create their own.3
“David Coyle
Research Vice President
Gartner, Inc.

Numara FootPrints: Practical and Flexible Service
Management Software for the Real World
Whether your organization is moving to a single platform for a
comprehensive service desk or looking for rich value in a solution
that offers extensive service desk automation without the high
costs and complex administration of enterprise-level solutions,
Numara FootPrints can help.
Numara FootPrints is uniquely positioned to offer organizations an
ITIL-compatible and extremely flexible service management solution
that can be easily configured and changed without programming to
meet the data-driven demands across the business.
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are still struggling to make good decisions regarding costs,
efficiencies, processes, and business alignment, because of the
incomplete data and reporting they receive from their current IT
service management tools.
Easily quantify current and historical trends, performance and
customer satisfaction with the built-in, powerful searching and
reporting tools in Numara FootPrints. Numara FootPrints includes
a menu-driven report writing tool that anyone can use without
training, making it very easy for anyone to create real-time,
customizable metrics and graphical reports with drill-down
capability to see detail more quickly.

Actively used at mid-large sized organizations throughout the world for

more than 10 years, Numara FootPrints is a leading, 100% web-based
service desk solution that helps IT and support managers run support
as a business. This award winning service management solution
empowers support professionals to effectively manage service
delivery, provide customer problem resolution 24/7, improve service
quality and delivery, and report on productivity in real-time.

Numara FootPrints software supports numerous industry best

practices, including ITIL IT service lifecycle management. Numara
FootPrints combines integrated functionality for incident, problem,
request fulfillment, change, knowledge, service level, service
catalog, configuration, IT asset and more. Numara FootPrints gives
you a practical, modular approach to ITIL best practices that will
remove the barriers to real ITIL productivity, help you speed the
workflow implementation process and reduce unnecessary costs.

Numara FootPrints offers the best value in the service desk

market – unparalleled flexibility and ease-of-use with enterprise-
level functionality at a mid-market cost of ownership. Its
core foundation is a truly open and incredibly flexible service
management platform that enables organizations to easily
automate enterprise workflow and numerous business processes
beyond the service desk and IT – including compliance,
development and bug tracking, facilities management, human
resources tracking, and much more.

By design, Numara FootPrints offers confirmed ease-of-use, a

rapid implementation process to quickly reach productivity, an
extremely compelling and low cost of ownership, and effective
integrations to leverage existing investments. Unlike other costly
and complex products, this highly configurable and scalable
solution does not require any programming, deep technical
expertise, or long consulting engagements.

Good decisions require good data. In today’s business world, IT

and support managers are being asked to make better decisions
more quickly in order to respond to fast paced business,
economic and technology dynamics. Yet IT and support managers

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Conclusion
Support organizations that want to grow beyond being a reactive
service desk to a well-controlled service management center can
greatly benefit from a practical and flexible service management
solution. It’s important to adopt a solution that offers rich workflow
automation along with seamlessly integrated modules for the
management of core service desk processes. A full-featured
automation solution that offers rapid implementation and provides
exceptional reporting allows IT managers to make better decisions,
faster. Numara FootPrints is a proven, ITIL-compatible and flexible
solution that can transform your service desk today and enable
your long-term service management strategy.

About the Author

As Director of Product Management for the Numara® Software
line of service management solutions, Michele McFadden
drives the product strategy and execution on new capabilities
and products. She and her team work with sales, marketing,
development, customers and prospects to gather and prioritize
requirements and define product vision. She is responsible for
the strategic roadmap for the Numara FootPrints and Numara®
Track-It!® Flagship product lines and how they fit in with the
overall Numara Software strategy to provide the best customer
experience for service management.

Michele has driven the product management process for service

management solutions since 1999, first as part of the UniPress
Software Team and then as part of the Numara Software Team.
In that time she has been responsible for numerous product
releases, worked with industry analysts on reports and public
webinars, and has been quoted in many trade publications.
Michele holds a Bachelor of Arts Degree from Kean University.

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About Numara Software
With more than 55,000 customer sites worldwide, Numara®
Software is a global leader in delivering practical, flexible solutions
that allow IT organizations to improve service to their end-users.
Our integrated IT service management and IT asset management
software platforms enable organizations to efficiently automate a
wide variety of IT related tasks and processes using interoperable
solutions from a single, proven vendor.

Widely known for our dedicated focus on ease of use and

affordability for our customers, our IT solutions deliver fast
time-to-value, increased control, and reduced risk for small
businesses to large companies. For more information, visit:
www.numarasoftware.com.

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©2010 Numara Software, Inc. All rights reserved. Numara and the Numara logo are registered trademarks of Numara Software, Inc. FootPrints and Track-It! are registered trademarks of
Numara Software, Inc.
100383-0810

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