The Importance of Service Management

As an IT service provider, we are in the business of managing a huge volume of technology systems on behalf of our clients. We are pleased to announce that we have recently added two key roles within our Managed Services team to ensure the we are both achieving our Service Level Agreement (SLA) commitments and delivering a high quality client experience:

Service Desk Manager

The Service Desk Manager (SDM) is responsible for achieving (and beating) the key SLA metrics around incident management including response time and resolution time. He is also responsible for ensuring utilization of the entire technical team (i.e. everyone is busy), skills-based dispatch/routing (i.e. ensuring that those handling requests are equipped with the training/knowledge/experience to handle them), and incident triage (i.e. the constant shuffling, delegation, re-assignment, prioritization and escalation of requests). The SDM glues our service desk together and interfaces both with the Managed Services Team Lead (see below) and the Director of Technical Services to ensure that long term targets are being met. Some of the key metrics the SDM is measured on include:

1. Overall Client Experience
2. Priority 1 & Priority 2 Issue Resolution
3. Response & Resolution Time
4. Correct Categorization of Issues
5. Service Desk Bypass (e.g. Direct E-Mail / Phone)
6. Pattern Finding (e.g. Repeat Issues)

Managed Services Team Lead

The Managed Services Team Lead (MSTL) is responsible for the overall quality of the service being delivered by our Managed Services team. He is ensuring that the actual resolution process is not only following best practices, but taking the appropriate amount of time. We understand that even if something is done well, if it's done too slowly the client experience suffers. He is also responsible for the streamlining and standardization of Managed Services processes, building systems and best practices to ensure that everything from a password reset to workstation deployment, to a backup and disaster recovery implementation follows a strict standard operating procedure (SOP). Finally, he is responsible for all of the remote monitoring and management (RMM) tools used in our business to support our client environments. The MSTL gels our technical team, provides technical leadership/escalation, and interfaces daily with both the Service Desk Manager and Director of Technical Services. Some of the key metrics the MSTL is measured on include:

1. Overall Client Experience
2. Standardization of Processes
3. Application of Standardized Processes
4. Advancement of Monitoring & Management Tools

I am delighted to have grown Fully Managed™ to the size where adding these two roles is necessary. I am confident that our clients will experience a higher level and quality of our service with this critical layer of service management (not to be confused with middle management!) in place. This team centrally supports both our Vancouver, BC and our Edmonton, AB clients, with members in both cities.