Posted on Fri, Sep 14, 2012
Get the Most of Your IT Department
No one needs to tell you the IT Department is necessary in today's work environment. Our computers do crash (sometimes with alarming frequency), and few among us are capable of making more than the most rudimentary repair. This is nothing to be ashamed about; IT people exist for that reason. And their job is not an easy one. Since so much of what we do in enterprise today requires at least some IT input, we can be lost without access to our computers. If several devices go down simultaneously, IT personnel have a lot to do in a short time. We need to respect their function, because without it, all would be lost. The day-to-day operations of many firms depend on IT doing its job correctly. Keep that in perspective when you can’t print out an email or your cell phone answers you with static or nothing.
IT Department Responsibilities
Since few of us really understand what makes IT work, much less what to do when something goes wrong, miscommunication with the IT Department is more the rule than the exception. Even as we labor to make sense of IT problems, explaining the issue to IT workers may only lead to more confusion. Let them do their job, without too many interruptions, or the kind of workplace "curiosity" that too often leads to gossip instead of enterprise. The behind-the-scenes systems' maintenance and repair ensures each of us can email, browse, research, engage integral corporate functions and otherwise communicate correctly. The best strategy for getting the most from your IT-Department is showing appropriate deference to their expertise. Start every call or email to IT with, “Hey, I know you’re really busy, but if you get a spare minute….” You’ll likely get faster service than if you insist that your problems are their most important.
Management and IT: Working Together
Transparency – plain communication between management and IT-personnel about the Department's decision processes and performance -- lead to optimal use of the organization's technology. C2 notes three key areas where clear communication is essential:
- Prioritization – Not all IT-work involves you or your people. Other departments need IT-services as well. Accurate assessment of which projects are most valuable to your organization generates appropriate prioritization of IT-assignments.
- Accountability – Enacting reliable IT-methodologies (ITIL® best-practices?) ensures people understand the purpose of each step of what's been done, with processes assuring everyone's responsibilities are delineated and measured.
- Risk Management – Delivering updated IT services – enhanced system functionality, expanded platforms or mobile devices – entail additional complexity; introduction of newer or nonstandard software or applications impose extra IT-costs and risks. Management needs to understand IT-personnel have a better realization of these drawbacks. Take their advice about potential downsides to upgrades, and allow them to optimize the process as they decide.
Conclusion
No organization will ever rid itself of IT-problems. Although the machines IT-people deal with are unfeeling, they themselves are not, and shouldn't be subjected to your frustration or anger about failed apps or other malfunctioning. Inevitably, that's probably more your fault than theirs. Since they repair the often complicated devices that make your work possible, show them rightful deference. Develop useful personal relationships with them. IT-people must explicitly contend with crashes and other problems an ongoing basis, and require the space to resolve your issue. Even if its takes more time than is convenient, they'll get you running again. C2 has both IT-personnel and policy programs available to help your firm deal expertly with these issues. Please visit www.c2enterprise.com for a good representation of excellent IT services.
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ITIL® is a registered Trademark of the Cabinet Office. Information Technology Infrastructure Library is a registered Trademark of the Cabinet Office.
Posted on Thu, Sep 06, 2012
IT Service Catalogs—Determining Your Audience
Introduction
The Information Technology Infrastructure Library (ITIL®) recommends improvement of service catalogue content, as a basic priority of IT Service Management (ITSM) and Service Level Management (SLM). It focuses directly on supporting IT services needed for enterprise applications. Improved content is essential because the catalogue is the only part of an organization's service portfolio published to customers; thus, what it offers needs to be accurately portrayed. And, because the catalogue is used to support the sale and delivery of IT services, determining the audience for these messages is equally important.
Service Catalogue Priorities
The service catalog is a structured document or database describing an organization's live services, including those available for deployment. Because it is the only component of a firm's overall service portfolio accessible to prospective customers, the well-designed service catalogue readily communicates to customers the availability of company IT-services and their performance expectations, according to ITIL standards. Included in the service catalogue is information about organizational
1. contact points,
2. ordering,
3. deliverables,
4. prices, and
5. request processes.
Services are characterized by:
- professional/expert IT resources enabling a business process that
- comply with customer needs, while
- aiding customer’s enterprise strategies, causing
- customer belief that the services provided represent a consistent product.
To this end, the service catalogue is an integral component of the customer relationship, informing corporate processes. It helps organize interactions with customers by defining available services to ensure appropriate identification of their respective audiences in particular, followed by prioritization of their delivery to those customers-users.
Service Catalogue Audiences
The different services provided by an organization may overlap user-audiences, but many are discrete, of importance primarily to specified recipients. Thus, IT-personnel need to determine the intended audience for each service, as well as the appropriate means of presenting the service to them, for their optimal understanding of what it is and how well it can serve their needs. Policy determination follows completion of these tasks. At C2, we provide assistance in developing these aspects of SML for service catalogue management.
C2 also excels on providing audience-determination assistance. In general, audience depends upon service-use:
- End-user services catalogue – the foundation of user self-service. It displays a listing of operational services for an audience of organizational employees, management personnel, administrative workers and contractors. Among such applications are access requests, delivery expectations, desktop software available, facilities' requests, licensing data and pricing information. Aid for automated request fulfillment is also provided, as are opportunities for external service use.
- Technical services catalogue – helps create a standardized, easily-used listing of technical-request processes such as automation or compliance methodologies for business analysts, project or release managers, and support-groups external to IT. Among applications are job scheduling, risk assessment, and storage.
- Business services catalogue – lists IT-services according to business services enabled and the value they deliver to an audience of enterprise leaders such as analysts, division heads, personnel managers and service level administrators. These strategic planning services include entry/warehouse management, product service descriptions, and SLM definition/development.
Conclusion
Your service catalog should be business-oriented, to provide vehicle marketing while communicating IT services beneficial to both end-users and business decision-makers. To do this, it is essential you properly determine your target audience. A visit to the www.c2enterprise.com website provides service desk solutions of the highest caliber. C2's staff is available to help you decide what works best for you, providing the operational agility needed for successful enterprise applications; automated processing of your requests generates unparalleled productivity for service catalogue usage, and for the particular audiences you seek. You can only find the ultimate services from www.c2enterprise.com.
ITIL® is a registered Trademark of the Cabinet Office. Information Technology Infrastructure Library is a registered Trademark of the Cabinet Office.
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Posted on Fri, Aug 17, 2012
Even Small Companies Can Benefit the Information Technology Infrastructure Library (ITIL®)
Introduction
The Information Technology Infrastructure Library (ITIL) integrally supports the IT Service Management (ITSM) function. Included are the checklists, tasks and procedures used by a firm to establish a minimum level of IT-capability; these frequently are not specific to the firm, but are more generally used and accessible by the entire business community. ITIL modalities represent the operational baseline for a firm to generate IT-strategies, implement and measure them. If in doubt of how to proceed, a visit to www.c2enterprise.com can provide the support and guidance needed to level the competitive field in your favor. C2 specializes in services for small businesses.
ITIL for Management
ITIL is not intended to provide set-in-stone directives for IT-use; rather it is a framework upon which to base IT-activity. Comprised of 12 service supervision processes, ITIL offers a useful foundation for administrative applications such as change management, incident investigation, trend analysis, and problem management processing. Enacting these ITIL-based procedures serves the organization through transformation from reactive to proactive maintenance. Firms will not only demonstrate compliance to applied best-practices, but also have a basis from which to measure the improvement. Although ITIL has unquestionably acquired a reputation of being more appropriate and effective for big business, it has many uses for small- and mid-sized IT shops.
ITIL for Smaller Companies
Originally, ITIL was used almost exclusively by large corporations, since the concepts and techniques the Library addressed were written with them in mind. Today, however, smaller firms implement their own best processes and practices through ITIL, to improve the value and use of their information systems. Doing so may require some adaptation of the larger-scale standards to smaller organizations. At www.c2enterprise.com., we advise smaller companies to appoint from among IT-personnel a process-owner, to manage the Library's implementation and application. Equally as important, is careful selection of the ITIL processes most applicable to your needs; C2 has the experience to help with these choices. Implementing the entire range of Library concepts and techniques may not be the best strategy; rather, picking ITIL methods most appropriate to your requirements and strategies is suggested. Indeed, selecting only key ITIL processes for implementation allows more rapid adoption for organizational uses.
Thereafter, incremental addition of ITIL works best for the small-to-mid-sized company. Benefits of ITIL for the small organization include:
-
adaptability to almost any corporate culture or need,
-
quicker results/reduced costs with fewer people to train,
-
standardized knowledge-base for ITIL-applications cuts-across barriers to interaction,
-
streamlined IT processing as redundant processes reduced,
-
conservation of resources,
-
improved data-resource use,
-
reduced IT-outage time, and
-
lower costs for change ordering, maintenance and other support.
Implementing ITIL ensures your organization makes optimal use of your IT infrastructure, by improving operating efficiency while lowering costs. ITIL drives business value in smaller firms, and should be an integral component of each phase of the service lifecycle.
Conclusion
ITIL is a set of best practice concepts and techniques for addressing the effective management of IT infrastructure, service delivery and support. First conceived for use by larger-scale firms heavily invested in IT, its use has broadened to organizations of all sizes. Smaller firms benefit from adaptation of selected ITIL processes to their specific needs; ITIL interfaces with existing IT, lending itself to a wide range of adaptations and combinations that stimulate change management in corporate culture and procedure. Incremental addition of newer processes is recommended; C2 has the expertise you require to successfully launch the ITIL agenda in your firm. Please visit the www.c2enterprise.com website for further details.
ITIL® is a registered Trademark of the Cabinet Office. Information Technology Infrastructure Library is a registered Trademark of the Cabinet Office.
Posted on Mon, Jun 11, 2012
Accreditation to Deliver the Certification Courses on ITIL® Foundation 
C2 Innovations was recently named Accredited Training Organization (ATO) and is proud to announce that it meets the standards of Accreditation, and is therefore approved by LCS to deliver the certification courses on ITIL® Foundation.
C2 is now granted all rights and responsibilities accorded to an LCS Accredited Training Organization (ATO), including full examination services for the above mentioned certifications.
Loyalist Certification Services (LCS) has a proud tradition of providing responsive, reliable and trusted examinations and certification services. LCS is a division of Loyalist College in Ontario, Canada, which has offered examinations and certification services since opening in 1967. LCS has offered ITSM certifications since 2001. Loyalist College employs six hundred full- and part-time staff with an entire division dedicated completely to ITSM-related certifications.
ITIL® is a registered Trademark of the Cabinet Office. Information Technology Infrastructure Library is a registered Trademark of the Cabinet Office.
Posted on Thu, Apr 12, 2012
C2 Innovations adopts new Branding
A completely new and unique brand image to reflect the company's leadership and expertise with its software suite C2 ENTERPRISE, C2MOST and its division of Business Process Reengineering.
MONTREAL, April 2, 2012 - C2 Innovations, a leader in service desk solutions, launches its new brand identity today. C2 Innovations will now evolve under the brand C2. The orientation of C2 sees its activities enhanced by its unique expertise at all levels by providing IT Service Management tools and management consulting services on Business Process Reengineering.
Following a strategic realignment, the company decided to update its image to better reflect its comprehensive portfolio of products and services. "C2 Innovations has earned a solid reputation as a provider of inventive software such as Service Desk solutions over the last decade.
We want to simplify our offering to our customers and combine our teams and our proprietary products under one name. The management and ownership of the company as well as people and products remain unchanged. Our new image is a reflection of our wide range, high performance and innovative products and services.
We are moving forward in developing the next generation of our C2 ENTERPRISE software suite, by expanding our product range with a value-added service catalog under the name C2 MOST, emphasizing the development of our range of business processes engineering services in addition to renewing our image, "explains Stéphane Lauzière, President of C2.
In addition, the company is also currently integrating a new concept that perfectly reflects the energy, devotion, passion, innovation and team spirit that all employees have for their work, customers and partners. "We are creative, innovative and dynamic and we continue to move into offering new products and services in connection with our customers business needs," said Alain Dionne, Director of Marketing at C2.
The company is launching its new website today: www.c2enterprise.com.
ABOUT C2
C2´s ability to deliver outstanding results has attracted hundreds of clients, including a who’s who of top brands and world-class IT managers across many industries – from retail, gaming, and insurance to financial services, health, education and business to business. We work side by side with our clients to help them develop relevant, effective, IT Service Management (ITSM) Solutions. Our flagship Service Desk solution C2 ENTERPRISE, enable notably to optimize the quality of internal and external services, organizational management processes, centralize all information on a single platform, reduce risk, increase transparency and performance. Thus, our current customers can already attest positive changes and major reduction of their operating costs, they have seen and continue to see through C2.