My presentation at itSMF Fusion 2010 in Louisville, KY.

1. Session 187: So Smart:
Metrics and Business
Intelligence for ITSM
Sam Friedman, Column Technologies

2. Sam Friedman, Column Technologies
• Business Intelligence Practice Manager
• ITIL Service Manager Certification
• Management experience:
– Service Delivery Management
– Team Manager
– Project Manager
• Technical experience:
– Solution architect
– Software application developer
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3. Information you will get:
• Introduction to Business Intelligence
• Stakeholders and their interests
• Capabilities and a Roadmap
• Metrics Methodology
Knowledge you will acquire:
• Understand current reporting challenges
• Anticipate customer requirements
• How to formulate a solution roadmap
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4. Business Intelligence
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
• Business Intelligence (BI) refers to computer-based techniques used in spotting,
digging-out, and analyzing business data,
• BI technologies provide historical, current, and predictive views of business
operations. Common functions of BI technologies are reporting, online
analytical processing, analytics, data mining, business performance
management, benchmarking, text mining, and predictive analytics.
• BI often aims to support better business decision-making.
Data Useful Information
• Observations • Actionable
• Events • Decision Support
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5. Stakeholders and Interests
Customer • Should I renew a contract?
• Do I have enough information to resolve an
Support Incident?
Manager • Who is idle or overworked?
Analyst • Why is there a trend?
Executive • Are existing policies effective?
Vendor • Am I paying enough attention to this customer?
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6. Benefits of Business Intelligence
• Satisfy the needs of many different types of users.
• Eliminate pain points:
– Report execution or
distribution is manual
– Incessant requests for reports
– Abandoned reports
– Metrics are defined
inconsistently
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7. Root Cause of Reporting Pain Points:
Report Developer needs
a lot of skills:
• Crystal Reports training
• Knowledge of SQL
• Understand data models
• Business analyst skills
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8. BI Capability Roadmap
Scorecards
Strategic Planning and Forecasting Executives
Report Automation
Managers
Tactical Ad Hoc Reporting
Analysts
Tactical Dashboards
Embedded Reporting
Operational Support Staff
Operational Dashboards
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9. Operational Capabilities
Embedded Reporting:
-Provide realtime, context-driven data within
the operational tool
Operational Dashboards:
-Use realtime metrics to drive day-to-day decision making
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10. Tactical Capabilities
Report Automation:
-Eliminate manual report scheduling and distribution
procedures
Ad Hoc Reporting:
-Enable non-technical users to write their own reports
Tactical Dashboards:
-Provide business-level visibility into service
performance.
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11. Ad Hoc Reporting Example
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12. Automation Example
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13. Strategic Capabilities
Planning and Forecasting:
– Forecast the environment, anticipate problems, and
develop plans to respond to them
Scorecards:
– Use metrics to quantify progress toward strategic goals
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14. Scorecard Example
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15. Metrics Methodology
• It is hard to build consensus
unless you have a common
language.
– Operational Metrics
– Key Performance Indicators
– Critical Success Factors
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16. Operational Metrics
• Operational Metrics are simple observations.
– How many times did something happen?
• Defined in technical terms, but without context
Critical Success
Factor
CSF
Key Performance
Indicator KPI KPI
Operational
Metric Metric Metric Metric Metric
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17. Key Performance Indicators
• KPIs are a function of one or more operational
metrics.
• Defined in technical terms, with context
Critical Success
Factor
CSF
Key Performance
Indicator KPI KPI
Operational Metric Metric Metric Metric Metric
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18. Critical Success Factor
• CSFs are a function of one or more KPI.
• Defined in business terms, with context
Critical Success
Factor
CSF
Key Performance
Indicator KPI KPI
Operational Metric Metric Metric Metric Metric
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19. Metrics Hierarchy Example
Critical Success Customer
Factor Satisfaction
Key Performance Availability of
Indicator Responsiveness
Services
Duration
# of Time to Time to
Operational Metrics of
outages repair respond
outages
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20. Business Intelligence Wisdom
• Support Staffers do not need historical data.
• Executives do not need realtime data.
• There is a lot you can do without building a data
warehouse.
• There is a lot you can do with free, open source
software.
• Reports are expensive to build AND MAINTAIN.
• The difference between useful and interesting is
whether the customer has to pay for it
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21. Summary of Key Points
• Different stakeholders need different information, at
different times, in different ways
• A report is only one of many ways to present
information
• Common language for metrics enables consensus
building and collaboration
• A BI solution is something you can grow: start small
and add new capabilities later
• Use incentives to separate “Useful” from “Interesting”
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22. Final Word: If you remember only
one thing from this presentation…
• Traditional reporting is an incomplete solution.
• There are several major challenges associated with it.
• Most of those challenges can be resolved by applying
the knowledge you acquired today:
– Report automation
– Ad hoc reporting
– Dashboards
– Scorecards
– Building consensus around which metrics matter
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23. Thank you
• So Smart: Metrics and Business
Intelligence for ITSM
• Session #187
Contact details:
Sam Friedman
sfriedman@columnit.com
(917) 690-4508
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