Metrics for the Internet, Information Technology,
and Service Management
Over 540 Objective
Metrics Defined
83 Graphical Metric Reports
show over 240 metrics
Compliant with ITIL
ISO 20000
IT Service Management
The CIOs biggest challenges is to justify staffing and spending levels as they strive to improve IT efficiency. When assessing comparative benchmarks, it is hard to know which metrics to start with. The Metric for the Internet, Information Technology and Service Management HandiGuide helps CIOs to understand and pick the appropriate comparative benchmarks to justify staffing and spending, improving IT operations and demonstrating the value of IT to the business.
Defining Which Metrics to Use
Most IT metrics efforts lack relevance to the business and are not well linked to business outcomes. They tend to be IT focused, such as WAN availability or server downtime. It is difficult for the business to understand how these measures relate to its objectives, and they provide little insight into the value that IT delivers.
CIOs must create a scorecard and service level agreements that:
- Relate to the enterprise and its management team. Server availability, network throughput, help desk call volumes, capacity utilization, and other IT operational metrics are not relevant to business executives. These types of metrics need to be translated into something enterprise management understands, such as availability of business applications or the cost to support a business area. The IT-operational metrics should be kept within IT unless they can be put in enterprise terms.
- Relate to the enterprise strategic and tactical objectives. Enterprise executives are concerned with introducing new products and services, improving customer loyalty and satisfaction, increasing gross margins, and growing market share. IT metrics must be linked directly to these enterprise objectives, specifically demonstrating how IT initiatives contributed favorably to improving them.
Effective SLAs are extremely important to assure effective Information Technology operations. The metrics used to measure and manage performance to SLA commitments are the heart of a successful agreement and are a critical long term success factor. Lack of experience in the use and implementation of performance metrics causes problems for many organizations as they attempt to formulate their SLA strategies and select and set the metrics needed to support those strategies. Fortunately, while reaching for perfection is difficult and costly, most organizations can achieve their objectives through a carefully chosen set of simple-to-collect metrics. Hopefully, this paper provides some insights into the "whys" and "hows" of this selection process. The Metrics HandiGuide is the tool that can be used to accomplish that task.
At the heart of an effective Service Level Agreement (SLA) are performance metrics and they
- Measure the right performance characteristics to ensure that the client is receiving its required level of service and the service provider is achieving an acceptable level of profitability
- Can be easily collected with an appropriate level of detail but without costly overhead, and
- Tie all commitments to reasonable, attainable performance levels so that "good" service can be easily differentiated from "bad" service, and giving the service provider a fair opportunity to satisfy its client.
The Metrics for the Internet, Information Technology and Service Management HandiGuide is over 300 pages, defines 540 objective metrics, and contains 83 metric reports that show over 240 objective metrics.
Operational Improvement Opportunities as defined by
CIO, CTO, and CEO
The metrics cover all areas of the Internet, Information Technology, and Service Management -- including WIRELESS metrics which in turn includes mobile broadband specifications. In addition, there are industry specific examples for financial services, distribution, manufacturing, education, entertainment, government, hospitality, insurance, medical, real estate and retail.
- Organizational responsibilities defined
- Metric process, design, and definition of 540 specific objective metrics
- 83 sample metric reports - includes over 240 of 540 objective metrics
- Graphic data presentation rules
- A full metric report package is defined - a template you can use right away
- Wireless metrics examples are featured
- Updated to comply with Sarbanes-Oxley
Sample Metrics Reports in Graphic Format
Click on the individual images above to to enlarge
Metric and IT Measurement News
Cloud Process Benefits Defined
The benefits that that come from Cloud Processing and the associated infrastructure transformation include:
- Improvement in application performance
- Hardware reduction
- Reduce system administration overhead
- Reduce carbon footprint
- Power savings
- Savings in software licenses
- Faster job submissions
- Downtime avoidance
- Reduce compliance and ISO 9001 validation time
- Single path to support
- Warranty savings
Janco also points to other less tangible advantages that cloud processing achieves, such as: higher employee productivity, better performance across its infrastructure and avoided costs of outages. Additional savings and efficiencies, such as from virtualization, casn be expected as the cloud process continues to expand.
- more infoFirefox releases 4.0 Beta
Mozilla has launched the fourth beta of Firefox 4, adding bookmark and password synchronization, and revamping how people wrestle tabs.
The latest build supports the first attempt at accelerating Firefox 4's page rendering by tapping the graphics processor. The hardware acceleration, available only in Windows Vista and Windows 7, is disabled by default.
Trends in Browser Market Share
Firefox 4 Beta 4's most visible addition is "Panorama," a new name for what Mozilla had been calling "Tab Candy." Largely driven by the work of Aza Raskin, creative lead of Firefox, Panorama lets users collect tabs into sets, graphically displays those sets, and when users open a tab, shows only those tabs within the group.
Mozilla, which calls Panorama a tab manager, has argued that it's the next step in the evolution of tabs.
- more infoWindows 7 takes off
Windows 7 is success
A major finding in the report is that Microsoft's new Operating System, Windows 7 has 17.39% of the OS market less than 13 months after its availability. That is a major factor in Microsoft's improved record earnings. Janulaitis said, "The last time that an OS was accepted as quickly the market was XP. Vista's market share has peaked and is in the process of being decommissioned in most enterprises."
- more infoNew IT Metrics Program and Benchmark Program
Most IT Managers understand the importance of collecting, reporting and acting on performance metrics, but few put this knowledge into action in a meaningful way. Our partners at Janco Associates' recommend that all IT organizations develop and maintain a metrics program by focusing on simple metrics that address specific business issues like spending and staffing justification or performance improvement.
To help you identify and launch a metrics program that is meaningful to your specific business, Info-Tech has assembled the Metrics for the Internet, Information Technology, and Service Management HandiGuide. It is a collection of metric reports and tools designed to get your IT team's metrics program up and running quickly and easily. You will be given simple steps to creating a metrics program including the most important step: How to act on the results and improve IT performance to better serve the business.
- more infoMainframes and server farms are sources of productivity improvements
In the post-recession environment, the demand and supply mismatch between IT departments and the businesses they serve is growing. Business demands on IT are increasing while IT budgets have been cut.
The needs that IT can't address as a supplier, it can
address through other means. CIO can be a facilitators connecting the business
units to the services they need, whether internally or externally, such as from
a cloud or software-as-a-service provider.
IT is becoming more responsive, not because it can do more, but because it can acknowledge and help the business with more of their operationals needs. Productivity levels have improved
The path to value is taking some familiar and some new directions while also running into age-old issues.
Company have saved millions, mostly in cost savings, by putting new applications into a mainframe and on stand-alone servers environmens. The savings came from the smaller physical footprint, reduced cooling and power needs, and reductions in networking and systems administration work.
- more infoSocial networks hinder productivity
Social networks had already surpassed e-mail use among American Internet users. But according to a Nielsen Co. survey, online gaming is now also more popular that e-mail.
According to the Nielsen survey, Americans today are spending nearly a quarter of their online time posting comments, pictures and video on social networking sites like Facebook and Twitter, making it the most popular online activity among Americans.
Online gaming is the second most popular online activity, accounting for 10% of online use, while e-mail ranks third at 8.3%. In a survey completed in June, 2009, e-mail was the second most popular online activity, accounting for 11.5% of Inernet activity.
- more infoWorkforce mobility a productivity issue for CIOs
Part of the CIO's job is to support maximum productivity by choosing
appropriate infrastructure for
laptops and other devices to meet the individualized needs of mobile employees. But IT leaders also must support the
mobile infrastructure in a way that is designed to minimize costs, simplify
administration efforts, protect against mobile-specific threats, and ensure
security. Key enablers of the mobile workforce include the following:
- Outstanding security and network accessibility
- Simple, intuitive systems and data management tools
- A streamlined process for backing up critical data
- Smooth transitions when changing hardware or software
Good metrics improve performance
When valid metrics are used, performance improves. Janco has found that these six rules need to be followed.
- Select metrics that relate directly to the factor that you want performance improved on
- Have at least four but not more than six metrics that are focused on a particular performance factor
- Set minimums and maximum values for each metric before you start
- Base metrics on at least two months of trend data
- Have metrics that are both leading and lagging indicators
- Set targets where actions will be taken when those thresholds are crossed
Service-Oriented Architecture and IT Service Management Are Keys To Success in the Recovery
SOA and ITSM drive success and productivity
One bad customer experience can cost you that customer for life. Hospitality, travel, retail, healthcare, and financial services are especially prone to losing customers who have a negative experience. It does not take much for a customer to decide that you and your company are not worth his time, effort, or money.
Customers like to feel loved, and they are turned off very quickly when they sense that you do not care about the pain they are feeling. Even if you cannot help them because the situation is beyond your control, acknowledge that you understand both the situation and their frustration.
No
customer wants the person serving her to be distracted or preoccupied. Ever go
to the local mall and try to get help from a teenager focused more on texting
her friends than helping you find what youre looking for? On the other hand,
being too focused can be a bad thing. Have you ever asked an innocent question
out of curiosity and then found yourself stuck for an eternity while a customer
support person hunts endlessly for an answer? This person is likely so focused
on getting the answer that he does not realize that you really do not care that
much about it and would rather not wait for an answer to an inessential
question. Be sure your people understand the degree of focus required for the
job.
Even if the employee has the right skill set and experience, his odds of being successful and remaining on the job are low if his core behaviors and tendencies do not line up with those needed for success in that particular role. This is especially true for customer-facing roles in which your frontline employees act as extensions of your brand and heavily influence the customer experience.
- more infoIT Service Management drives customer satisfaction
Industry estimates peg the costs of acquiring new customers as being about five times more than the costs incurred to satisfy existing customers. IT Service Management and change control are keys to this process.
Customer retention and satisfaction also drive profits. According to some experts*, a 2 percent increase in customer retention can have the same effect on profits as cutting costs by 10 percent. And a 5 percent reduction in customer defection rate can increase profits by up to 25 to 125 percent, depending on the industry.
Additionally, existing customers are the ones who are most likely to be future purchasers. Theyve already shown they want and like your products or services and are willing to pay for them. And in many cases, customer profitability tends to increase over the life of a retained customer.
So whats the key to retaining customers? Keeping customers happy has always been a cornerstone of good business practice. But with today's economic conditions, delivering good service to ensure satisfaction has become critical to any companys success.
- more info