A familiar name in the world of ITIL, Pink Elephant has been at the forefront of IT management best practise for over 30 years. Caroline Wyatt, Head of Corporate Development explains the company’s approach and offers an example of how its ‘classroom in the cloud’ approach to training is helping one of its clients.

Pink Elephant is an independent global professional services organisation and world leader in IT management best practices. The company exists to optimise and transform IT Services for its clients, specialising in improving the quality of IT services through the application of recognised best practice frameworks, including the IT Infrastructure Library (ITIL®).

The company began life in the Netherlands, over 30 years ago, and was set up by a couple of entrepreneurial Dutch graduates, one of whom is still very much at the helm of the European organisation. Supplying intelligent, motivated and service focused individuals into complex IT environments has always been a cornerstone of the company philosophy. From these origins the company now has global presence and a team of international consultants who deliver services to corporate clients around the world.

VitAL: What is the company’s specialist area or product group, if any?

Caroline Wyatt: Our approach to implementing Service Management has been honed over 20 years of supporting transformation through the implementation of IT Service Management best practices. Our approach and experience in managing people through these organisational and cultural change programmes sets us apart. We work hard to translate knowledge into results.

VitAL: Is that specialisation to make the best use of skills in the company or because it fits the company’s world view or has it simply evolved?

CW: With the first decade of the new millennium ending in a serious global financial slowdown, organisations have been forced to refocus on increasing IT value contribution while also keeping a very tight grip on costs; reducing IT risks; and increasing and sustaining the service quality provided to its customers. But at the same time, IT can no longer be seen simply as a technology supplier – it must be seen to be adding value to the business and providing corporate strategic capability.

IT business performance allows it to change the focus from technology and production to customers and services. This enables IT to become service-oriented, aligning itself with the organisation to provide innovative and customer-driven solutions to business problems.

IT Services has no other option than to transform itself from its ‘traditional’ support function to that of strategic contributor to business success now and in the future.

VitAL: How has any specialisation influenced the company’s general stance?

CW: This is Pink Elephant’s business. The basis of our success is our unique understanding of how service organisations develop, what underlying processes are needed to make technology consistently valuable, and how people feel and behave. This understanding and knowledge is the basis for our success.

Pink Elephant does not sell any hardware or software. We don’t design or develop technical systems. We are an Independent ITSM professional services company and think that understanding what our clients need comes from a broad view of what goes on in our industry and society in general.

We recognise how important people are to our success, so we have developed selection criteria that ensure we provide the right people who will bring expertise and enthusiasm to any project. They are passionate about what they do. They are also chosen because they have the practical knowledge which they can translate into results. They have the ability transfer that knowledge to your people, so that they can translate it into results.

We attract the best people in the industry. That is why our clients entrust us with accountability in their most critical projects.

Our people are not simply IT professionals. Whether they are consultants, trainers, analysts or support staff, they are capable, and trained ITSM thought leaders. They create and develop ITSM products and services, many being accepted as the, ‘industry standard’. We have always been at the forefront of ITIL, from its inception through to the latest version, and our people are still actively participating in its future development.

VitAL: who are the company’s main customers today and in the future?

CW: Our customers are pre-dominantly market-leading blue chips with large, complex IT infrastructures, although increasingly we service clients from both private and the public sector as control, governance and the need to improve services becomes all pervasive.

We strive to be agile, flexible and responsive to devise solutions that fit our clients’ unique situations. And in the drive to be thought leaders in our field we are always looking to the future, for a better way of working, on how to improve services, delivery and value to our clients.

To support this assertion and to demonstrate how we operate, we felt it would be useful to include a case study written with one of our key Education clients rather than keep talking about how great we are!

A virtual world of ITIL learning goes live at CSC

Background: CSC is one of the world’s largest and most respected providers of information technology services. For more than 50 years, CSC has provided technology-enabled solutions and services to solve their clients’ toughest challenges. CSC has approximately 93,000 professionals serving clients in more than 90 countries. In EMEA there are approximately 21,400 professionals with around 7,500 of those based in the UK.

The delivery of managed IT services is a vital part of CSC’s business. And as a leading provider of consulting and outsourcing solutions to blue chip clients in every major industry sector, CSC is committed to driving business effectiveness for customers through the delivery of IT services founded in ITIL-aligned processes and workflows.

Maintaining a highly qualified ITIL workforce is therefore critical to the day-to-day service management and service operations businesses of CSC, and training staff to achieve ITIL Foundation, Intermediate and Expert Level certification is a strategic priority for the company.

The challenge: In the UK, CSC has a widely distributed workforce. This makes classroom-based training events a logistical and financial challenge. And when it comes to removing key personnel from client services to undertake a five-day ITIL Intermediate level certification course, the scheduling issues for staff can be immense.

With burgeoning travel and accommodation costs eating into valuable training budgets, it was time for a new approach as Robert Humphrey, EMEA Learning and Development Manager at CSC, explains.

“We wanted to take the ITIL classroom to our people – giving them access to high quality interactive training that’s easy to schedule into a working day,” he says. “Alongside minimising disruption to our personnel, delivering ITIL in a virtual learning environment would allow us to reinvest savings on travel and accommodation costs into what counts most – more training for more people.”

When considering this new approach CSC contacted its ITIL Education Partner, Pink Elephant. Having already used it for traditional classroom courses and worked with it to successfully develop an innovative blended learning ITIL Foundation programme for its staff they were the first choice to help enable its ‘classroom in the cloud’ vision for ITIL practitioners.

The solution: In close collaboration with the Learning and Development and Service Management resourcing teams at CSC, Pink Elephant evolved a format that would ensure delegates would benefit from an engaging and fully interactive online learning environment that provided ample opportunities for collaboration and debate – a key aspect of Pink Elephant’s approach to ITIL advanced learning programmes.

Using REDTRAY’s e-learning delivery platform – an on-demand online meeting, web conferencing and videoconferencing application – Pink Elephant evolved an instructor-led online classroom training programme.

As Robert Humphrey highlights, getting the initial induction session right was key. It was important to establish delegates were confident using the technology, were clear on the training objectives, and were fully engaged with the virtual classroom programme format.

“We wanted to demonstrate that this approach would give them everything they’d experience in a real-world classroom – and more,” he says. “We worked hard to ensure the induction set the scene for positive and productive delegate participation.”

During each five week ITIL Intermediate course delegates attend twice-weekly three-hour instructor-led online sessions from the comfort of their desk. Alongside being able to hear a Pink Elephant lecturer, delegates can view and participate in interactive whiteboard presentations in real time, respond to questions, engage in group discussions, and write and share e-notes.

What’s more, each ‘bite-sized ITIL’ session is recorded so delegates can revisit and review sessions as often as they need. During each live session the Pink Elephant lecturer monitors individual delegate presence, providing ongoing mentoring and support. Management reports on attendance and scoring from course exercises enable the lecturer to identify who is doing well and who needs extra support. This reporting also supports discussion with the training function and the delegate’s manager if there are any issues. Having a course that runs over five weeks means that issues can be picked up and resolved effectively.

But that’s not all. Between sessions delegates have access to a closed portal where they can ask the trainer questions, share and review responses, tap into a Trainer Blog, access additional mentoring, and communicate with other course participants.

At the close of the programme, delegates come together in the ‘real world’ for an intensive morning review session before sitting the ITIL certification examination in the afternoon.

The outcomes: “Delegate feedback on the programme has been excellent,” confirms Robert Humphrey, “but the results speak for themselves.”

Following the initial pilot programme, delegate pass rates were on par with the traditional classroom-based course pass rate of 90 percent. But today CSC is achieving a 100 percent pass rate, with some delegates achieving the maximum score possible in the final ITIL certification exam.

“Pink Elephant worked with us to adapt the format exactly to our needs,” explains Humphrey. “They have an excellent track record in ITIL education and collaborated closely with us to ensure the virtual learning programme for ITIL practitioners was refined to our specific needs – evolving, for example, the online learning community to supplement virtual classroom sessions.”

Delegates confirm the bite-sized online sessions are much easier to schedule alongside daily work responsibilities, with the added benefit of giving them time to think about and absorb information between sessions. What’s more, the new trail blazing approach has enabled CSC to release around 40 percent of its ITIL Practitioner training budget – previously allocated for travel and accommodation – to deliver additional training.

“We’ve shown the virtual world of advanced ITIL learning can be just as effective and fulfilling for delegates – and that our trail blazing approach has paid off in more ways than one,” concludes Humphrey. Following the successful launch of the programme in the UK, CSC is now looking to roll out the ITIL Practitioner ‘classroom in the cloud’ initiative across Europe.

www.pinkelephant.com

Delegate perspectives:

Ben Thompson – Service Level Manager, Manufacturing, CSC UK

Ben confirms his biggest worry before attending the pilot online ITIL v3 Intermediate Operational Support & Analysis course was that he’d miss out on valuable interaction with other delegates. “As it turned out, my concerns were completely unjustified” he says. “The virtual classroom approach was just as effective and enjoyable and it was easy to build rapport with the others. What’s more, the Pink Elephant lecturer created a community of trust in which open discussion and debate was actively encouraged.”

Cath Gardiner – ESM New Business Manager, CSC UK

Cath Gardiner admits she had no trepidations about the ‘classroom in the cloud’ aspect of her course. For her, tackling the advanced ITIL v3 Intermediate Operational Support & Analysis topic matter was the big challenge. “I knew this would be a big step up from ITIL Foundation level, but the twice weekly sessions made it easy to get on board with the material – and were painless to schedule into my working week,” she says. But it was the final review and examination day that proved a real highlight. “You finally get to meet everyone and put a face to a name – it really helps to cement relationships,” she confirms. “And it was great to get that vital last input from a Pink Elephant lecturer before taking the exam.”

VitAL: Name, company and job title please? Married? Kids?

Adam Maurice: I’m Adam Maurice, Managing Director of The Internet Group Ltd. I am married with one daughter.

VitAL: What got you started in IT?

AM: I started my first company when I was still at school. When I was in my final year I went to an exhibition at the Royal Festival Hall on a school trip. I was utterly transfixed by the speakers, who were entrepreneurs that had experienced a lot of success in the IT world. I immediately thought, “if they can do it, why can’t I?” The rest is history!

VitAL: Was there any one person or organisation that was your inspiration?

AM: I worked for Microsoft and BT briefly before setting up my first company, and I loved that culture of ‘Big Business’. That was really the inspiration.

VitAL: What was your first IT job, what was your first major IT triumph?

AM: My first IT job was working remotely for a small Internet company in Scotland after school each day. I would login from home and answer technical questions from their users. The fact that I was earning money from sitting in front of my computer (which as a teenager I was doing anyway!) was really exciting.

VitAL: Did you ever make any embarrassing mistakes? What did you learn from them?

AM: The biggest mistake I ever made was faxing a copy of all our internal paperwork for a legal dispute over to the other sides’ solicitors! That was very embarrassing (and expensive). I haven’t used a fax machine since!

VitAL: What do you like best about your job?

AM: I love the fact that every day is different, but most importantly I love going and seeing our clients who tell me that The Internet Group has made a positive impact on their business. That is the bit that is really rewarding.

VitAL: What is your biggest ambition?

AM: My biggest ambition is to grow The Internet Group into the business that it deserves to be, and become one of the leading managed service providers in the UK. We have made great strides in recent years, and despite the recession have achieved 38 percent growth this year.

VitAL: What are your hobbies or interests?

AM: Since an early age I have always been interested in computers and the Internet, however after welcoming a new addition to the family earlier this year, I find that whenever I am away from the office I am spending time with my wife and daughter; I rarely use my home PC now. I also enjoy fine dining and travel.

VitAL: What is the secret of your success?

AM: I would say that there is no secret, as such. I believe that anyone who thinks there are shortcuts to success is wrong – I have built The Internt Group to what it is with good people, lots and lots of hard work and, most importantly, a strong dedication and drive to succeed

VitAL: Adam Maurice, thank you very much.

Headquartered in Pleasanton, California in the USA, FrontRange is a leading provider of powerful and affordable IT Service Management, IT Asset Management, and Customer Service Management solutions. The company says that these solutions enable IT and Services Transformation by providing enterprise-class capabilities that deliver fast time to benefit, high ease of use, and rapid return on investment.

With an award winning tradition and recognised as a leader by industry analysts, the company’s products and solutions are used by over 13,000 customers in more than 80 verticals and 45 countries to quickly improve interactions with external and internal clients and achieve better business results.

Ian McEwan is responsible for FrontRange’s sales operations across Europe, the Middle East and Africa. He has over 15 years experience in the IT sector, primarily in the Help Desk and Service Management markets, and a successful history of sales management to Fortune 100/500 customers.

Prior to joining FrontRange, McEwan held a number of senior sales and management positions with Peregrine, BMC, IBM and Vignette.  He is currently playing a central role in the company’s continued expansion in the EMEA region.

VitAL: What are the origins of the company; how did it start and develop; how has it grown and how is it structured?

Ian McEwan: FrontRange Solutions is headquartered in California, with the hub of its European operations in Newbury, UK. The company realises around 45 percent of its global revenues in the EMEA region, and has all major functions (engineering, sales, marketing and support) based in the UK and Germany.

It was incorporated in 2000, when the companies behind HEAT helpdesk and GoldMine customer relationship management (CRM) solutions merged. The company capitalised on its dominance in the SME helpdesk market to launch its fully fledged IT Service Management solution in 2005.

More recently it has further expanded its portfolio with an IT Asset Management solutions division with the acquisition of Enteo (developers of the solution now known as FrontRange Desktop & Server Management) in 2007 and Centennial Software (FrontRange Discovery and License Manager) in 2008.

VitAL: What is the company’s specialist area or product group?

IM: The FrontRange Solutions portfolio spans three core areas of a company’s operations: IT Service Management, IT Asset Management and Customer Service. All three are critical to our and our customers’ success and it’s this breadth of offering that we feel is our real strength. To complement this, we recently launched our SaaS2 (Solutions-as-a-Service model.) This enables customers to choose the most appropriate method of technology acquisition both today and in the future – FrontRange is the only vendor offering a fast and painless transition between SaaS and on-premise solutions.

VitAL: Is that specialisation to make the best use of skills in the company or because it fits the company’s world view or has it simply evolved?

IM: For most organisations, public or private, the service they deliver to their internal and external customers is paramount. Without delivering excellent IT services, staff can’t function; without delivering excellent customer care, the organisation has no future. This is why the FrontRange portfolio has evolved to incorporate an integrated suite of solutions that enable organisations to manage their IT assets, IT service delivery and external facing customer service – three inter-linked disciplines that are all critical to the viability of the organisation.

The nature of the solution range is far from accidental. For example, the acquisitions of Enteo and Centennial Software both brought with them not only an important additional revenue stream to FrontRange, but they also strengthened our Service Management solutions with asset and configuration management being natural extensions to the solution.

VitAL: How has any specialisation influenced the company’s general stance?

IM: Rather than specialism, it is the breadth of the solution portfolio that stands FrontRange apart from rival competitors. That breadth is represented both in terms of the sheer capability of the solutions on offer – everything from PC and software auditing, through to desktop management through to fully ITIL-compatible service – as well as the technologies employed to deliver these solutions to the customer – be it on-premise or through the cloud (SaaS).

VitAL: who are the company’s main customers today and in the future?

IM: Because of the nature of the solution portfolio and its routes to market, the FrontRange customer base is incredibly broad in character. From large enterprises who use the FrontRange ITSM and Desktop Server Management solutions to manage their IT operations down to SMEs who rely on the GoldMine CRM solution to maximise the profitability of each and every customer interaction.

Tomorrow, this breadth of customer base will continue and may become broader still as more organisations like to implement hybrid SaaS / on-premise solutions.

VitAL: What is the company’s business model, ie, does it select a market and then design solutions to meet the needs of that market or does it specialise in particular solutions and seek markets where those solutions are needed?

IM: The majority of FrontRange solutions are, by their nature, horizontal rather than vertical. The customer service or IT asset management challenges facing an organisation in one industry are unlikely to differ greatly from a company in another vertical. As such, it is fair to say that the FrontRange portfolio is shaped by looking for common issues faced by many organisations and how a solution can be created to deliver the maximum benefit with the minimal customisation.

Some solution areas such as IT Service Management are always going to be subject to some ‘tailoring’ to the individual organisations’ needs, but the difference is how the solution is engineered to accommodate this level of personalisation while still retaining its core product differentiators.

VitAL: How is the company encouraging social responsibility in its customers and the wider world?

IM: The green agenda, and becoming more conscious of energy use in general, has some close synergies with IT Asset Management and so this is one potential route for the FrontRange solution portfolio moving forward.

VitAL: How does the company communicate with vendors and customers?

IM: FrontRange employs a true multi-channel communications strategy for partners and customers. This ranges from the open FrontRange ‘Connect’ forum to customer and partner-specific support sites, where they can access comprehensive knowledge bases as well as the latest product downloads. Telephone support for both technical and commercial questions is only a call away and customers and partners are both encouraged to take advantage of FrontRange’s regular roadshows and in-office meetings.

VitAL: What does the product range cover?

IM: As outlined above, there are essentially three pillars to the FrontRange product portfolio: Service Management, IT Asset Management and Customer Service. Within these areas there are a number of distinct product areas, from audit to license management, voice enablement to web-self service – but each and every component of the portfolio contributes an important role towards the overall aim of enabling organisations to maximise the productivity of their staff and IT operations as well as leverage the full value of their customers.

VitAL: What is your view of the current state of IT Service Management and IT in business and the economy in general, the challenges and the opportunities?

IM: It is somewhat of a cliché to say ‘do more with less’, but with IT budgets generally static there is a strong need to make IT service delivery more efficient and to ensure that each and every pound allocated to IT is spent wisely. Integration and automation are the keywords here, and the FrontRange portfolio is ideally placed to deliver both, with integrated IT Service Management and Asset Management. Automating key tasks such as software application deployment or restoring user profiles from a central console integrated with the ITSM system can provide a massive labour saving for IT.

For organisations with outdated ITSM systems in place, but without the budgets to replace them with new solutions, vendors like FrontRange now offer an easier way to access new technologies with SaaS-based versions of their solutions. This keeps the initial acquisition costs to a minimal level, but enables the customer to move to an on-premise solution as their needs demand in the future.

VitAL: What are the future plans for the business?

IM: It is an exciting time for FrontRange, with the recent launch of our SaaS2 solutions as well as new versions of our IT Asset Management on-premise products. The future is to grow these solutions in parallel so that customers can access the solutions they need through the delivery methods that are right for their businesses both today and in the future.

VitAL: Ian McEwan, thank you very much

http://www.frontrange.com/

Fox IT has been at the forefront of the practical implementation of Service Management techniques since 1981. It is a global independent specialist that has undertaken transformation engagements in over 50 countries. As a premier supplier of consultancy, education and technology, Fox IT is recognised as one of the most extensive ITIL based ITSM and governance consultancies in the world.

Significant changes in the technology market are revolutionising the way IT services are sourced and delivered. While this is good news for business, the increased speed and fluidity of change in modern environments present challenges.

VitAL: What is ITSM 2.0?

MB: ITSM 2.0 is an integrated IT Service Management framework for both traditional and cloud infrastructures. It has been developed to bridge the gap between new technologies and current management best practices enabling organisations to successfully transform and integrate IT service delivery into the cloud.

The framework has been designed to leverage existing best practice with focus on three key principles; simplicity, consumer focus and technology enablement. ITSM 2.0 incorporates a Value Model that enables greater business focus for all Service Management activities.

Groups of processes have been mapped to five organisational functions; Consumer Management, Portfolio Management, Zone Management, Private Operations Management and Public Operations Management. This enables greater organisational integration of best practice.

VitAL: How is ITSM 2.0 different to a standard Service Management framework e.g. ITIL?

MB: There is an improved focus on business alignment, speed and agility, cost efficiency, control and governance which puts the consumer at the heart of the service architecture.  Over recent years, the technology marketplace has seen significant changes.  Developments such as cloud computing, social media, web 2.0 and mobile technology are transforming business and consumer expectations.

It is now common practice for business management staff such as Sales Managers to procure services direct from cloud CRM providers (SaaS – software as a service) without IT involvement. Application developers can go direct to cloud infrastructure providers (IaaS – Infrastructure as a Service) for development platforms which are made available in minutes.  Increased usage of social networking may drive IT providers to adopt new ways of communicating with consumers, leading to integration challenges with existing processes and tools.

This consumer driven activity leads to reduced control over IT services resulting in increased risk in areas such as compliance, security, availability and cost. However, with appropriate Service Management the operational flexibility can provide significant business value and competitive advantage.

ITSM 2.0 reinforces the importance of existing best practice and standards and is enabled by frameworks such as ITIL and Cobit.

VitAL: Why have Fox IT partnered with VMware on ITSM 2.0?

MB:  The utilisation of cloud services is increasing; Gartner has estimated that “within 5 years, one out of five companies will have 100% Cloud-based infrastructures.” This strengthens the need for Next Generation management technology and process that enable automation, pay per use, service elasticity and dynamic sourcing, for example.

Moving forward, automation will be the foundation for service architectures as companies look to further leverage their resources in people and technology.  VMware’s unrivalled virtualisation capabilities have positioned it as the key cloud management provider.  By combining our areas of expertise we are able to offer clients thought leadership and practical guidance.

In a recent press release Mark Newton, Regional Director, VMware UK and Ireland commented: “The innovation that Fox IT is bringing to market with ITSM 2.0 is welcome in order to move the people and process agenda forward with the technology. As the global leader in virtualisation and cloud infrastructure, VMware has unrivalled expertise in reducing customers’ IT complexity and enabling them to achieve more flexible, agile service delivery. We support Fox IT’s initiative and are delighted they have selected VMware’s technology to deliver the ITSM 2.0 framework.”

VitAL: What is the first step in adopting an ITSM 2.0 model?

MB: The first step is to identify the drivers. Some organisations will need to focus more on consumer management and their relationship with the business whilst others may need to establish a dynamic sourcing model to reduce infrastructure costs and improve service availability.

Fox IT has developed an assessment service to provide a 360o view of the IT environment. The assessment uses the ITSM 2.0 value model to identify business drivers and priorities which are then mapped to your organisation’s capability. The output is a management report and roadmap for the adoption of Next Generation Service Management.

VitAL: When and how was ITSM 2.0 made available?

MB: ITSM 2.0 was announced at the IT Service Desk & Support show in Earls Court on the 19th April. The complete framework has been made available free of charge at www.itsm2.com.

 VitAL: Matt Bateson, thank you very much

www.itsm2.com

www.foxit.net

VitAL: Name, company and job title please? Married? Kids?

Geoff Collins: Geoff Collins, product manager at 1E for our new AppClarity software efficiency solution. I’m lucky enough to be married to a wonderful woman and we have a beautiful, clever and funny 18 month old daughter.

VitAL: What got you started in IT?

GC: I was probably always going to be involved in IT from an early age – I was just very interested in technology when I was growing up. My Dad’s an engineer, so I think growing up I leant about problem solving and building things from him (either that or it was all the Lego he bought me). IT is a great place for people that like to think that way – it’s basically about building stuff after all.

VitAL: Was there any one person or organisation that was your inspiration?

GC: I’ve been lucky to have a few really good mentors along the way who have given me sound advice, including our CEO Sumir Karayi. In terms of external influences I’m really excited by disruptive companies. A good example of this is Jim Jannard at Red (who previously founded Oakley with $500) – he blows me away with his ability to create excitement within a community, his maverick attitude to the rest of his industry and his ability to create technically superior, cool products.

VitAL: What was your first IT job; what was your first major IT triumph?

GC: My first IT job was for a business ISP. My first triumph there was (unofficially) writing a tool for the channel sales to issue renewal invoices for resellers. The company had been waiting for the official solution for a while and were delighted with this ‘guerilla’ solution. Almost immediately after that I joined the R&D team.

VitAL: Did you ever make any embarrassing mistakes? What did you learn from them?

GC: This week? Sure plenty! Actually I feel not being afraid to make mistakes and challenging the status quo is crucial in the modern work place. Done the right way, it’s one of the keys to being able to develop or create something that is actually different or new.

VitAL: What do you like best about your job?

GC: Being a product manager is like being CEO of your own little company; in this case ‘the company’ being ‘the product’. You have to work with all aspects of the business to be successful: The engineering teams to design and build the product, with sales & marketing to get the word out there, with finance for business cases and pricing. There’s always so much to do and be done, but as a product manager, you’re at the heart of it all.

VitAL: What is your biggest ambition?

GC: I have a few! In the short / medium term making my new product a success is pretty important! Further out, I would love to do the whole start up thing one day. Also, I’d have regrets if I never went on a big sailing adventure; maybe singlehanded across the Atlantic or round the world with my family.

VitAL: What are your hobbies or interests?

GC: As the previous question possibly hints at I’m a keen sailor. As a family, our favourite pastime is a few days on our yacht, which we keep over in the Stockholm Archipelago.

VitAL: What is the secret of your success?

GC: Not sure I’m ready to describe myself as successful yet (see ‘Question 7’)!. My one strategy so far is to say what I think. It’s amazing to me that 99 percent of people don’t do this and perhaps it’s also amazing that it hasn’t got me fired…Yet.

VitAL: Goeff Collins, thanks you very much.

According to Ian McEwan, 2011 is an incredibly exciting year for FrontRange Solutions, With the launch of its SaaS ITSM solution, the company can now offer either a cloud-based or on-premise solution to cusotmers. Here he tells VitAL what is driving the company and where it is going.

Over the years, FrontRange Solutions has created some well-known brands with its HEAT helpdesk and GoldMine customer relationship management solutions, but what’s the real driving force behind the company today? Ian McEwan Vice President EMEA at FrontRange Solutions offers an update on what’s new at FrontRange and where the company sees itself in the future.

VitAL: What is the history of your company?

Ian McEwan: FrontRange Solutions was incorporated in 2000 when the companies behind the HEAT helpdesk and GoldMine customer relationship management (CRM) solutions merged. The company capitalised on its dominance of the SME helpdesk market to launch its fully-fledged IT Service Management solution in 2005. More recently it created an IT Asset Management solutions division with the acquisition of Enteo in 2007 and Centennial Software in 2008.

2011 is an incredibly exciting year for FrontRange Solutions, with the launch of our SaaS² portfolio of IT Service Management and IT Asset Management solutions.

VitAL:  What is the specialist product area of your company?

IM: The specialist nature of FrontRange Solutions is actually the breadth of our solution portfolio. We believe there are close synergies between ITSM and both IT Asset Management and CSM. As such, our portfolio spans these three core areas of operations – giving organisations the option to select just one vendor to cover their critical customer-facing IT needs.

Within each of the core areas we aim to develop solutions which are both best-in-class in their own right as well as being a valuable component in a larger solution.

VitAL: What specific products set your offering apart from the competition and why?

IM: While there are some parts of the portfolio that competitors simply can’t match (and we’ll get onto those in just a moment), it’s worth re-iterating that the main differentiator for FrontRange is the sheer breadth of the portfolio – from software asset management and inventory through to fully-mature ITIL-compatible service management and more.

To cite two specific examples of key differentiators, let’s look at the FrontRange Voice solution and the Discovery inventory and audit solution.

When it comes to Service Management, one feature that is often overlooked during the early stages of requirements planning and deployment is voice self-service. Yet there is a lot of evidence to show that enabling customers to submit their own tickets or get access to pre-prepared information without talking directly to a human service desk employee can be a major productivity enhancer and cost-saver for an organisation. As such, the out-of-the-box integration between FrontRange Voice and ITSM is a real winner for customers who prize high customer satisfaction as well as wanting their service desks to be both lean and highly productive.

A second differentiator may sound like a basic commodity but can actually make a real difference to the effectiveness of IT operations in general. Many in IT don’t really give a second thought to audit and inventory, yet it should be the foundation upon which all other IT operations are built on. From service management to desktop management, software asset management to IT governance – all rely in part on having an accurate view of exactly what IT assets are deployed on the corporate network. Having possibly the most powerful solution available as part of the FrontRange portfolio gives us a significant advantage. Few, if any, vendors can match the breadth of supported platforms or the auditing power of FrontRange Discovery. Once customers see it for themselves, they stop thinking about inventory as a commodity item.

Finally, as mentioned above, FrontRange recently launched the first of its SaaS offerings and we’re already creating quite a storm by offering not just named user licenses but also concurrent licensing options. The new SaaS solution features all of the advanced functionalities of our on-premise solution (eg, advanced workflow and business rules automation) but in a package that offers true multi-tenancy and was designed from the ground up as a SaaS solution (rather than being re-purposed from an existing on-premise tool).

VitAL: Who is a typical user of your products?

IM: The common ethos behind all FrontRange products is that they are designed to bring enterprise-class functionality to a price point that makes the solutions attractive and affordable for mid-market organisations. In general terms, this means our IT Service Management solutions are bought by organisations with between 1,000 and 10,000 employees. These customers are typically fast-growing organisations with a dispersed operational base.

VitAL: What overall are the benefits of your product compared to the competition?

IM: We believe one the major advantages of FrontRange Solutions’ portfolio for customers is the speed of implementation and short time to full Return on Investment (ROI). As much as is reasonably possible with a mature IT Service Management solution, most of the core functionalities are designed to work out of the box, with little configuration or set-up.

Of course, for those organisations that require a highly-individualised approach to IT Service Management, there is the possibility to customise and configure the solution to work in any number of ways, but in terms of initial set up, customers can be up and running extremely quickly.

Further advantages can be found in the broad nature of the portfolio, as referred to above. In our experience, many customers like the idea of being able to buy complementary solutions (ITSM, Desktop Management, Discovery, Software Asset Management, Customer Service Management etc) from a single vendor, safe in the knowledge that integration will not be an issue and that time-to-benefit will be radically reduced.

VitAL: Do you have any plans to develop the product in future, if so, how?

IM: As an indicator of how seriously FrontRange takes the future development of our solutions, consider that around 20 percent of our total revenue each year is re-invested directly in research and development. That’s far in excess of the industry average and shows how committed FrontRange is to delivering an aggressive solution roadmap.

With the recent launch of our SaaS ITSM solution, FrontRange Solutions is in the unique position to be able to offer customers either a cloud-based or on-premise solution to best meet their needs. Over the coming months and years we expect to dramatically increase the scope of the solutions available through the SaaS model as well as offerings customers a highly cost-effective migration path either way between SaaS and on-premise.

Within their own divisions, each of our solution areas have their own exciting roadmaps for new features that will bring significant additional benefits to our customers around the world.

http://www.frontrange.com/

 Manage engine set out to build low cost, easy to use, efficient enterprise IT management solutions for all types and sizes of customer. It claims that its 90:10 promise gives you 90 percent of the features of software from the big four (that is: IBM, HP, BMC, CA) at ten percent of the price. But Manage Engine’s journey into the IT management solutions space has been far from conventional.

About 20 years ago, two guys, Sridhar Vembu and Tony Thomas, while working at Bell labs became disillusioned by the lack of standards existing in the computing industry at the time. Everything was proprietary. Their vision was to form a company built on standards and improve software development efficiency. This vision took several years to become reality as they looked for the best way of achieving their aim. By the mid ’90s a new programming language, JAVA, appeared that introduced standards and portability. This was the enabling technology they’d been waiting for and they worked in their free time writing an SNMP API which was their first product in 1996. At this point AdventNet was born.

Over the next few years AdventNet developed a number of products – various APIs, utilities, agent toolkits, simulation software and a network management framework all offering standard building blocks and protocols for telecom equipment vendors to improve their development efficiency.

The telecom market was booming and in the years that followed the company revolutionised the EMS/NMS space with its technology, acquiring many world famous names as customers, most of them are still customers today. The company set the standard and became the number one in this domain – a position it still holds today.

End of an era

Nothing lasts forever and sure enough post 9/11 the dotcom bubble burst and the telecom market changed forever. In order to survive the company also had to change. The telecom space was small and shrinking, 300+ equipment vendors serving 250+ operators.

The enterprise space was huge by comparison. It was a time to question everything. One very pertinent question at the time was “Can we build efficient, affordable and easy to use IT management products that have all the features of those offered by the big four? Can we make it work without consultants or experts?”

Even though the enterprise market was large, at the start of the last decade, the options were limited to either open-source solutions – heavily dependent on in-house expertise or the big name expensive solutions. Neither was suitable for the majority of businesses and this was an opportunity! So Manage Engine was born and began to develop a range of enterprise products for the IT services market.

By the end of 2003, a small team began to build a network management product – which was to become Op Manager (currently Manage Engine’s second best seller). In 2005 the company started to build Service Desk Plus and actually released the product in that year. SDP is now Manage Engine’s best selling product. Today the company has 40 products and over 100 versions for all types of customer – from the very small to the largest corporate.

The company believes in providing customers with the best software at affordable prices and that traditional enterprise IT management software vendors have business models that cannot provide software at the right price.

VitAL: What are the origins of the company; how did it start and develop; how has it grown and how is it structured?

David C Howell: Founded in 1996 and known until 2009 as AdventNet Inc, ZOHO Corp is headquartered in Pleasanton, California with offices in North America, Europe and Asia. It is privately held and started out by building SNMP APIs and network management platforms for network and element management systems for the telecom domain way back in 1996. The WebNMS Framework was rated number one EMS/NMS Platform for telecoms and is a carrier-grade platform with over 1,000 man years of development. During the dotcom bubble burst and telecom slowdown, early 2000s, ZOHO diversified in to the enterprise IT management space. Manage Engine is the enterprise IT management software division of ZOHO Corp.

The corporation serves a diverse range of enterprise IT, networking and telecom customers. It has achieved impressive growth over the years and has been a rock-solid supplier and partner, with sound financials, never taken external capital and grown organically rather than by acquisition. It is a very interesting company in many ways having reinvented itself twice in the last seven years. Today we have three business units:

WebNMS: provides 15 different types of developer tools (API’s, utilities, agent toolkits, simulation software and a network/element management framework ) for the telecom industry, with around 500 customers.

Manage Engine: with 40 products in more than 100 editions, we now reached 45,000 customers from 120 countries in 23 different languages. We sell to three out of five of the Fortune 500 companies and we sell a Manage Engine product every 23 minutes. The product range is extensive and growing covering areas such as network performance management, data centre and server management, Service Desk and desktop management and log analysis and security management, ZOHO believes in providing customers with the best software at affordable prices. We believe traditional enterprise IT management software vendors have business models that cannot provide software at the right price. Manage Engine is the answer.

Zoho.com: is a tightly integrated suite of online business, productivity and collaboration applications. Zoho is a comprehensive suite of award-winning online productivity, collaboration and business applications for small and medium-sized businesses, as well as consumers.

Over three million direct users rely on Zoho for their business, productivity and collaboration needs and actively connect via forums and blogs. To date, Zoho has launched 22 different applications which include several online office applications such as Writer, Sheet, Show and Mail along with a host of business applications ranging from CRM to Projects, Invoice and Meeting. These applications are offered directly via Zoho.com or through hundreds of partners in the Zoho Alliance Partner Program, which brings in millions of additional Zoho users. Zoho has received numerous awards, including a 2009 Webware 100 Award and an InfoWorld 2009 Technology of the Year Award. For more information about Zoho, please visit www.zoho.com.

VitAL: Is that specialisation to make the best use of skills in the company or because it fits the company’s world view or has it simply evolved?

DCH: Both – the specialist skills within the company allowed us to capitalise and develop new innovative products. Post 9/11 the telecom market changed forever and in order to survive we also had to change. With zoho.com we are now at the next level competing head on with Google and Microsoft in the online office market.

VitAL: How has any specialisation influenced the company’s general stance?

DCH: We don’t specialise – we have a very broad offering allowing us to fight on all fronts. The ability to change and evolve has ensured we survive. Many of our competitors have either gone out of business or been acquired.

VitAL: Who are the company’s main customers today and in the future?

DCH: We have all the major telecom equipment vendors (500) in the WebNMS business unit. With Manage Engine and Zoho.com, we have large corporate customers from all types of verticals (see our website for specific names – too many to mention). It’s exciting times in Zoho, with the Manage Engine business unit we’ve acquired over 45,000 customer in a little over 5 years and with Zoho.com we now have over 25,000 customers in 3 years. Fantastic growth!

VitAL: What is the company’s business model, ie, does it select a market and then design solutions to meet the needs of that market or does it specialise in particular solutions and seek markets where those solutions are needed?

DCH: We identified the enterprise space. At the beginning of the last decade even though the Enterprise market was large, the options were limited to either open-source solutions – heavily dependent on in-house expertise or the big name expensive solutions. Neither was suitable for the majority of businesses. This was the opportunity we addressed, building low cost, easy to use, efficient enterprise IT management solutions for all types of customer. The Manage Engine 90:10 promise gives you 90 percent of the features of the big four (IBM, HP, BMC, CA) at ten percent of the price.

VitAL: What is the company’s commitment to corporate social responsibility, ie, ‘green’ issues and how does the company encourage social responsibility?

DCH: This policy is under development

VitAL: Has the company grown organically or by acquisition and how much is growth expected in the future?

DCH: Organic only. We are very confident in the value proposition we offer. Whilst we see many of our competitors struggle we go from strength to strength achieving double digit growth year on year. We expect this to continue.

VitAL: David C Howell, thank you very much

http://www.manageengine.com/

VitAL: Name, company and job title please? Married? Kids?

Andrew Scott: Andrew Scott, group manager of IS Systems at Allocate Software Plc. Married? Why, are you offering!?

VitAL: What got you started in IT?

AS: I discovered an aptitude and interest in IT from school days, when I took Computer Science at A Level. I then got a job working at Nat West bank, just as it started to roll out Windows to its branches. This was a great experience, and gave me the opportunity to work with some fantastic people – I have never really considered any other career.

VitAL: Was there any one person or organisation that was your inspiration?

AS: I have always followed the success of Microsoft and Bill Gates; Microsoft is truly phenomenal and has fundamentally changed the way the world operates. For me, Microsoft is the reason IT has been able to offer me a financially stable and enjoyable career and for that reason I owe it a lot.

VitAL: What was your first IT job, what was your first major IT triumph?

AS: My first IT job was working for Nat West on printers and tapes which hung off their IBM mainframes. Back in those days, units took up half the floor of the data centre!

VitAL: Did you ever make any embarrassing mistakes? What did you learn from them?

AS: Oh yes! I managed to disable four Nat West branches by accidentally scheduling a software update to the branch terminals for 8am and not 8pm. I learnt to always put other checks and balances in place, so human error can’t be allowed to wreak havoc. In IT, we talk about mission critical software precisely because what we do is vital to the smooth running of an organisation.

VitAL: What do you like best about your job?

AS: In my current role, no two days are the same. Allocate is a fast paced, fast growing company. It’s quickly changing from a small but innovative software company, to an international medium-sized company with huge ambition.

Our technology not only sits at the heart of our business, it is also sits at the heart of our customers’ operations, helping them to get the best out of their staff, while meeting rigorous governance criteria.

To add to the job satisfaction, the company has a lively atmosphere and I really love being able to communicate with people about IT without blinding them with science – it’s a great part of the role.

I am also lucky enough to have been able to travel extensively with this career, which has enabled me to bring in new approaches and perspectives when addressing challenging issues.

I hope it doesn’t come across as too smug to say it’s very satisfying to have reached this stage in my career and still look forward to taking this exciting company to the next phase of its business growth.

VitAL: What is your biggest ambition?

AS: Well I’m in the right place. Allocate is a UK headquartered company on the cusp of becoming a truly integrated multinational company. So my ambition would be to fully immerse myself in the key strategic programmes which will continue to help deliver efficiency benefits to my colleagues and our customers.

VitAL: What are your hobbies or interests?

AS: I am a keen sports fan – I have been avidly watching the Six Nations, and am very much looking forward to the start of the Grand Prix season as well! I also enjoy the cinema, and admit I am a geek, so my iPad has become my new best friend.

VitAL: What is the secret of your success?

AS: Hard work, dedication and never stop learning. I am currently studying for an Open University BA (Hons) in Business Studies.

VitAL: Andrew Scott, thank you very much.

VitAL: Name, company and job title please? Married? Kids?

Andrew Byrom: Andrew Byrom, support services manager, ICT Services, Leeds City Council. I have been married to Pam for 20 years, I have two children; Robert 18 and Sophie 17. Robert’s just started off on his career in IT as a Microsoft apprentice and has just been employed by an IT company in North Leeds. My daughter is a talented artist and plans to study fine art at university after her A levels.

VitAL: What got you started in IT?

AB: I have worked in IT since leaving school, 22 years and counting. My background was in mainframe environment (ICL, IBM, Bull) workings shifts until 2003, when I passed a Novell exam and was successful in being appointed into a job working permanent days. I was always interested in IT and it was a natural move for me to develop my career in that direction.

VitAL: Was there any one person or organisation that was your inspiration?

AB: More recently, Adrian Fegan who was the head of service delivery at Leeds City Council was a huge inspiration and influence in my career development. Adrian recently moved back to Australia after being in the UK for six years. Over the six years I worked with Adrian I developed tremendously and I attribute a large part of that to the challenges and opportunities that Adrian passed my way.

VitAL: What was your first IT job, what was your first major IT triumph?

AB: My first IT job was working for the Burton Group as an IT assistant in their IT Production team. I spent 18 months working in the print room churning out vast quantities of print reports which were sent to the head office in London on a courier each morning at 3am. How times have changed.

VitAL: Did you ever make any embarrassing mistakes? What did you learn from them?

AB: I think anyone working in IT has made mistakes at some point. The key thing is to own up immediately and ensure you learn from it. I think the biggest mistake I made was accidentally opening a door on a tape reader two hours into a batch run, which obviously had to be restarted and put us back two hours, which eventually led to online system being unavailable at the correct time for the business.

VitAL: What do you like best about your job?

AB: In my current role I love the scope of things I am working on, I manage a team of around 80 staff covering Service Delivery and it is extremely fast paced. At Leeds City Council we are ambitious in what we are trying to achieve and ICT sits at the heart of this. Therefore I am heavily involved in key strategic projects and programmes which will transform services and drive efficiencies in the business. I have gone through all the ITIL certification, up to ITIL Expert level and enjoy adapting the ITIL methodology to the work place.

VitAL: What is your biggest ambition?

AB: Obviously health and happiness for my family and friends has to come above any work ambition. However, my work ambition is to constantly learn, develop and adapt to the new challenges that are presented. I am a firm believe in personal development being a journey not a destination.

VitAL: What are your hobbies or interests?

AB: Outside of work I am a huge music fan and attend several gigs a month, and usually try to get to a major festival each summer (Glastonbury 2010 was incredible!). I play guitar, unfortunately no longer in a band as I don’t have the time, which I find relaxing. I love my real ale and try and attend beer festivals in the Yorkshire region. I enjoy most sports, particularly both codes of rugby, and support Hull FC (the rugby league team).

VitAL: What is the secret of your success?

AB: Honesty, integrity, hard work, dedication and common sense.

VitAL: Andrew Byrom, thank you very much.

As a global provider of consulting and training services, Kepner-Tregoe (KT) says it helps its clients implement their strategies by embedding problem-solving, decision-making, and project execution methods through individual and team skill development and issue resolution process improvement. According to the company clients build competitive advantage by using its systematic approaches to achieve rapid, targeted results and create lasting value.

Since 1958, the company has studied how effective business leaders manage difficult business challenges. It aims to incorporate their habits into repeatable, logical, and consistent methods for resolving problems, making decisions, planning ahead, and managing people and projects.

KT helps individuals and organisations to meet everyday business challenges with improved processes and new approaches to quality, competitiveness, cost, cycle time, business strategy, or other issues. Many clients embed its systematic methods into the way work is done, transform their organisations, and achieve quantum leaps in performance according to the company.

Steve White should be familiar to all VitAL readers; he pens the regular ‘VitAL Signs – Life in the world with IT’ column in this magazine.  But his day job is to provide global leadership for KT ResolveSM, a systematic approach to achieving step-change improvements in the quality, speed, and cost of technical support operations. As product manager, he collaborates with client and Kepner-Tregoe teams to develop improvement programmes that combine process improvement, skill development and performance management to achieve rapid, targeted results and lasting value. VitAL asked Steve White to explain the KT company philosophy…

VitAL: What are the origins of the company; how did it start and develop; how has it grown and how is it structured?

Steve White: Kepner-Tregoe was built on the premise that people resolve issues more effectively when they approach problems and decisions in a rational manner. While working for the Rand Corporation in the 1950s, Dr Charles Kepner and Dr Benjamin Tregoe, conducted research on breakdowns in decision making at the American Strategic Air Command. They discovered that successful decision-making by Air Force officers had less to do with rank or specialism than the logical process an officer used to gather, organise, and analyse information before taking action.

Kepner and Tregoe spent thousands of hours observing the practices of both effective and ineffective decision makers responding to complex, repetitive challenges. Based on their initial research, they founded Kepner-Tregoe and their findings became the foundation for ‘Rational Process’, the Kepner-Tregoe method for effective organisation management. Their book, The Rational Manager, (McGraw Hill, 1965) has become a business classic.

At the same time that Mr Hewlett and Mr Packard were tinkering with computers in their garage in Palo Alto, Ben Tregoe and Chuck Kepner were founding KT in Ben Tregoe’s garage in Pacific Palisades, California. Kepner-Tregoe has since built a network of offices that circles the globe. 

We specialise in data-rich, information-poor environments where multiple stakeholders are engaged in problem-solving or decision-making: where there is a high cost of failure and a high value in success.  In addition to finance and IT support in all industries, these environments include the nuclear industry, pharmaceutical manufacture, oil and gas production, mining, and continuous process manufacture.

VitAL: Is that specialisation to make the best use of skills in the company or because it fits the company’s world view or has it simply evolved?

SW: What we do today employs the core principles from the body of work created by our founders. As the rate of business complexity speeds up, our services evolve to meet today’s challenges. The IT support world embraced a core KT approach decades ago and these methodologies were included in all three versions of the ITIL framework. IT professionals have been using KT processes with a particular focus on IT Problem and Incident Management driven by worldwide customer interest and demand.

VitAL: How has any specialisation influenced the company’s general stance?

SW: Over the decades KT has realised that in order to add significant value to clients it needed to evolve from a pure training company to a ‘solutions company’. We realised that while training clients in Rational Process made advances in workforce productivity, it was not the answer to solving the complex business issues that abound today. As a true solutions provider KT now integrates its methodologies into the business processes and performance systems of our clients to maximise bottom-line results. So, in a chameleon-like way, we work inside of existing systems so this improved process will be sustainable.

VitAL: who are the company’s main customers today and in the future?

SW: The place in a company where we find universal application is in the IT support department, specifically in the Incident and Problem Management team. The most well known historical event that KT had an influence on is the Apollo 13 ‘Incident’, where successful incident management was literally a matter of life or death.

NASA had already prepared itself to think correctly under pressure by adopting KT processes years beforehand. In the ‘bubbling’ boiler-room of incident management, their ingrained experience in KT processes – and the resulting alignment of their personal ‘operating systems’ – contributed to a return to ‘systems normal’. The complexity of the incident, and a quarter of a million miles between the team and the hardware may have meant it took months to find the root causes, but service was restored with speed and efficiency to get the mission home safely.

VitAL: What is the company’s business model, ie, does it select a market and then design solutions to meet the needs of that market or does it specialise in particular solutions and seek markets where those solutions are needed?

SW: More the latter than the former. Our goal is always to create transformative results for our clients.  We have programmes and processes that form the foundation of our work and we customise these to exceed the market demands our clients face. The need for people to maintain rational approaches to their work in the midst of complex workplace conditions has not changed. Our core processes have stood the test of time and are today more relevant than ever. Unlike IT technical knowledge that has a shelf life of just a few years, KT core processes have a permanent and scalable capability. The personal ‘return on investment’ from getting good at these rational processes is life-long.

VitAL: What is the company’s commitment to corporate social responsibility, ie, ‘green’ issues?

SW: We are wholly committed to the importance of CSR to both our and our clients’ businesses.  Over the past few years we have moved from printing our materials in one central location to a model where this takes place closer to our customers, saving valuable travel miles. In addition, many of our industrial clients who have deployed our processes department-wide have benefited from large savings in scrap, waste, logistics and reworking.  And, recently we have developed a ‘Distance Learning’ delivery model for our training and coaching service. This, in turn, eliminates the need for clients to travel, reducing their carbon footprint.

VitAL: How is the company encouraging social responsibility in its customers and the wider world?

SW: Through its support of the non-profit, TregoED, Kepner-Tregoe is helping ensure that today’s  students and teachers have access to the same powerful critical thinking and collaborative decision-making strategies that KT provides to its customers. Via its highly-regarded workshops, TregoED offers school and district leaders the opportunity to learn strategies for developing consensus-based solutions to the complex problems today’s educators face. In addition, TregoED has developed an innovative classroom tool which helps students collaborate and apply critical thinking strategies in order to make well-developed arguments and better, more thoughtful choices. TregoED workshops and tools feature Kepner-Tregoe strategies which have been adapted for use in the educational arena.

VitAL: How does the company communicate with vendors and customers?

SW: As collaboratively and relevantly as possible.  For KT alumni we host an online user community called the KT Circle. This is currently at 3,000 members and growing. We also host and participate in a number of on-line forums including LinkedIn, Facebook and Twitter. Our website (www.kepner-tregoe.com) offers many opportunities for current and past clients to contact us as well as read case studies and white papers – and view webcasts.

However, with over one million people trained to use KT core products it has been difficult to stay in touch with such a large group. We often have people contact us saying “I attended a KT workshop 20 years ago as an engineer. Now I’m CIO and interested in getting you involved in helping my organisation”. Our workshops are a great way for a company to explore the value of KT within their organisations. We also attend a number of key conferences and exhibitions throughout the year.

VitAL: What does the product range cover?

SW: Moving aside our manufacturing-focused services, KT offers a unique suite of process solutions for support and service environments that we call KT Service Value ManagementSM (SVM). SVM is aimed at maximising Customer-Lifetime-Value.

Our core product here is KT ResolveSM. This solution, takes a support environment through the implementation of good quality consistent troubleshooting for IT support staff including, managers and directors up to the CIO. Our experience in helping big and small support organisations deploy the KT processes allows us to prevent management teams from making critical errors in implementation. That way we can identify and leverage the best practices an organisation currently has in place. Core training is supported by a KT coaching workshop (‘how to coach KT processes’) and a facilitation workshop (‘how to facilitate KT processes to drive results’). The ‘Train-the-trainer’ workshop is where we transfer our process capability to our clients, and our Implementation workshop is where we show our clients how best to implement KT in their organisations.

KT ITSM Problem & Incident Management is a public session workshop that is an excellent first step. The workshop and syllabus is supported by a Foundation exam from ISEB.

VitAL: What is your view of the current state of IT Service Management and IT in business and the economy in general, the challenges and the opportunities?

SW: The key challenge here is the growing complexity of the IT environment, which is clashing with constant reductions in IT budgets. Everyone needs to do more with less. This means even higher levels of productivity need to be accomplished by: solving problems faster, reducing recurring issues, and identifying capabilities that are scalable across multiple product platforms. We believe that IT organisations will have to reassess their strategies to identify who their key business customers are and choose the most critical applications for these IT users. All other applications and services should be considered for outsourcing.

VitAL: Has the company grown organically or by acquisition and how much is growth expected in the future?

SW: Largely, KT has grown organically. The company is exploring new growth strategies which include geographic expansion and building a channel (reseller) business as well as different forms of licensing of its successful model.

VitAL: What are the future plans for the business?

SW: After 50 years serving a wide number of industries as the ‘Gold Standard’ in organisational issue resolution KT has chosen Operational and Service Excellence as its core vertical markets. This focus will bear fruit in the form of new services and applications for IT, Support, Quality and Manufacturing functions in several industries.

VitAL: Any other points you would like to add?

SW: None, other than we are very excited about our new direction and the body of work that lies front of us.

VitAL: Steve White, thank you very much.

http://www.kepner-tregoe.com/