Connect to Your Customers in a Whole New Way

Posted on April 9, 2013 by

By Dick Stark

Last week, I attended a salesforce seminar in Washington DC, Connect to Your Customers in a Whole New Way.  The keynote speaker was  Mark Benioff, Chairman and CEO, salesforce.com. It was a standing room only affair– think Dreamforce, but on a much smaller scale.  The message: become a customer connected/trusted/focused company. Salesforce will show you how.

Thanks to our Remedyforce experience, RightStar is a salesforce consulting partner. Additionally, internally, we’ve used salesforce’s sales force automation software ever since we started RightStar. And, we will soon become a salesforce ISV partner, as our own product group is developing a purchasing app for the force.com platform.

Mark Benioff began the keynote by proclaiming that change is pervasive and not only are we in the midst of a customer revolution, but also:

  • Social revolution: 4B social users world-wide;
  • Mobile revolution: 1.7B touch devices shipped in 2012;
  • Big Data revolution: 450B business transactions per year by 2020;
  • Community revolution: think of Chatter or crowdsourcing to collaborate and solve problems;
  • Apps revolution: every company should become an Apps company;
  • Cloud revolution: $111B industry in 2012; and
  • Trust revolution: era of customer trust and privacy.

Throughout the morning, Mark used testimonials from several customers: Department of State, Blue Cross Blue Shield of Rhode Island, Obama for America, and Rosetta Stone to show how they have adopted the customer company philosophy, and how they have transformed the way they sell, service, and market. Here are a few examples:

Become an App Company. In case you haven’t noticed, Coca-Cola’s old vending machines are being replaced with new “Freestyle” vending machines that mixes up to 125 different flavors. Coke built a salesforce app to manage these machines and connect/socialize the users to each other to compare their flavor experiences.

Create Communities. The Obama campaign used salesforce and Chatter to make every connection (and vote) matter.  By using social media to connect with constituents they could identify experts (or volunteers) to resolve issues faster, especially in the days leading up to the election.

Service customers everywhere. The salesforce Service Cloud delivers a seamless customer experience.  By connecting through social media, the web, email, or even the old fashioned way—phoning in, Service Cloud connects everyone on every channel.

Conspicuously absent was any mention of Remedyforce, which connects internal customers (employees) to IT.  Connecting the “Internet of things” together can be complicated and someone will undoubtedly need some help along the way.  Even better is  BMC’s MyIT which ships later this month.  But more on that later….

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged , , , , | Leave a comment

BMC FootPrints Asset Core vs. ADDM

Posted on March 31, 2013 by

By Dick Stark

On Wednesday, RightStar presented a webinar, “Take a Walk Through FootPrints Asset Management.” Not to be confused with the prior week’s topic, BMC’s Application and Dependency Mapping (ADDM).  When should we sell one over the other?  Or more importantly why will a customer buy one over the other? Will both ADDM and Asset Core work together, and whatever happened to BMC Client Automation (BCA), which BMC was pushing just several years ago?

Asset Core

Asset Core is part of the FootPrints family and integrated tightly with Service Core, and recently, Remedyforce. It is a multifunction asset management suite consisting of discovery and inventory, OS and application deployment, policy compliance, software license, financial asset, patch, remote, power, event, device, and migration management. Asset Core differs from ADDM in several key areas:

  • Except for network devices, agents are required.
  • Dependency mapping, the relationship between applications and the infrastructure, is not provided, however topology and connectivity mapping are.
  • Power management, the ability to shut down workstations at night to conserve power, is a native application. ADDM uses tables to look up and calculate theoretical power usage and savings.
  • Asset Core does not integrate with the Atrium CMDB, only FootPrints Service Core and Remedyforce.
  • ScanStar, RightStar’s barcode scanner for physical inventory and receiving applications only works with Service Core. Asset Core will be supported at a later date.
  • Discovery and software license management is Asset Core’s primary function.  ADDM’s primary function is discovery and application dependency mapping.

Since Asset Core is not integrated with BMC’s Atrium CMDB, a simple rule of thumb is that ADDM is for Remedy users (larger enterprises) and Asset Core is for FootPrints and Remedyforce users (mid-market organization). However, given BCA’s near end-of-life status, consider Asset Core for Remedy users as well.  A much larger enterprise might use ADDM for server discovery and mapping, and Asset Core for patch management or software distribution.

According to a RightStar Asset Core consultant, Asset Core usage varies considerably among customers.  “Asset Core really pays off among customers facing software license challenges,” Steve reported. “For example, software like WinZip and Ad-Aware might be free for home usage, but not on company networks.  The cost of a software audit will often far exceed the cost of the installing Asset Core.” Patch management is another huge time saver, especially if a company has poor processes in this area.

Given that several of the Asset Core competitors are fading (Altiris was purchased by Symantec, and BigFix by IBM), Asset Core is well positioned for continued growth. With Asset Core, IT has an accurate and current inventory of hardware and software, the proper software and security policies, and with Service Core, the ability to manage changes and prioritize support problems.

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged , , , , , , , , | 2 Comments

Remedy and ADDM: Unbeatable Combination

Posted on March 23, 2013 by

By Dick Stark

On Wednesday, RightStar presented a webinar, “Discovery & Relationship Mapping with BMC ADDM.” ADDM is starting to heat up with more and more customers, not just implementing Remedy, but ADDM, due to the combined value that both products together provide.

In fact at one RightStar customer, ADDM has made a significant difference, not just by identifying what’s in their data center or on the network, but how applications are mapped to related hardware and software.  For example, ADDM creates all computer systems OS (Windows, Linux, Unix), CPU, RAM, IP, MAC, software instances, status (Deployed or Down), entries and their relationships, as well as network devices and printers.  Additionally, ADDM populates its data into the CMDB (Hostname, Manufacturer, Model, etc.) A physical inventory then updates the physical location–company, site, floor, room, status (Received, Deployed, Down and End of Life), as well as, adds disk drives and blade chassis/blade server items and their relationships.

The result is not just improved asset management effectiveness and a reduction in cost, but risk mitigation when making changes, due to a better understanding of the change and its impact to the affected underlying infrastructure. Additionally, RightStar consultants fully integrated ADDM into the CMDB. Using ADDM, all newly discovered, newly removed (not seen for a minimum 7 days) and changed (moved) assets are tracked and compared to see if a Change Request was indeed created for these installs and moves. If a Change Request was not created, an alert is sent to the administrator to investigate.

There are several other reasons why ADDM is such a good complement to Remedy:

ADDM is built on the Atrium architecture.  Through the CMDB, discovery data automatically maps to CMDB classes, for example, operating systems, CPU, and applications.  Additionally, through continuous synchronization, the CMDB is always kept-up-to-date.

Collaborative Application Mapping makes the creation of self-maintaining application maps simple by providing a workflow tool that makes it easy to obtain information about business applications. Using these maps, IT can better understand how applications and infrastructure work together to deliver the services that organizations depend upon.

Application Map

The ADDM Extended Data Pack includes two reference libraries. The software pack provides dates for software end of life, end of support for operating systems and software.  The hardware pack provides information on physical and thermal characteristics of hardware.

Understanding complex application dependencies is a fundamental requirement for all strategic IT initiatives. With ADDM, IT has the necessary insight to make the right planning choices, safely manage changes, prioritize support and understand the real costs of IT.

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Has ITIL Lost its Mojo?

Posted on March 10, 2013 by

By Dick Stark

Last Thursday, I attended a panel discussion sponsored by the National Capital Area itSMF user group.  The topic: DOD IT Service Management Perspective. Kirk Holmes, itSMF founding member led the discussion with representatives from the US Navy, DISA, US Coast Guard, and the the US Air Force. This was an impressive group and talk centered around service management and ITIL. Despite the investment each of these organizations has made in service management and ITIL, and even though good progress has been made, the recuring theme from each speaker was the on-going level of effort ITSM requires.  Here is a summary.

ITIL maturity. ITIL has lost some of its luster  recently due to its lack of perceived value and complexity.  One panelist stated, “Be careful how hard you try to sell ITIL. When you try to shove it down someone’s throat, they won’t swallow.” Jeff Hiatt from the Air Force remarked, “sometimes the government is an inhibitor; we need to figure out how to get out of our own way.”

Process really matters. One panelist stated that he doesn’t mention ITIL anymore, just process improvements. It is all about IT capabilities delivered the right way 100% of the time. IT departments must focus on things that make the agency run better, not necessarily by “standardizing on ITIL. There is an incredible pressure to deliver results now and to make sure that the agency’s needs come first.

Value is more important than ever. In this era of sequestration, value, or return on investment may be the most important success factor. Drew Jaehnig from DISA mentioned that his agency is investigating ways to share potential cost savings with prospective bidders.  For example, he said that a contractor might get to keep 10% of a potential $200,000 cost savings.  Drew admitted that he liked the idea, but it is stuck presently in legal.  All other panelists agreed that cost savings is critical and a top project selection criteria.

Adoption. It was clear that user adoption was a delicate balancing act, and that “grass roots is where it’s at.” Oftentimes the reason an ITSM project fails is not due to process or technology, but to user adoption and politics. One lesson learned was never to underestimate the role politics plays in a new initiative.

I pointed out that the anchors of service management are CMDB and service catalog and asked the panelists to describe their level of maturity with both.  DISA has made the most progress.  Drew described their success with federated databases and discussed the integration with Remedy, NetCracker, and Maximo. All the other panelists admitted that more progress is necessary. One discussed the difficulty of building and maintaining a CMDB.  Another discussed the value a service catalog provided: “an excellent way to limit the services that our agency provides.” But it was clear that every agency lagged behind where they thought they should be.  One panelist pointed out that an 85% solution should be acceptable.  The remaining 15% customizations may not be affordable.

Has ITIL lost its mojo?  Hardly, all representatives agreed that ITIL is a required framework for future ITSM process improvements. Jeff Hiatt summed things up this way: “My biggest mistake is that ITSM is not my full time job.  We have so much more work to do.”

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged , , , , , , , | 2 Comments

Why Knowledge Management is Important to the Success of your Service Desk

Posted on March 5, 2013 by

By Dick Stark

Last Thursday I hosted a joint webinar with RightAnswers.  The topic: “Knowledge is Power, IT Knowledge Management for your BMC Service Desk.”  Surprisingly, Knowledge Management (KM) gets less than expected mindshare with most of the service desks that we support.  This is undoubtedly due to the popularity of Google, other search engines, social media, and crowdsourcing, such as the friend who knows the answer. Why implement a KM system if Google has all the answers?

Several months ago we implemented a KM software add-on for a Remedy customer.  After we finished, the customer remarked that the final outcome was not significantly different from Google.  So, I asked the RightAnswers team to comment on how their system differed from Google.  (The aforementioned KM system, by the way was not RightAnswers.)  Here is what I gathered.

KM software and knowledge packs have been around for years and should be a critical success factor for all service desks.  Most organizations have a raft of company specific information, not available on Google, which needs to be readily accessible to users with a need for that information. The return on a KM process and software investment pays dividends in terms of improved problem and incident resolution especially when offered to all users. Unfortunately, some KM projects fail because of poor user adoption making the data quickly outdated.

Nearly all service desks have implemented some sort of self-service portal in varying degrees of sophistication ranging from on-line ticket entry to knowledge bases to service requests to service catalogs (fix it, order it, or learn it).  According to last Thursday’s webinar survey, 70% of service desks have self-service, but surprisingly 65% do not utilize any KM tools or processes.

Most commercial based service desk software is evolving such that the service request module, and not the agent screen is the centerpiece of the application. Software such as BMC’s Remedyforce even comes with a built in chat feature to allow for a rapid-fire response to any type of query.  Also coming is integration to social networks. It’s a self-service world and the good news is that self-service knowledge management reduces the number and duration of calls, which allow service desks to do more with less.

Often overlooked, Problem Management must be a keystone habit of all service desks as the potential impact, especially when linked to incident, change and knowledge management is enormous. Identify, rank and make sure he problem and the resolution are readily accessible.

One thing is certain: IT is becoming more and not less complex so continuous service desk process and technology improvement will return significant value to the organization.  The result:  reduced costs, increased agent and employee productivity, and overall, improved customer satisfaction. If service desks can’t or don’t evolve to compete with Google or other crowdsourcing technologies, then then service desks will change significantly over the next several years.

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged , , , , , , | 1 Comment

Unreasonable Customer Service

Posted on February 25, 2013 by

By Dick Stark

“I believe that the level of priority and the amount of passion and emphasis that must be put towards the customer experience must be, in a word, unreasonable.  It must be excessive.  It must go beyond the limits of common sense.  It must be extreme, irrational and out of proportion with what your competitors are doing. It cannot be anything less than remarkable.”

–Joe Mechlinski, Grow Regardless

Customer satisfaction, or “every customer a reference,” is a RightStar customer motto and a critical success factor for RightStar.  What type of unreasonable customer service stories do we have?  When I visited BMC in Tampa, their Director of Technical and Customer Support, told us a story about a large customer we both share. He said that they ran out of disk space recently when working AssetCore.  Without flinching, BMC ordered new servers and expressed shipped them to the customer for free.

Several years ago, we did something similar for a ScanStar customer. Once we began the project, we discovered that their scanners were not compatible with ScanStar. This was surprising since we make it a point to ensure that all ScanStar customers receive our list of certified scanners. Rather than argue about who was right, we rushed five new scanners to them overnight at no cost. This guaranteed an on-time delivery and a very satisfied customer.

Likewise, our consultants are often faced with situations where a BMC defect has slowed our implementation progress. Rather than push the customer for a change order to make up for our lost time, we will often work “for free” until the job is complete.

Every customer a reference may be a slight stretch, since some customers may never be fully satisfied, no matter how hard we try. However, thanks to social media, companies and brands have to compete on a completely different level than they used to.   As a result, most customers now feel entitled to excellent service and select vendors, on the basis of good service, not just product or price.

This means that we must deliver unreasonable customer service.  If we’re merely meeting our customer’s needs, we’re not doing anything noteworthy.

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged , , , , , , | Leave a comment

To Sell is Human

Posted on February 18, 2013 by

to sell is human

By Dick Stark

I finished Daniel Pink’s new book, To Sell is Hunan, right before our annual sales kick-off, as I was eager to report on any new information and to help jump start our sales team for 2013.  I’ve been a Daniel Pink fan since his book Drive, and applied his motivation principals of Autonomy, Mastery, and Purpose at RightStar.  We celebrate all of these things in our Weekly Star employee newsletter, and company all-hands meetings. So, I was very excited about the release of this new book.

The premise of To Sell is Human, of course is that everyone is in sales. Pink re-writes the Glengarry Glen Ross, Always Be Closing scene, into Attunement, Buoyancy, and Clarity as follows.

Attunement. Pink points out that thanks to the Internet, we moved from a Buyer Beware (Caveat Emptor) to a Seller Beware (Caveat Venditor) sales environment. According to Pink, “We’re all in sales now. Old-style salesmanship is dead or dying,” he says, “because the widespread knowledge to assess their purchase has made it hard for sellers to exploit a knowledge gap.” Pink takes the concepts of introversion and extraversion and shows that neither extreme is good for sales success.   Instead, he points out that Ambiverts, (what happens when extraverts are crossed with introverts), make the most successful sales people. The majority of people fall into this category, another reason why “to sell is human.”

Attunement means being “in tune” with customers or prospects.  Good sales people understand this and are able to size up the situation to their advantage. Humility is a better weapon.

Buoyancy.  I had an ex-sales manager that said he, “walked on a cushion of good news,” meaning only good news, i.e., new sales orders were welcome.  Pink states that good sales people are able to “stay afloat in a sea of rejection.” Positive autosuggestion, “Tell yourself you can do it,” is not the best way to overcome blows to self-esteem. Instead, the research suggests, it is better to prepare for the sale by asking yourself a question, the answer to which should help explain how to meet the challenge ahead.

Clarity. When I ask potential sales hires, what they like most about selling, the answer I hear back surprisingly is not the money, but the ability to solve clients’ problems. Pink discusses finding the right problems to solve and at RightStar, what matters most is not just solving problems, but proving value. For example:

  • At Memphis City Public Schools, thanks to AssetCore, we achieved a rapid ROI based on power savings alone.
  • Selling Remedyforce yielded a $60K first year savings when compared to a similar on-premise solution.
  • At an Air Force customer, a 60 to 85% increase in asset management effectiveness has stopped the “leakage” of assets and resulted in big savings.

What Daniel Pink does not address is lead generation as his book assumes that activity has already occurred.  In other words, we already have the good “Glengarry” leads. Regardless, To Sell is Human is worth the read and a good way to start the new selling year.

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged , , , | Leave a comment