Dick Stark's Blog

“Transformational” was the latest buzzword at BMC’s Partner Summit held two weeks ago. Ken Berryman, BMC SVP Corporate Strategy and Development, explained that BMC’s new strategy is “ to achieve transformational growth by driving a winning strategy aligned across BMC Partners, Sales, and Services.” Vance Loiselle, BMC Vice President, Global Services, said that his top priority was to shift BMC Global Services from transactional to transformational. And, coincidently, Jeanne Ross and Peter Weill of the Wall Street Journal this week wrote an article entitled, “Four Questions Every CEO Should Ask about IT.”  Question No.1:  Are we using technology to transform our business, or are we just adding bells and whistles to existing processes?

According to this WSJ article, the question should not be “how do I use technology strategically?” Rather, it should be, “What would be the ideal way to interact with and serve my customers?”  This brought to mind the visit I had with Orange County, a RightStar and BMC customer, several weeks ago. Orange County is a large county serving central Florida. Their IT department supports 9,000 employees with a staff of 180. Orange County, like most municipalities, must deal with budget cuts and increasingly demanding constituents. At the heart of their IT infrastructure sits BMC Service Desk Express for traditional IT functions: Incident, Problem, Configuration and Change Management.

Orange County understands the value of application consolidation and utilizes SDE in a multipurpose fashion.  Additionally, you’ll find SDE as the centerpiece for several case management applications, a potential HR application, and, most importantly, a 311 application. The 311 application is used by its citizens to request information and to report non-emergency situations such as road potholes. Due to the call volume, the 311 service desk is staffed by 30 full time agents. In order to provide a transformational customer experience, Orange County is expanding its 311 service to their web site and utilizing SDE for both self-service and direct callers.

One important benefit is that citizens utilize a GIS based web-interface that allows them to identify precisely on a map where, for example, a traffic light is out, or a dog is barking. The goal is not to just improve service to its citizens by offering an easy to use portal, but also reduce the number of agents required to answer the phone.

At Hershey Medical, RightStar is putting the finishing touches on a BMC ITBM project portfolio management (PPM) system, which will allow Hershey to transform the total customer experience and reduce the their insurance costs significantly. By connecting project management to the service desk, a project manager can use the BMC SRM portal to set up a project and view the current status of one or all projects.  The system is drawing a lot of positive attention because PPM is not only used for the hospital’s IT projects but also for improving the quality of their health care services. With the ability to track critical care factors, such as length of time in the emergency room, staph infections, duration of stay, and more, Hershey Medical can maintain tighter control over the quality of care they provide to their patients.

“We run when we’re scared, we run when we’re ecstatic, we run away from our problems and run around for a good time.”
– Christopher McDougall, Born to Run

Yes, I believe we are born to run, and in case you haven’t read the best selling book by Christopher McDougall by that title, I highly recommend it. Why else would so many people turn out for races like the Boston or Marine Corps Marathons?

Dick Stark running the Washington, DC Cherry Blossom Ten Mile Run

As you may know, spring in Washington, D.C. officially begins for me with the Cherry Blossom Ten Mile Run. Last Sunday, like I’ve done nearly every year for the past two decades, I successfully finished another one. It was a beautiful day for a race—sunshine, cool temperatures, and, of course, lots of cherry blossoms.  There were 15,000 runners of varied ages converged at the starting line near the Washington Monument.  As I get older (now 54), it seems that no matter how hard I train, my current time can’t keep pace with my time from last year. I did, however, manage to finish in the top twenty percent in my age group.

McDougall writes that what’s unique about running is that although runners “peak” at age 26, they can continue to run well into their 60’s. No other sport, aside from maybe golf, offers such longevity. This is good news for me as I look forward to many more years of running.  The other good news is that the qualifying time standards for races like the Boston Marathon go down as your age goes up.  In other words, as long as I keep running, I still have a shot at qualifying for Boston.

People ask me why I’m still running. Other than the obvious health benefits, I love to compete; setting a goal for a race and devising a workout plan to meet that objective is an enjoyable process for me. Without having the goal of running a specific race with a fixed finish time in mind, I’m not sure that I could get motivated to run just for running’s sake.

Long distance running is about dealing with challenges and adversity. It’s about razor-sharp focus on an intended outcome, teaching you how to handle pain without quitting and giving you the satisfaction of completing something that you thought wasn’t possible. (At my age, it’s also about avoiding injury. That means more recovery time between runs and, as a result, more cross-training.)

I’ll keep running as long as I can. I’ve signed up for the Marine Corps Marathon on October 30th.  I haven’t run a marathon since 2001 when the Pentagon had a big hole in its side.  That’s five months from now—plenty of time to prepare. My Marine Corps time goal is up on my bulletin board: 3:45:59, the qualifying time for Boston for my age group.  I can’t wait…

Since I grew up in Spokane, Washington, my favorite pastime in March is watching the Gonzaga University basketball team advance in the NCAA tournament. Over the last decade or so, Gonzaga has earned a reputation as a small school that the traditional basketball powers fear.

Since Gonzaga University is a RightStar SDE customer, I visited the campus and caught up with an old high school friend, who is now Gonzaga’s director of public relations. He explained to me what it takes for a small Jesuit school to compete against perennial college powerhouses such as Duke, UNC, and UCLA. What can RightStar learn from a successful basketball program? Plenty. According to my friend, it’s all about the method and the mix. Below are several of Gonzaga’s keys to success and how we apply them at RightStar.

Continuity. Those close to the team point to continuity—Gonzaga’s coaches have been with the program for a combined 52 years—as the main reason for the Bulldogs’ run of twelve consecutive NCAA tournament berths. Continuity is also key to RightStar’s success, especially on the sales front. We have established customer relationships that go back many years. By contrast, other companies are constantly experiencing territory and sales rep turnover.

Mark Few, coach of the Gonzaga University basketball team

Methodology. It’s difficult for Gonzaga to attract the same caliber of recruits as other top basketball programs. As a result, it relies on a proven methodology to develop its players into something special. Gonzaga coach Mark Few depends on daily evaluations of the state of the program. Using statistical models, he posts grades for each player after every practice and for the team after every game.

Being the best company we can be starts with assessing where we are and what we need to modify to become even better. I plan to implement an After Action Review after every project RightStar completes, focusing on:

1. What were our intended results?
2. What were our actual results?
3. What caused our results?
4. What will we sustain or improve?

Family. One of Few’s methodologies is to make the team an extended family. Alumni are considered “guardians” of the program. Former players, like retired Utah Jazz guard John Stockton, remain close to the team as off-court supporters and on-court pickup game partners in the offseason.

My vision for RightStar is to treat employees with respect, fairness, kindness, and generosity. In that sense, I hope our staff members recognize each other as family and RightStar as a company that people like to work for. As I’ve said before, it’s okay to succeed alone, but never fail alone. We stand together as one united team.

Leon Rice, Gonzaga’s assistant coach summed it up this way: “We don’t go out and get thirteen all-Americans. We get the right guys for the right positions and the right mix for our team. And that’s what’s made us successful.”

At RightStar, we get the right consultants for the right projects with the right solutions. That’s what’s made RightStar successful on the IT Service Management court.

I have often described RightStar as an IT Consultancy and BMC Solutions Provider focused exclusively in the Business Service Management space. The question is, however, what sets RightStar apart from other ITSM Service and Solutions Providers?

At a recent Management Team meeting, we came up with these four key differentiators:

1. RightStar’s Implementation Methodology. As the hired experts, we strive to demonstrate thought leadership in every situation. The best way to do that is through the use of a standardized methodology based on the ITIL framework. Although we’re licensed for BMC’s Rapid Results Methodology, RightStar has modified and personalized it to deliver optimal solutions in less time and with less effort.
2. RightStar’s PathFinder Assessment and ITIL Training. RightStar highly recommends a PathFinder Assessment before beginning any new project to ensure that the solutions we deliver truly meet our customers’ needs. We’re committed to project success and the way we achieve it is by starting out with a thorough understanding of the customer’s current situation. With sufficient knowledge of the issues at hand, we can proceed to design a blueprint to satisfy all agreed upon objectives. PathFinder is a portal-based assessment tool grown from thousands of hours of real life consulting experience. The result is a first-class assessment delivered in as little as one or two weeks.
3. RightStar Developed Products. Who says there’s not much interest in Service Desk Express add-on products? Not the nearly 80 prospects that attended our MagicPortal webinar this past Wednesday. A popular MagicPortal feature is the ability it gives end-users to enter tickets and make requests through a web-based portal as well as with their Blackberry or iPhone. RightStar products, including MagicMobile and MagicWand, extend the functionality of SDE beyond what is available from BMC. In addition, with Remedy’s ubiquity within the Federal space, there is notable interest in our PKI CAC integration and ADSynch products.
4. Business Intelligence. Although both SDE and Remedy have separate business intelligence offerings—Crystal Reports and Analytics and Dashboards, respectively, it is rare that either is implemented properly to provide the expected benefits—continuous improvement. In addition to our expertise with the out-of-the box BMC BI products, RightStar has partnered with Dundas, a business intelligence software company, to provide unique reporting and dashboard offerings to meet specific needs.

At RightStar, we continually seek ways to deliver the best possible counsel, technology solutions, service & support, and education to our customers. Mind you, we don’t aspire to be better for better’s sake; we simply believe that our customers are entitled to our very best.

During a recent all-hands meeting here at RightStar, I encouraged the staff to view change not as an instigator of problems but as a creator of opportunity. It’s human nature to find comfort in the familiar but unless you’re willing to espouse change, you’ll miss the many benefits it has to offer. My suggestion was to look for “bright spots”, the things that are right with your situation, be it at the company, your job, or your life.

"Switch: How To Change Things When Change Is Hard" by Chip and Dan Heath

Looking for “bright spots” is an idea from Chip and Dan Heath’s book, Switch: How to Change Things When Change Is Hard. In their book, the Heaths offer up some powerful insights on how to not only survive change, but make change work for you. The book is built on a simple metaphor: a rider attempting to steer an elephant down a winding path. The rider represents our intellectual side, our left-brain logic that is, in reality, nominally in charge. Our “thinking” rider is weak in influence when compared to the elephant, our right-brain emotion. The path is the outside world and its impact on our life — the twisty, often narrow routes into and through a changing environment.

Taking my own suggestion, I focused my attention on the bright spots at RightStar. Let me share just a few of them here:

The new release of RightStar’s MagicMobile v3.0. There has been tremendous interest in our latest version of MagicMobile, RightStar’s mobile solution for BMC Service Desk Express. With IT personnel experiencing the time-saving convenience of accessing their service desk on the road and in the field, we expect v3.0 to take MagicMobile sales to a whole new level.

The growth of our ITIL Training and Consulting. With an emphasis on sales and marketing, we discovered that we can easily fill both public and private ITIL training classes. Our training is evidence that RightStar is a thought leader in the ITSM industry and gives us insight that is of great value to our customers.

Our L1 Support continues to be a shining star. Our L1 support team provides excellent customer support to more than 250 customers with a near-perfect satisfaction rating.

RightStar offers more Remedyforce experience than any other BMC Partner. Cloud Computing, especially SaaS, is an area of growth with great promise. RightStar is proud to be BMC’s Remedyforce leader among its solutions partners.

Third-Party BMC MarketZone Solutions provide new opportunities to both RightStar and our customers. RightStar is fast becoming recognized as BMC’s “go-to-partner” for Matrix42, nLyte, and ITBM. We offer solid ITBM and nLyte implementation experience at several customer sites.

As Chip and Dan Heath would say, pursue the “bright spots”, focus on what’s working in your organization and do more of it, and, if I may add my own bit of wisdom, embrace the adventure as you ride your elephant along your chosen path.