Infravision Solutions
InfraVision Reporting Solution for the Alignability Process Model
The Challenges after a Successful Alignability Process Model implementation
After a successful implementation of the Alignability Process Model, the operational processes for delivering and supporting IT services are in place. For monitoring, managing and improving these processes you need some relevant information. When defining reports to deliver this information, customers are facing various challenges:
- Information needs depend on roles: Different roles need different data. For example, a process owner need process related data while a service owner needs service related data. So it is not possible to define 'one size fits all' reports without overloading people with irrelevant data.
- Information needs depend on management level: Operational roles like specialists, service analysts, change coordinators and problem coordinators can rely on the operational data in BMC Service Desk Express. But what if you have a tactical role like service owner or process owner? Where do you get your management information? The same issue exists for strategically roles like service managers and IT managers.
- Trending information and transactional databases: BMC Service Desk Express uses a transactional database where certain information like status and assignments are overwritten many times during the lifecycle of tickets. This makes reporting on trends a challenge. And trend reporting is the key to tactical and strategic reporting.
- Complex database structure: The database structure of BMC Service Desk Express is complex, especially for Alignability Process Model environments because of the many customisations that were applied to the out of the box functionality of BMC Service Desk Express. This makes creating reports a complex and time consuming activity. In depth knowledge of the data structure and processes is required to create useful and trustworthy reports.
The InfraVision Reporting Solution
To overcome these challenges, InfraVision created a reporting solution for Alignability Process Model. It contains a set of predefined 'proven practice' reports that match to the roles and responsibilities used in Alignability Process Model and described in the process model. These reports show relevant Key Performance Indicators (KPI’s) that can be used for monitoring and managing the performance of the processes and the delivery of your services in general.
The metrics that are used for the KPI reports are calculated and stored in a separate metrics table. The actual reports are based on the metrics in this table.
The Key Benefits of the InfraVision Reporting Solution
This reporting solution has many advantages, such as:
- Useful, manageable information: the information is relevant for the role it is intended for. The KPI’s always show performance that can be managed / improved by the IT organisation.
- Independent of reporting platform: the structure of the metrics table is simple and well documented. You can easily create reports in your corporate reporting solution if necessary. An Excel-based dashboard is included in the solution.
- No need to write and maintain complex queries: the queries for calculating and storing the metrics are designed and maintained by InfraVision. All you have to do is use the information that is available.
- Performance: the reports are generated from a single, heavily indexed table. Running reports will no longer slow down your BMC Service Desk Express environment.
- You are able to define your own KPI’s by using the predefined set of metrics. We store each metric with many breakdown parameters so the information you are looking for will probably already be available.
