Helping Users Help Themselves - Wherever They Are

Well – the pandemic is still very much at large, along with the impacts on life, the universe and everything.

And so, the new normal becomes the normal normal as the old normal doesn’t exist any longer… Or something like that. Regardless, geo-dispersed workforces were already becoming simply “the norm” in the IT sphere, so logically this has expanded to all forms of industry, where you don’t have to physically operate a gizmo locally but can be anywhere in the connected world. Admittedly, it would never work for boxing.

All of which makes the recent work I’ve been doing back in one of my old focus areas of ITSM/service desk and remote support more relevant than ever. Having been “brung up” in IT (or DP) in the mid-80s supporting a geo-dispersed workforce (AKA many branch offices), supporting them remotely and occasionally working on a project from home (to escape endless support calls!), I think I’m well-seasoned in such conditions to be able to advise with a degree of qualification. Hell, some people are good at DIY, I know how to work out what’s wrong with a PC to printer connection from 300 miles away, but don’t ask me to put up shelves…

What, however, has been the most interesting take-away from the work I’ve been doing recently with a longstanding client, Richmond Systems, culminating in a report on its v15 software release wot can be found here: https://richmondsys.com/product-review  – is how the service management concept has now been fully extended out to become a company-wide methodology for supporting and assisting the workforce. In other words, departments such as HR, finance and facilities all have requirements for supporting the staff, with their own equivalent problems to “printer gone AWOL”. Richmond’s software is a great example of how “the artist formerly known as helpdesk” has moved on from simply being IT-centric to pro-actively supporting all aspects of the company and the needs and requirements of their staff, from their first day to their last. In this way, it is also adding a huge amount of value to the business; not so much an insurance policy as one that also assists with day-to-day business process and streamlining operations. Add in a self-service portal that is completely customisable, so users can self-help (DIY is alive and well after all!) via an interface that doesn’t drive them insane, and you have yet more value-add to the business.

As a vendor-related aside, it’s easy to see why – in an IT world that is ever more consolidation-based – the ITSM vendors will be the next category to get swallowed up by the big guys. It’s the next must-have acquisition – you heard it here first!