Blackmores ISO Consultancy Service: The creators of isology®

Last week we gave you an introduction to ISO 20000, the Service Management Standard. As a refresher, the aim of the standard is to provide a framework for an effective end-to-end service management system which encompasses the entire lifecycle of a service from concept and design, through to service removal and end-of-life.

It’s best adopted by businesses who provide a service, particularly those that operate a help / service desk system.

For some this may still seem a bit nebulous, especially for those that may not be familiar with Service Management terminology. To help demystify this Standard, we’ve brought Steve back to take a deeper dive into what makes this Standard unique.

Join Steve Mason and Mel in this weeks’ episode as they explore Clauses 7 and 8 of ISO 20000 in more detail, and how certain aspects can apply to any business.   

You’ll learn

• What is ISO 20000?
• What is included in Clause 8 of ISO 20000?
• How can ISO 20000 apply to any business?

Resources

• isologyhub
• ISO 20000

In this episode, we talk about:

[00:43] What is ISO 20000? Go back and listen to our previous episode to learn what ISO 20000 is, a brief overview of the key clauses and the benefits of adopting the Service Management Standard.  

[02:00]  A recap of the main requirements of the Standard:

• 4.0 Context of the Organisation
• 5.0 Leadership
• 6.0 Planning
• 7.0 Support of Service Management System

• 8.0 Operation of the Service Management System
• 9.0 Performance Evaluation
• 10.0 Improvement

Clauses 7 and 8 are where the main differences lie between this Standard and others. It includes requirements for aspects such as:

• Service Portfolio
• Relationship Agreements
• Supply and Demand
• Service Design and Transition
• Resolution and Fulfilment

[03:15] Similarities with other ISO Standards – Ultimately, this standard in terms of the structure, it looks like any other ISO standard, i.e. we’ve got context of the organisation, leadership, Planning, performance Evaluation and improvement. These will be familiar if you’ve worked with ISO 9001, ISO 14001 or ISO 27001.

 [04:05] Clause 7 –  Support of Service Management System: This is where we’re really looking at the competency awareness communications and documented information required by the standard. In 7.5 there is a really useful list of all the documented information that’s required in the management system – one that we wish was included in every ISO Standard!

That required documented information doesn’t have to be in writing, it could be on computer or established system.

Another key aspect of Clause 7 is Knowledge – this is about ensuring all knowledge is documented and sharable and not just stuck in people’s heads. For Service Management, this may involve the creation of a customer portfolio where you can record any incidents that occur during a service call, and how you dealt with it ect.

Competence is also another major component – Make sure people are competent to do their job, i.e. they’ve been trained to do things properly and effectively.

[06:40] Different ways of knowledge sharing – Knowledge sharing doesn’t just have to be written down – it could be done via a recorded video. We use Loom a lot at Blackmores to get things across quickly.  

There are also a number of service desk tools available that can help you put together process flow diagrams to make things easier to understand.

[08:15] Clause 8 – Operation of the Service Management System: Before you do any sort of service management, you need to plan it properly – otherwise, if you fail to plan, you’ll plan to fail.

First you need to understand what resources you have, what activities there are in the service management to deliver that service to the customer and ensure that they’re coordinated.

A top tip from Steve: Separate resources into five groups: people, technology, information, finance and service partners.

[09:55] Planning your Service – Now you understand what you’re trying to deliver, it’s time to plan your service.

First you want to take a look at the flow of the service through the organisation. Which departments does it go into? Is there good connection between departments? Can you ensure that a customer’s order is going to stay the same through the whole process, you wouldn’t want possibilities for miscommunication to occur.

We’d recommend drawing up a flow diagram for this process – just so you can clearly see who is doing and communicating what at any stage.

[11:20] Getting Operations in order – once you understand what the process is, you need to begin to control and involve the interested parties within the life cycle of your process.

This isn’t just the customer; this also includes confirming what services you’re actually delivering – as you’ll be looking to improve these services as time goes on.

You also need to consider the whole service life cycle. This includes things like if a customer wants to move to a different service – how would you deal with that? Have you got a process in place to handle the return of customer assets if they disengage from your services?

[12:30] Service Level Agreements: It’s a good idea to establish Service Level Agreements and Delivery Level Agreements early on. This is so you typically know what you are going to be delivering to a customer and how quickly can you deliver it and ensure the whole process is sustainable as well.

This will also clarify key accountabilities for everyone involved with delivering a specific service.

Clearly defined services – Finally, it also provides a clearly defined service for Salespeople. This avoids the situation where they simply sell what they think sounds good but isn’t backed up by any resources to actually deliver the service they sold.

You need to have a clear strategy that sales can use and go out and sell – this may be referred to as a Service Catalogue.

[15:18] A Service Catalogue in action –  In Blackmores case, our Service Catalogue is online on our website. We have all the ISO Standards we can assist with listed, in addition to a description of how we can help companies implement an applicable Management System.

You don’t have to have all your prices listed out at that stage, that can come later when you have a full view of the customer requirements and agreements are made.

[18:20] Asset Management –  In 8.2 there is a consideration for Asset Management on your side. You should take care of any assets relating to the customer, where it’s stored and how it’s being looked after.

Standards such as ISO 27001 (Information Security) and ISO 55001 (Asset Management) already have some considerations for this.

[19:05] Configuration Management –  Configuration management is understanding how the parts of the service fit, so you don’t disassociate them from each other.

The Standard asks you to identify what’s known as CIS, these are configuration items, and these are all the things that you need to deliver your service. We’ll dig more into this aspect in future content – so keep an eye out!

[20:40] A final top tip from Steve:  Collaboration and communication that involves leadership. If you just devolve it down to parties doing the work and just get them to work in silo, it will not work for you. It’s a collaborative standard – both inside and outside of the business.

[21:20] Resources available –  We’ve got a number of ISO 20000 related resources available on the islogyhub – contact us to learn more!  

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Often seen as the poor cousin to ISO 9001, ISO 20000 Service Management largely gets ignored in favour of the more popular Quality Management Standard.

To be fair, it’s title may have done it a disservice in the past. Being known as the IT Service Management Standard prior to 2018, it was often perceived as only applicable to IT service providers, when in actuality it could be adopted by any business!

So, what is ISO 20000 exactly? The aim of the standard is to provide a framework for an effective end-to-end service management system which encompasses the entire lifecycle of a service from concept and design, through to service removal and end-of-life.

It’s best adopted by businesses who provide a service, particularly those that operate a help / service desk system.

In this weeks’ episode, Steve Mason joins Mel to discuss what ISO 20000 is, who can use and benefit from the Standard and how it fits in with other more widely adopted ISO Standards.

You’ll learn

• What is ISO 20000?
• Who is ISO 20000 designed for?
• What are the benefits of ISO 20000?
• A brief overview of the Standard
• How ISO 20000 integrates with other ISO Standards

Resources

• isologyhub
• ISO 20000

In this episode, we talk about:

[00:50] Why are we talking about this Standard? We’ve had a lot of interest in a few of our informative videos available on YouTube over the past year, with ISO 20000 content constantly ranking in our top 5 most watched videos every month.

[01:00]  ISO 20000-1 was previously known as the ‘IT Service Management Standard’, but since it’s most recent update in 2018, it’s simply known as the ‘Service Management Standard’ now.

[03:10] Why is ISO 20000 one of Steve’s favourite Standards? – It takes some of the aspects of quality a step further and actually gives you much clearer detail on how you can improve your management systems. So, if you’ve got a Service Management System in any way, shape or form, this is the standard to go.

It’s also one of the easiest standards to audit because there’s some very simple questions to ask that can highlight some very obvious weaknesses. This can lead to significant improvement when compared to the likes of ISO 9001.

[04:05] What Is ISO 20000? –  ISO20000-1:2018 is a Service Management standard which has evolved from the IT industry and the ITIL Framework for Service Management; but today it can be used in all types of Service Industries particularly where there is a need for a Help Desk / Service Desk system.

Some may ask, isn’t this what ISO 9001 can do? In short, no. ISO 9001 will give you a bare framework of how to create a Quality Management System, but it won’t give you the fundamental details of how to improve that Service Management System, and that’s where ISO 20000 comes in.

[05:39] Who is ISO 20000 applicable to? – Any business that provides a service, but more specific examples include: IT Service provider, call centres, gas / electricity providers, retail ect.

[07:15] A high level overview of ISO 20000 – This Standard follows the Standard structure that many other ISO Standards follow. The first 3 clauses are all informative, starting from clause 4 we have:

• 4.0 Context of the Organisation
• 5.0 Leadership
• 6.0 Planning
• 7.0 Support of Service Management System
• 8.0 Operation of the Service Management System
• 9.0 Performance Evaluation
• 10.0 Improvement

Clause 8.0 is where ISO 20000 fills in the gaps for other Standards, as it covers topics such as:

• Service Portfolio
• Relationship and Agreement
• Supply and Demand
• Service Design, Build and Transition
• Resolution
• Service Assurance

[08:20] Familiar to some – Those in Service Management may recognise some of those terms, but may not use that exact wording. For example ‘relationships and agreements’ may be more commonly known as Service Level Agreements and Operating Level Agreements – which can be a business critical area for some.

[10:45] What are the benefits of ISO 20000? –  Improve the planning and introduction of services: This standard would help you understand what it is you need to do to introduce that new service, go through the planning, testing through a proper change management system and launch through a release and deployment management system.

SLA’s and OLA’s – Achieve Service Level Agreements (SLAs) and Operating Level Agreements (OLAs) will be achieved consistently month on month.

Reduce Stress – It will help to reduce employee stress as service request, incident and problem queues become manageable. Knowledge articles can be created to document incidents and solutions for future reference.

Improved quality of service through continual improvement gained from Incidents and Problem fixes resulting in both time and financial savings.

[12:30] ISO 20000 to the rescue –  Steve recounts an experience he had at a company that had an outstanding issue ticket queue of 800. With the introduction of elements of ISO 20000, they we able to reduce this ludicrous amount down to 30!

[14:05] A top recommendation –  We’d highly recommend that you consider doing a Gap Analysis against ISO 20000. Even if you have no plans to implement it, you can still benefit from the findings.

[14:40] Further resources –  You can purchase the Standard directly from the ISO website.

We also have a number of short courses covering specific clauses in ISO 20000, available in the isologyhub.

[15:55] How does ISO 20000 fit in with other ISO Standards?-  ISO20000-1:2018 has now been remodelled using the High Level Standard (HLS) framework so that clauses 4 to 7 and 9 to 10 can all be interconnected with only minor differences due to the nature of each standard.

Essentially, if you already have ISO9001:2015 or ISO27001:2013 most of the framework for ISO20000-1:2018 will have already been done; all that would be required is to address the service aspects in those six clause before tackling the main work in clause 8.

[18:20] Business Continuity –  ISO 20000 specifies a section on ‘service continuity management’ which can neatly slot in with ISO 22301 – the Standard for Business Continuity. While ISO 22301 focuses on the bigger picture, the ISO 20000 element focuses on how a service can continue for a customer during an incident or accident occurring.

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• Share the ISO Show on Twitter or Linkedin
• Leave an honest review on iTunes or Soundcloud. Your ratings and reviews really help and we read each one.

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How to build assurance into IT services

Not satisfied with just achieving certification to ISO 9001, this IT Services company is certified to

• Quality – ISO 9001
• Information Security – ISO 27001
• Service Management – ISO 20000
• Environmental Management – ISO 14001
• Secure shredding standards

As a Quality Manager with responsibility for looking after the Management System, Damian highlights in the ISO Show Podcast this week:-

• Benefits ISO 9001 – Some people struggle with the term ;Quality’ and prefer ‘Customer’ requirements
• How standards are used to run an IT business
• How to focus on what is important and not using standards as a ‘tick-box’ exercise
• How ISO Standards can be used as a great communication tool – making everything transparent and not hidden form employees.
• Approaches to Leadership commitment at XFM – How the ‘Big conversation’ provides areas for employees to focus on (objectives) and provide an update on changes.
• As an employer of 500 people, how an IT firm reduces its environmental impact through an Environmental Management System (ISO 14001).
• How the Service Management Team have embraced high standards by introducing ISO 20000 and how this compares with the other ISO’s
• Two top tips for overcoming challenges – Focus on communication and Top Management commitment.

To find out more about XMA, visit their Website.

If you would like to find out more about ISO 20000, we have a free webinar available to watch on demand.

We’d love to hear your views and comments about the ISO Show, here’s how:

• Share the ISO Show on twitter or Linkedin
• Leave an honest review on iTunes or Soundcloud. Your ratings and reviews really help and we read each one.
• Also available on Spotify and YouTube

This is the second of a series of blogs, relating to Clause 8 of the new ISO 20000-1:2018, designed to unpack the requirements of the standard and remove that air of mystery that can so often form around standards. This week we’ll continue to look at clause 8.2 of the standard.

Service catalogue management

The Service Catalogue is often undervalued in service management systems, but it has a critical part to play in communicating to customers exactly what you can provide, and, above all, it should be used by Sales when selling services to a customer. If anyone sells anything that is not in the catalogue it is not the responsibility of your organisation to bend your processes to meet that service agreement. First, Sales should go back to the customer and advise them that the service cannot be delivered and second, the proposal put forward by Sales could be passed through the Design, Build and Transition process to produce a new service.

Sometimes it helps to see that Service Catalogue as something like an ‘Argos’ catalogue where all the wares for sale are recorded, but the customer doesn’t have to buy everything; they may choose to just by Incident Management or Service Request Management, but the catalogue will show them clearly how they might develop that service in the future.

The catalogue does not have to have the service prices printed in it as this will be part of the Sales discussion. One way of making the catalogue available to all interested parties is to put in on the company website or in a ‘customers only’ area of the website.

Asset management

Don’t look at Asset Management as purely being related to customer assets as the standard clearly states that ‘the organization shall ensure that assets used to deliver services are managed…’ So, a good asset management system can help here (if you are certified to ISO55001, much of the work will have been completed). What are the assets that should be considered?

–              Service Desk tools (Service Now etc)

–              Vehicles to get engineers and equipment to a customer site

–              Spares

–              IT equipment

–              Staff

This isn’t by any means an exhaustive list but just listing 4 items can show how broad this small clause can be. But don’t run away with the idea that you need to create a new job role to manage assets, instead look for where these are managed naturally in the business; staff by HR; Vehicles by facilities; Service Desk tools and IT equipment by the IT department; Spares by Procurement and Logistics. All these teams might be providing reports to the Service Delivery Manager/Director about the availability of the assets in their control.

Configuration management

Focus on Customer Assets takes place here. First, we need to understand what is meant by a Configuration Item (CI) – a CI is an asset that makes up part of the service.

The service itself could be a Configuration Item and all the assets used to deliver that service could all be classed as configuration items; but the main point of configuration management is to ensure that your organisation only services equipment under contract.

For every service established it is key to understand the exact equipment to be serviced; this can be determined through Model Numbers, Serial Numbers and or Asset Numbers (see below). This will enable the Service Desk staff to know what equipment is under contract and which equipment should be subject to a Service Charge. Without this you will end up servicing equipment that is not under contract

The standard is quite specific about what information should be recorded for each Configuration Item:

–              Unique identification (serial number, asset number)

–              Type of CI (the item or model number)

–              Description of the CI (detailed description of the item)

–              Relationship with other CIs (does this CI have any dependencies on or for other items; if changes are made will other CIs be affected?)

–              Status (is the CI still live or obsoleted in the service contract).

A configuration management list will be produced for each customer, but it is important that the list is reviewed at planned intervals (add this to the audit schedule) and audited to ensure that changes to the configuration estate have been captured. It is useful to ensure that a step in the Change Management process includes a review of the customer’s configuration list.

Need assistance with ISO 20000-1? We’d be happy to help, simply contact us at: enquiries@blackmoresuk.com

This is the first of a series of blogs, relating to Clause 8 of the new ISO 20000-1:2018, designed to unpack the requirements of the standard and remove that air of mystery that can so often form around standards.

8.1 Operational Planning and Control

Clause 8.1 of the standard relates to Operational planning and control. At first glance, it appears to be a copy of the requirements of ISO 9001:2015, but further reading shows that it is different.

If you are setting up your Service Management System in the order that the standard has been written, you will have arrived at clause 8 of the standard with risks, opportunities and objectives that need to be considered when establishing the Service Management System. Without this knowledge to hand you could develop and management system that does not address these risks and opportunities or enables the setting objectives.

The standard requires us to ‘establish performance criteria for the processes based on requirements’ or, in other words, what performance measures are needed to determine the effectiveness of processes in the service management system. These might include, performance against targets; numbers of incidents and problems; lost and gained services; volumes against Supply and Demand; Security breaches; customer satisfaction and complaints… plus much more. These measures must be appropriate to each individual business; don’t measure and monitor things that do not bring service improvement or customer satisfaction.

Once you understand the measurement criteria you can begin to build the Service Management system to meet these requirements; ‘implementing control of the processes in accordance with established performance criteria’, performance criteria communicated through SLAs, OLAs and KPIs.

A good management system doesn’t stop there as it will have determined what documented information needs to be kept, to demonstrate achievement of measures and compliance to the standard.

The control of planned changes and the review of the consequences of unintended changes leaves many with a challenge. We all understand planned changes, especially if we have an effective Change Management Process in place which will naturally control planned changes. However, the consequences of unintended change are a little vaguer, probably because it covers a broad subject; so, let’s unpack this further.

Unintended change might result from process creep where a process has been developed and moved away from its agreed path, without consultation with other departments that might be affected, and the consequence is the unintended change brought upon other processes which rely on the initial process that has been changed.

Other areas where the consequences of unintended change may be found are related to impacts of Incidents; Problems and Non-conformities where the errors have repercussions that are either unexpected or unintended and need further attention.

Another example in relation to this standard is ‘service creep’ where items of equipment owned by a customer and outside the contracted service agreement are swallowed up in the service contract because of poor asset management and configuration management, and you are effectively end up servicing equipment for free.

If these types of things occur it is important that the actions are investigated through to the root cause level to prevent their recurrence.

The final line ins 8.1 is about outsourced processes – one line that is very important to ensure compliance to the standard. In this standard, if any process is outsourced to a third party the organisation has a responsibility to ensure that the outsourced process is effective through setting appropriate SLAs or OLAs; and agreed service review meetings should be set up.

By implementing the rest of clause 8 of this standard then compliance to 8.1 will be achieved naturally.

If you would like to learn more about what Blackmores has to offer – contact us today!

ISO20000-1:2018 – International Standard’s best-kept secret.

The ISO 20000-1 IT service management standard is often overlooked by organisations and has become the ‘best kept secret’

in the world of management system certification. This is now set to change with ISO20000-1:2018 being welcomed into the fold of the High-Level Standard (HLS) framework.

Whether your service is IT, Transport, providing Health-Related Day Care services, or any kind if Service Management that involves service planning and helpdesk activities, ISO20000-1 is the ideal tool for helping your organisation to establish the systems and processes necessary for achieving improved service planning and implementation, cost-effective delivery of service and customer satisfaction through continual improvement. Furthermore, ISO20000-1 lends itself to enhancing other standards such as ISO9001:2015; ISO27001:2013 and can be supported by ISO22301:2012.

This webinar was held on the 15th of November and covers the following:-

• What is ISO 20000-1:2018?
• Who should implement ISO20000-1?
• What’s the difference between the 2011 and 2018 standards?
• What are the benefits of ISO 20000-1:2018?
• How ISO20000-1:2018 can enhance existing ISO certifications
• How Blackmores can help you to achieve ISO 20000-1 certification

Need assistance with ISO 20000-1? Contact us on: enquiries@blackmoresuk.com