Transcript newslides - Ohio County Schools

Chapter 7:
Business Skills for Technical
Professionals
A Guide to Customer Service Skills for the Help
Desk Professional
Second Edition
Objectives
• Understand how to acquire and use business skills in
the workplace
• Understand how to use business skills to identify and
justify improvement opportunities
• Develop presentation skills you can use to
communicate
• Learn advanced business skills such as managing
projects, conducting a cost benefit analysis, and
calculating return on investment (ROI)
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Business Skills for
Technical Professionals
• Technical professionals must acquire
business skill such as:
– The ability to understand and speak the
language of business
– The ability to analyze business
problems and identify improvement
opportunities
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Acquiring and Using Business Skills
in the Workplace
Business skills are useful and increasingly
required:
1. The business world is extremely competitive
2. Trends such as automation and outsourcing
mean that companies have fewer job positions
People who have a mix of skills—including
business, technical, soft, and self-management
skills—create the greatest opportunities for
themselves
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Acquiring and Using Business Skills
in the Workplace (continued)
• Some business skills are particularly
relevant to technical professionals and
transferable to other professions
• Some skills are acquired by observing and
inquiring about the activities that occur
where you work
• Business skills will grow with education
and experience
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Acquiring and Using Business Skills
in the Workplace (continued)
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Acquiring and Using Business Skills
in the Workplace (continued)
• Customer service
– Skills such as understanding the importance of meeting
customers’ needs and knowing how to manage their
expectations are imperative
• Process management
– The need for people who have experience developing,
documenting, and continuously improving processes is
increasing
• Listening and communication
– Two of the most basic skills needed in today’s fast-paced
business world
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Acquiring and Using Business Skills
in the Workplace (continued)
• Writing
– An increasingly important business skill when using e-mail
and instant messenger
• Problem-solving
– Imperative skill in the support industry and highly valued
• Financial management
– The need for these skills increases as technical professionals
advance to team leader or supervisory positions
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Acquiring and Using Business Skills
in the Workplace (continued)
• Making presentations
– Presentations are an accepted and effective way to
communicate information and gain acceptance for ideas
• Project management
– An understanding of concepts makes it possible for a person
to be effective whether he or she is a member of a project team
or responsible for planning and managing a project
• Conflict management
– Important when working in a team setting
– An excellent life skill that can be improved with practice
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Acquiring and Using Business Skills
in the Workplace (continued)
• Basic business skills can be learned on-the-job, through
self-study, or in the classroom
– Listening, communication, writing
• These and other skills are relatively universal and can be
used regardless of a person’s chosen profession
– Customer service, problem solving, project
management, conflict management, time management
• Skills such as financial management and human resources
management are also important and become even more
important as people advance in their careers
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Acquiring and Using Business Skills
in the Workplace (continued)
• An understanding of ethics is another increasingly
important business skill
• Ethics - The rules and standards that govern the conduct of
a person or group of people
• Ethical behavior is behavior that conforms to generally
accepted or stated principles of right and wrong
• The policies of a department or company dictate what is
right and wrong behavior and may vary from one
department or company to the next
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Acquiring and Using Business Skills
in the Workplace (continued)
•
The business skills required for a help desk job vary based on:
– The industry in which the company is engaged
– The job category
•
The specific skills a company requires are determined by the job
description
•
Most employers do not expect technical professionals to have
fully developed business skills when they first join the workforce
•
Some basic knowledge, such as service industry knowledge, and
a willingness to learn are viewed as a positive.
•
Some companies also desire industry knowledge, or business
skills that are unique to the industry or profession the help desk
supports
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Acquiring and Using Business Skills
in the Workplace (continued)
• Managers are increasingly requiring technical
professionals who want to advance in their
careers to hone and use business skills
• People applying for help desk management
positions are also expected to have more
advanced business skills and experience
• Developing and demonstrating business skills is
an effective way to differentiate yourself from the
competition and increase your opportunities
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Understanding and Speaking the
Language of Business
• The term business has many meanings and
encompasses a broad range of disciplines
• Business - A commercial enterprise or establishment
– Has profit as its chief aim
• The term may also be used to describe a person’s
occupation, work, or trade
• Nonprofit – A company established for charitable,
educational, or humanitarian purposes rather than for
making money; also known as not-for-profit
• The business skills required to work for nonprofit and
for-profit companies are similar
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Understanding and Speaking the
Language of Business (continued)
• Learn about your company (or a company where you
want to work)
– Its mission
– The industry
– Its competitors
• Study the words that are used to describe your
company, its mission, and its goals
• A “big picture” perspective will help you understand
why certain technologies or data are viewed as highly
important (strategic), or why certain projects are
viewed as essential to the business (mission critical)
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Understanding and Speaking the
Language of Business (continued)
• IT and business alignment – A process aimed at
ensuring that information technologies support
corporate goals and objectives
• Learning about your business will help you:
– determine ways technology can help your
customers achieve their goals
– Help business people understand available technologies
and how best to use them
– Ensure that new technologies offer real value to the
business
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Using Business Skills to Identify and
Justify Improvement Opportunities
• Help Desk professionals have a unique
opportunity to support the goals of
business by working to:
– Eliminate or minimize the impact of
business problems
– Identify improvement opportunities
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Using Data to Identify and Quantify
Improvement Opportunities
• Help desk tools and technologies are useless if
they do not provide and produce meaningful
information
• People working in a help desk must understand
clearly that the data they collect on a daily basis
becomes information
• This information is used to:
–
–
–
–
Track outstanding problems and requests
Measure analysts personal performance
Measure the overall performance of the help desk
Measure customer satisfaction with the company
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Using Data to Identify and Quantify
Improvement Opportunities (continued)
• Help desks divide information into various data
categories
• Data categories tend to be similar from help desk
to help desk because most help desks perform
similar processes
• Each help desk captures additional data
categories specific to its business or industry
• Data are typically captured through fields in the
help desk’s incident tracking and problem
management system
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Using Data to Identify and Quantify
Improvement Opportunities (continued)
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Using Data to Identify and Quantify
Improvement Opportunities (continued)
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Using Data to Identify and Quantify
Improvement Opportunities (continued)
• Customer Data - Identifying details about a customer,
including the customer’s name, telephone number, email address, department or company name, address
or location, customer number, and employee number
or user ID
• All of the fields that describe a single customer are
stored in a customer record
• Customer records are linked to problem records by a
unique key field
• Used to quickly identify a customer contacting the
help desk and to research a customer’s history of
problems
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Using Data to Identify and Quantify
Improvement Opportunities (continued)
• Problem Data - The details of a single problem
including the problem category (such as hardware or
software), affected component or system (such as a
printer or a monitor), symptom, date and time problem
occurred, date and time problem was logged, analyst
who logged problem, problem owner, description, and
severity
• All of the fields that describe a single problem are
stored in a problem record
• Used to research and track trends or to search the
knowledge base for solutions
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Using Data to Identify and Quantify
Improvement Opportunities (continued)
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Using Data to Identify and Quantify
Improvement Opportunities (continued)
• Status Data - Details about a problem that are used to
track problems not resolved at level one including
problem status (such as assigned, awaiting parts,
resolved, closed), the person or group assigned, date
and time assigned, and priority
• Stored in fields in the problem record
• Record is continuously updated as new data becomes
available
• Used to report on the status of outstanding problems
and to monitor SLA attainment
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Using Data to Identify and Quantify
Improvement Opportunities (continued)
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Using Data to Identify and Quantify
Improvement Opportunities (continued)
• Resolution data – Details about how a problem was
resolved including the person or group who resolved
the problem, resolution description, date and time
resolved, customer satisfaction indicator, date and
time closed, and root cause
• Stored in fields in the problem record
• Record is continuously updated as new data becomes
available
• Used to track service level compliance and perform
root cause analysis
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Using Data to Identify and Quantify
Improvement Opportunities (continued)
• Forward-thinking companies use data to spot trends
and discover the root cause of problems
• People working in a help desk have the opportunity to
continuously capture the data and information needed
to determine customers’ wants and needs
• Successful help desks seize this opportunity by
designing and implementing processes and
technologies that enable them to capture and use
customer information efficiently
• People interested in a support-industry career must
learn how to interpret data, share and add value to
information
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Performing Trend and
Root Cause Analysis
Performing Trend Analysis:
• Trend analysis - A methodical way of
determining and, when possible, forecasting
service trends
• Trends can be positive or negative
• Trend reports provide help desk management
and staff with the information needed to
formulate improvement plans and
communicate achievements
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Performing Trend and
Root Cause Analysis (continued)
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Performing Trend and
Root Cause Analysis (continued)
• Trend analysis involves looking at a set of
data and viewing it from different angles in an
effort to identify a trend
• Trend reports make it possible to:
– Determine the most common and frequently
occurring problems
– Identify anomalies
• Anomaly - A deviation or departure from the
average or the norm
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Performing Trend and
Root Cause Analysis (continued)
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Performing Trend and
Root Cause Analysis (continued)
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Performing Trend and
Root Cause Analysis (continued)
Performing Root Cause Analysis:
• Used to determine why problems are
occurring so the company can take steps to
prevent problems in the future
• Root cause analysis - A methodical way of
determining the root cause of problems
• Root cause - The most basic reason for an
undesirable condition or problem, which, if
eliminated or corrected, would prevent the
problem from existing or occurring
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Performing Trend and
Root Cause Analysis (continued)
• Determining the root cause:
– Takes time
– Requires analysts to look beyond the obvious and seek
an answer to the question, “Why?”
• Root cause is:
– Captured in a data field when problems are closed
– Supplied by the person who identified the solution
• Root cause is not always related specifically to
hardware products or software systems
• It is often related to how people are implementing or
using technology
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Performing Trend and
Root Cause Analysis (continued)
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Performing Trend and
Root Cause Analysis (continued)
• Many companies subscribe to the “80/20 rule”
• Relative to problem management, the 80/20 rule
means that 20% of the defects or failures that occur
cause 80% of the problems
• By identifying and eliminating the root cause of the
most common defects or failures, companies can:
– Considerably reduce the number of recurring problems
– Focus on eliminating the problems that are the most
costly to the organization and that have the greatest
impact on their customers
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Performing Trend and
Root Cause Analysis (continued)
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Performing Trend and
Root Cause Analysis (continued)
• Trend and root cause analysis work hand-in-hand
• They can be used reactively or proactively
• Root cause analysis is the more difficult of the two
disciplines
• Companies that fail to capture and then eliminate root
cause put themselves at risk for the problem to
happen again
• The fact that there is a solution in the knowledge base
does not make it okay for a problem to recur
• Ultimately, customers would prefer that problems be
prevented
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Communicating the Financial
Benefits of Improvements
• Help desk managers are under pressure to:
– Demonstrate the value of help desk services
– Justify the funds and resources the team needs to deliver
those services
• Members of the help desk team must learn to:
– Justify and quantify the benefits of their ideas in financial
terms
• Budget - The total sum of money allocated for a particular
purpose (such as a project) or period of time (such as a
year)
• Good budgeting ensures that the money does not run out
before the goal is reached or the period ends
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Communicating the Financial
Benefits of Improvements (continued)
• To justify improvement initiatives:
– State the expected benefits in the form of goals
– Express those goals as metrics
• Metrics typically assess characteristics such as:
–
–
–
–
–
–
Cost
Customer satisfaction
Efficiency
Effectiveness
Employee satisfaction
Quality
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Communicating the Financial
Benefits of Improvements (continued)
• Some characteristics are tangible, or capable of
being measured precisely
– Cost, efficiency
• Other characteristics are intangible, or more
difficult to measure precisely
– Customer satisfaction, employee satisfaction,
quality
• Intangible characteristics reflect perception and
are therefore more subjective
• Both tangible and intangible goals are important
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Communicating the Financial
Benefits of Improvements (continued)
By establishing both tangible and intangible goals with goals
such as quality and customer satisfaction as primary
objectives, companies can achieve a balanced, customeroriented result
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Communicating the Financial
Benefits of Improvements (continued)
Calculating a Labor Savings:
• “Time is money” - Labor often represents a
company’s single greatest expense
• Labor and benefits usually represent 60% to 80%
of a help desk’s overall costs
• Saving time, will in turn, save money
• To calculate an hourly rate:
$40,000 / 2,080 = $19
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Communicating the Financial
Benefits of Improvements (continued)
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Communicating the Financial
Benefits of Improvements (continued)
• When calculating savings, accurate data are important
• When actual data are not available, industry standard data
(such as hourly rate) can be useful
• Cost per contact is a financial measure frequently used in
the support industry
• Cost per contact - The total cost of operating a help desk
for a given time period (including salaries, benefits,
facilities, and equipment) divided by the total number of
contacts (such as calls, e-mails, faxes, and Web requests)
received during that period
• Contact volume - The total number of contacts received
during a given period of time
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Communicating the Financial
Benefits of Improvements (continued)
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Communicating the Financial
Benefits of Improvements (continued)
• Cost per contact can be used to:
– Benchmark a help desk’s services against other
help desks or the industry average
– Compare the cost of operating a help desk to a
service agency (outsourcer)
• Benchmarking - The process of comparing the
help desk’s performance metrics and practices to
those of another help desk in an effort to identify
improvement opportunities
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Using Presentations to Communicate
• Presentations are an important form of communication in
today’s business world
• They are used daily to:
– Convey information
– Promote the benefits of ideas and opportunities
– Win approval for ideas and opportunities
• For professionals, presentations are an important way to
build credibility
• The ability to make presentations can greatly influence a
person’s standing in his or her company, community, and
industry
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Using Presentations
to Communicate (continued)
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Using Presentations
to Communicate (continued)
• The setting in which presentations are made may vary
• Audience members are being brought together for a
reason
– Their approval is needed to move forward on a
project
– Their input is needed to formulate an action plan
– You need to make them aware of something or
teach them something
• There is a reason you are making the presentation
You are the expert!
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Using Presentations
to Communicate (continued)
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Using Presentations
to Communicate (continued)
Step 1. State Your Objective:
• A clearly stated objective:
– Determines whether a presentation is needed
– Focuses your thoughts and the thoughts of your audience
• A single sentence should be all you need to state your
objective
Step 2. Know Your Audience:
•
•
•
•
This step greatly influences all future steps
Determine what is important to your audience members
Understand the background of your audience
When in doubt, ask
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Using Presentations
to Communicate (continued)
Step 3. Design the Presentation:
• Create an outline with an introduction, body, and
closing
• Research your topic and collect facts that
support your objective
• Develop visual aids that support and
communicate your ideas
– Visual aids should not be your presentation
• Anticipate the questions your audience may ask
and use visual aids to answer those questions
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Using Presentations
to Communicate (continued)
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Using Presentations
to Communicate (continued)
Step 4. Rehearse the Presentation:
• Make sure that you can cover your material in the time
allotted
• Make sure that you leave time for questions
• Rehearsing is different than memorizing
• Memorize your introduction and closing
– They are critical to setting audience expectations
• Memorize only the key points you want to make during the
body of your presentation
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Using Presentations
to Communicate (continued)
Step 5. Deliver the Presentation:
• Be prepared, confident, and enthusiastic
• When time is a constraint, politely ask your
audience at the start of the presentation to hold
their questions until the end
• If you run out of time for questions at the end, let
the audience know that you will be happy to
answer their questions offline
• When possible, try to handle questions when
asked
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Using Presentations
to Communicate (continued)
Step 6. Learn from the Experience:
• Most mistakes made when making presentations are the
result of overlooking one of the steps previously discussed
• Take time after each presentation to evaluate your
performance and determine how you can improve
• If evaluations are provided, view the feedback you receive
as constructive
• Presentation skills are essential if you want to educate,
inform, obtain information from, build consensus with, and
communicate with others
• The more often you present and the more varied the
setting, subject matter, and audience are, the more
comfortable you become
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Advance Business Skills
for Technical Professionals
• Advanced business skills are critical skills for more senior
technical professionals
– Managing projects
– Conducting a cost benefit analysis
– Calculating ROI
• The need for these skills may vary from company to
company
• Understanding of these concepts will enable you to
make the most of learning and growth opportunities
• To excel at advanced business skills, technical
professionals require a blend of formal training and
experience
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Managing Projects
• People in a help desk are continuously exposed to projects
• Project - A distinct unit of work aimed at producing a
specific result or end product
• Projects can be small or quite large
• Help desk professionals may:
– Complete projects
– Support the end product of a project
– Initiate projects
• Technical professionals must understand:
– Project management concepts and tools
– The roles that people play within a project
– How to work successfully on a project team
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Managing Projects (continued)
• Project management - The process of planning and
managing a project
• All projects, regardless of their size, require some planning
and have the following:
–
–
–
–
–
A clearly defined scope
Well-defined deliverables
Clearly defined acceptance criteria
An established start date
An established end point
• Scope - A general description of the work to be done
• Acceptance criteria - The conditions that must be met
before the project deliverables are accepted
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Managing Projects (continued)
• For small projects, the project scope may be a request
• For larger projects, the project scope is typically defined by
a project planning committee made up of project
stakeholders
• Project stakeholder - A person or group who is involved in
or may be affected by project activities
• Project scope includes:
–
–
–
–
–
Project overview
Project deliverables
Project objectives
Considerations and concerns
Change control plan
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Managing Projects (continued)
• Project scope must be approved by the project sponsor
• Project sponsor - The person who has ultimate authority
over the project
– Responsible for ensuring that the project is aligned with the
organization's business goals
– Not typically involved in day-to-day activities
• Project manager - The person who leads the project team
and is assigned the authority and responsibility for
overseeing the project and meeting the project’s objectives
• The project manager is selected after the project scope is
defined and approved
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Managing Projects (continued)
• Project manager responsibilities include:
– Developing and maintaining a project plan
– Directing project activities
– Creating project status reports
– Preparing and participating in project reviews
– Resolving project plan deviations
– Resolving and escalating, if necessary, issues that
pertain to the project to management
– Administering project change control
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Managing Projects (continued)
• Project plan - A summary document that describes the
project, its objectives, and how the objectives are to be
achieved
– For smaller projects, may consist of scheduling a request and
documenting a simple To Do list
– For larger projects, a more formal approach is taken
• Work breakdown structure - A task oriented breakdown of
the work to be done. Used to:
– Logically arrange the tasks to be completed
– Define milestones
– Assign resources to tasks, create schedules, estimate costs
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Managing Projects (continued)
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Managing Projects (continued)
• A critical project manager responsibility is communicating
on a regular basis with all interested parties
• Project status reports typically include the following:
–
–
–
–
–
Accomplishments this period
Accomplishments planned next period
Resources required next period
Considerations and concerns
An updated project plan
• Ongoing communication—before, during, and after the
project—is critical to a project’s success
• Failing to communicate will almost always result in
mismanaged expectations and dissatisfaction
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Managing Projects (continued)
• Technical professionals can learn about project
management by:
– Observing how projects are run
– Trying to understand the keys to project management success
– Being an active participant when working on a project team
• If you are interested in being a project manager:
–
–
–
–
Take advantage of training that is offered where you work
Seek out self-study opportunities
Ask a seasoned project manager to serve as your mentor
Serve as a deputy, or assistant, to another project manager
• With a better understanding of projects you can begin
initiating projects aimed at implementing your ideas
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Conducting a Cost Benefit Analysis
• Cost benefit analysis – A technique that compares the
costs and benefits of two or more potential solutions
to determine an optimum solution
• A cost benefit analysis can be simple or quite
complex
• Because of the time and skill required, the cost of
performing a complex cost benefit analysis can be
considerable
• Companies typically offer guidelines that determine
the level of detail required
• Guidelines consider factors such as the size, cost,
and impact of the proposed solution
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Conducting a
Cost Benefit Analysis (continued)
• In its simplest form, a cost benefit analysis uses only
financial costs and financial benefits
• Financial costs may be:
– One time (nonrecurring)
– Ongoing (recurring)
• A more sophisticated approach to cost benefit analysis
attempts to place a financial value on intangible costs and
benefits
• Some companies assign a numeric value to intangible
benefits
• Intangible benefits are important and must be taken into
consideration
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Conducting a
Cost Benefit Analysis (continued)
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Conducting a
Cost Benefit Analysis (continued)
• The end result of a cost benefit analysis is the
identification of the best solution to a business
problem, given two or more proposed solutions
• It answers the questions:
– Which of the proposed solutions is the best solution?
– Is the proposed solution worth the cost?
• The key to whether a solution is worth the cost lies in
the goals of the organization
• Each company must decide what benefits (tangible
and intangible) are worth to their organization
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Calculating Return on Investment
• Return on investment (ROI) - A technique that measures the
total financial benefit derived from an investment—such as
a new technology project—and then compares it with the
total cost of the project
ROI = Net Benefits / Project Investment
• A simple ROI uses only financial costs and benefits
• Calculating ROI can be much more complex as benefits can
also be intangible
• Intangible benefits are important and must be taken into
consideration
• ROI typically states the return on investment in percentage
terms.
ROI% = Net Benefits / Project Investment X 100
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Calculating Return on
Investment (continued)
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Calculating Return on
Investment (continued)
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Calculating Return on
Investment (continued)
• Some companies determine the time it takes to recover an
investment when calculating ROI
• Payback period - The period of time over which the benefits
of an investment are received
Payback Period = Project Investment / Net Benefits X 12 Months
• Some companies establish guidelines relative to the use of
payback period when making purchasing decisions
– If the payback period is less than six months, purchase the
product immediately
– If the payback period is greater than six months, consider the
purchase in light of other budget expenditures
– If the payback period is greater than one year, consider the
purchase in a future budget
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Calculating Return on
Investment (continued)
• ROI can be a complex and time-consuming calculation and
is therefore typically reserved for larger technology
investments
• In its simplest form, however, ROI is a useful way to
communicate the worth of even a small investment
• ROI answers the questions:
– What do I get back (in return) for the money I am being asked
to spend (invest)?
– Is the return worth the investment?
• Calculating ROI becomes easier as you develop the skills
needed to identify and communicate costs and benefits in
financial terms
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Chapter Summary
• Whether a person works for a small or large corporation,
some business skills are useful and increasingly required
• Basic business skills can be learned on-the-job, through
self-study, or in the classroom
– Listening, communicating, writing
• These and other skills are relatively universal and can be
used regardless of a person’s chosen profession
– Customer service, process management, problem solving,
project management, conflict management, time management
• Skills such as financial management and human resource
management are also important and become more
important as people advance in their careers
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Chapter Summary (continued)
• People working in a help desk hear day-in and day-out
from customers who are having trouble using
technology
• They have a unique opportunity to support the goals
of business by using what they learn to:
– Eliminate or minimize the impact of problems
– Identify improvement opportunities
• To do this, technical professionals must learn to use:
– Data to identify and quantify improvement opportunities
– Techniques such as trend and root cause analysis
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Chapter Summary (continued)
• Presentations are an important form of
communication in today’s business world
• They are inevitable if you want to communicate your
ideas and, more importantly, have those ideas
accepted and acted upon
• Making a presentation is not an exact science, but
there are proven steps that can be taken to ensure
success
• The more often you present and the more varied the
setting, subject matter, and audience, the more
comfortable you will be
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Chapter Summary (continued)
• Advanced business skills are increasingly critical skills for
more senior technical professionals
– Managing projects
– Conducting a cost benefit analysis
– Calculating return on investment (ROI)
• The need for these skills may vary from company to
company
• A basic understanding of these concepts will enable you to
make the most of learning and growth opportunities
• To acquire these skills, some study, even self-study, is
needed along with experience
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Chapter Summary (continued)
• The business world has changed and technical
professionals must change as well
• By acquiring and using business skills, technical
professionals can:
– Expand their opportunities
– Have more control over their career
• Rather than always being told what to do and how to
do it, technical professionals with business skills can:
– Propose new and better solutions
– Participate fully in bringing their ideas to life
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