Published on the 11/06/2015 | Written by Donovan Jackson
With IT service management automating a substantial proportion of the processes which move incidents to resolution, there is still a gap which opens up between the moment something goes wrong and the time taken to find the right person to fix it…
The problem with one way communication is that there’s no sure way of knowing if the target has received and acted on the message. This familiar problem may be annoying when texting your partner about work drinks, but it becomes costly when the message recipient has to perform a business critical remedial action.
That’s according to David Wall who looks after APAC and Japan at xMatters. Speaking with iStart at the recent CIO Summit in Auckland, he explained that most break/fix processes are largely automated, with a notification from a user kicking off a process designed to restore order. “However, where that falls short is that the communication loop is left open ended. When notification of a problem is issued to the support personnel who can set it right, those personnel can’t easily acknowledge receipt of the message or confirm that they are addressing the issue.”
Depending on the time at which an incident occurs – Murphy’s Law (or more properly, Finagle’s Corollary to Murphy’s Law) has it that things go wrong at exactly the worst possible time – the way in which service personnel can be contacted should also differ. “Personas change throughout the day, from waking up in the morning and considering what’s ahead for the day, to driving to work, to being at work, to being back at home. Depending on the persona at any given time, the best way to make contact changes, too,” said Wall.
It may sound like small potatoes, but the gap between a problem occurring and getting the right person on to it can add up to significant time or dollar costs. “By enabling two-way communication, you reach the right people by their preferred means depending on their persona for any given time of day – telephone call, text message, email, some people still even use fax – and reduce time to repair,” he said.
Wall pointed out that time savings of minutes per service call quickly add up. Furthermore, he said time critical events can incur costs of thousands of dollars per minute.
The company plays in a small, but well defined niche: Wall said xMatters integrates with over 200 IT service management software products, improving response times for sensitive events. He added, however, that it is not only in IT service management that the gap exists, but in other contexts and industries where a feedback loop can improve communication effectiveness.
With an office in Melbourne, xMatters has some 50 clients in Australia and is in the process of expanding its reach to New Zealand. Wall said it has its first local customer, with a local university making use of its software.
