Intelligent CIO North America Issue 27 | Page 20

LATEST INTELLIGENCE

THE HANDBOOK OF ESSENTIAL IT SERVICE DESK METRICS

PRESENTED BY

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Introduction
People often say “ what gets measured gets improved ,” but they rarely say what , exactly , should be measured . With the recent developments in the reporting capabilities of IT help desk software , hundreds of KPIs and metrics can be measured and monitored .
But that doesn ’ t mean you should measure them all . Only the KPIs and metrics that are critical to your IT help desk need to be measured to improve service delivery .
This paper describes the eight KPIs that are critical to every IT help desk . These KPIs help meet basic IT help desk objectives such as business continuity , organizational productivity , and delivery of services on time and within budget . The KPIs are as follows :
1 . Lost business hours
Definition :
The number of hours the business is down because IT services are unavailable .
Goal :
Keep lost business hours to the bare minimum . Most IT teams track service availability to see the overall performance of their IT help desks .
But the pain of lost business isn ’ t always reflected in service availability levels , even when those levels are high . For instance , if service availability is at 99.9 percent , the company still loses more than eight hours per year . Tracking lost business hours clearly highlights the loss and its impact on business .
Case Study : No-fly time at Virgin Blue
In September 2010 , Virgin Blue faced what could be considered every airline ’ s worst nightmare . About 50,000 customers and 100 flights were grounded .
Four hundred more flights were delayed or rescheduled over the following days because the solidstate disk server infrastructure hosting Virgin Blue ’ s applications failed . This affected Virgin Blue ’ s online check-in and booking system .
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