At the end of March we’ll be heading to Orlando, the home of Disney World for the HDI Annual Conference (HDI 2014) taking place 1-4 April. There’s lots of things for us, and you, to get excited about when it comes to this event but there is one thing in particular that I’m personally really looking forward to, and that’s the “metrics and measurements” track.

For all of you reading this who are familiar with SysAid, you’ll know that this is a topic that we hold very close to our hearts. As far as we are aware, we are the only ITSM tools vendor who provides customer-generated performance benchmarks as part of its solution. For us, our IT benchmarking module is just as important as any of the standard service desk features. Benchmarking allows you to understand where you sit in the industry and how you compare to your peers. More importantly it provides you with critical information to be able to make informed business decisions and improve your IT performance.

How Can Benchmarking Help Me?

By creating and gathering your own benchmark data, or by using the benchmarking module within SysAid, you can see where your strengths and weaknesses are when it comes to your IT operations.

• How many incidents have been handled per by hour?
• How many tickets have been closed in the past 24 hours?
• What is your average response time to a service request?
• How many of your users are utilizing the knowledge base?
• How many ticket categories are being utilized by your end users?

What Do I Do With This Information?

You must remember that it’s not the measurements themselves, but what you do with them that’s important. All of this data is of no benefit to you and your organization unless you analyze it, draw conclusions, and make recommendations based on it.

You can refer to my earlier blogs on the topic for specific tips and advice on how to improve service using benchmark data:

• Get off the Bench and Make Your Mark Through Effective Benchmarks
• IT Benchmarks: Customer Access Channels and Improving Service
• IT Benchmarks: Incident Classification Categories
• IT Benchmarks: Knowledge Management and Reuse

At the Event

If you are attending HDI 2014, please come and see us! I’ll be at the SysAid booth and would be delighted to help you with any of your queries about benchmarks and metrics, regardless of whether you’re a customer, potential customer, or not interested in our ITSM tool at all! If you’d like to pre-book a 1:1 with us, just let us know.

We’ll also have the delightful Joe the IT Guy in attendance with us, and as always he will be posing for photos. Plus, just like at PINK14, we’ll be handing out our free All Essentials bags full of everything you could possibly need to get you through a four day conference (we’re talking water, granola bars, etc.).

I also highly recommend checking out the stream of content on metrics and measurement:

• Metrics 101: Understanding What to Measure and Where to Use the Metric
• Metrics with Meaning: Building a Business-Driven Model
• Top Down and Bottom Up: Performance Metrics That Count
• Tell the Story Behind Your Metrics
• Process Integration, Metrics, and Setting Expectations
• Measuring is a Balancing Act
• Building a Service-Based Scorecard
• Leveraging KPIs to Maximize the ROI of Support
• Daddy, Where Do Metrics Come From?
• Linking Metrics to Outcomes: Connecting the Dots

I can’t stress enough how much of a critical activity benchmarking and metrics are to the business. In the words of HDI “this information can help you make the proper decisions and take the appropriate actions for continuous improvement”. It is therefore incredibly important that you know what to measure and how to utilize measurement reports to better your business.

A Shout Out to Our Wonderful Customers

If you’re already a SysAid customer and are planning to attend HDI 2014 please get in touch. Not only do we have a special gift for you, but we’d love to catch up with you, grab a drink and/or have dinner. Any customers attending will be given top priority over any of our sales activities. Without you, we don’t exist.

Join In the Conversation

You can keep track of the HDI 2014 conference by following the #HDIConf14 hashtag on Twitter. I want to stress here how valuable these Twitter streams are, specifically if you cannot attend the event in person. Tips and advice are shared on Twitter throughout the day so that you can still benefit from the conference even if you’re sitting in the office.

It also goes without saying that we’ll be sharing all of our photographs from the event on our Facebook page, showcasing to the world just how much fun there is to be had with SysAid.

Here’s to another great event!

Image credit

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