h2index newsletter - December 2011 

Greetings!

• Verging on the cool - an interview with James Skinner of Aviva
• How not to create a legacy, part 1   
• User groups and forums
• Participants wanted 

Occasionally we introduce you to some of our clients and ask them about some of their views on IT management. James Skinner, Global IT Services Director at Aviva, kindly agreed to tell us about some new IT developments that excite him.

James and his team are responsible for delivering the organisation-wide IT services and change for around 40,000 employees across six Aviva regions. New technology and collaboration toolsets are key areas of focus; for both employee satisfaction and gaining increased value from IT across the group.

James is infectiously enthusiastic about his work and the potential for emerging technology to improve productivity and reduce costs. He wants his managers to understand that IT should be run like any other business with good business practice, including reviewing the role of technology. 

Two areas which he describes as "really good, verging on the cool", explain his thinking:

• Changing the mindset of the IT organisation from technology-driven to customer-driven, offering "IT as a Service"
• Exploiting innovative technology: the role of video and unified communications in the workplace

James wants his staff to think about the impact on their customers, not the technology they manage: to stop thinking, for example, "server 23 is down" but rather that "100 employees across the group cannot submit their accounts".

Taking the customer service mindset principle further means managers need to be proactive. James explains: "We visit people at their desks and have fantastic utilisation of our drop-in IT "Service Bar". By cleaning up their PCs and removing unused software, we make them run faster and often reduce our costs because they no longer require a licence. People are often unaware of much of their software's functionality, so we check that they know about the key aspects, improving their productivity."

Despite this, James says: "We have 98% satisfaction ratings on our end-user support. But when I walk around I can see room for improvement everywhere."

Exploiting video

Aviva is already using telepresence suites to enable communication and collaboration and James expects this to continue and grow. Although it is early days, James thinks desktop video could have an even greater impact as a key communications tool to reduce data deluge on staff.

James explains: "I received a 320 page report this morning. The information I need to glean from it could have been delivered in a 45 second video." Following his own advice, James has a high definition webcam on this desk and around 30% of meetings are now through this medium, "it means that with a bit of forethought, it does not matter whether I am in the office, home or travelling, I can still be productive". But beyond that I can quickly and easily create short videos to impart information quickly. In some regions of Aviva, a daily video broadcast of market changes and analysts' comment is produced using the same methods."

In addition, James suggests: "Try setting YouTube as your search page instead of Google; it's illuminating."

• Small informal groups
• Selected and qualified IT managers
• Organizations of similar scale
• Discussing IT issues that really bother them
• Organised and facilitated by h2index

Unified communications 

h2index's Unified Communications (UC) forum met in October 2011 hosted by Unilever, with senior IT managers representing Shell, Unilever, Astra Zeneca, BP, Nestle and Aviva.

Several trends emerged with the strongest being the view that UC is much more than a replacement for traditional telephony.  All of the attendees expect to replace their existing PBXs and IP telephony infrastructure with a UC solution at some point in the future and they believe Microsoft's Lync is likely to be the core of the future standard platform.

Sites will continue to use traditional telephony: there is large solid installed telephony base and this is unlikely to be replaced quickly. But UC is bubbling with opportunities and there are successful pilots and plans to rollout UC further. Problems finding suitable partners, employees with the right skill sets and the best contractual models to deliver the changes, are just some of the challenges.

Businesses are increasingly demanding Digital Workplaces, which allow employees to work seamlessly anywhere, any time and across all communications channels. This is driving the development of UC. Each company's interpretation is different, but common themes include nomadic, agile, flexible employees who are demanding integrated, device-agnostic (BYO) solutions.  

Unified communications' issues  

Exploiting UC has raised many issues. Some, such as security, capacity and regulatory, are familiar. But the striking evidence from the forum was the huge importance of improving usability and user competence, with attendees signalling that these factors were now key determinants of adoption and user acceptance. 

Interested in joining our forums?

The UC forum is designed for large scale enterprises (tens of thousands of employees), operating in multiple countries, and participants include major international companies in pharmaceuticals, finance, insurance, transportation, energy, consumer goods, electronics and engineering. 

We also run regular meetings on other topics such Microsoft Office 365 and end user services (EUS).  If you would like to join any of our forums, please reply to this email.  We work hard to ensure that the organizations in any one forum are of similar scale, face similar issues, and involve senior representatives directly responsible for the specific topic.

Participants wanted

h2index is continually undertaking research for its clients and each project requires a panel of representative organisations.

End user services in global enterprises - annual benchmark

For the last five years, h2index has conducted a full benchmark of end user services operations in large enterprises.  This year several clients have requested this research and have agreed to get together to define the requirement for the study and share the costs. Our clients would welcome further participants to extend the data set and reduce the cost per participant.  All participants will receive a detailed report.  This year's study is nearing completion, but there is still time for new participants to join. 

Benchmarking is often commissioned only at times of change, but regular benchmarking enables companies to ensure they are constantly:

• exploiting the leading technologies, tools and processes
• monitoring their service quality against their peers
• keeping their costs competitive

If you are interested in taking part, please reply to this email.