This post is the first of five on accelerating business insight generation with Matrix42 Service Management and Microsoft Power BI. Your benefit: greater business agility that opens up new opportunities to improve service levels, save costs, and generate new revenues.

Today, Acme Trading Co. has a service management infrastructure that is second to none. Every process required for smooth business operations is fast, automated, and transparent to everyone, from the CEO to the receptionists. As a result, Acme is running more efficiently and effectively than ever before. And employees are registering record satisfaction levels in staff surveys. But it wasn’t always like this. Rewind to summer 2015, and the picture was nowhere near this pretty….

The bad old days of service desk analytics

Tuesday, 9.30am:

The morning after the meeting the night before. CIO Stefan Simpson has had another grilling from the COO about service desk performance – or lack of it. Slow service, unanswered emails, unhappy users. The usual story. And now he needs to produce a report that clarifies the situation. He sends an email to Service Desk Manager Tim Tober. The task: generate a complete report on incident resolution over the last six months. The deadline: end of the day on Friday – at the latest.

Tuesday, 9.45am:

Tim Tober opens the email from his boss and groans. As if he didn’t have enough to do already. “This is going to take hours,” he says to himself. And the problem is, he’s right. Sure, he can pull together the information from his creaking service desk software – between dealing with tickets, emails and calls. But it will take hours – and that’s just the start. Then he needs to check the data is complete, and manually build charts so that Stephan understand the data. Then he needs to get all this into a presentable format. Even if he works late, it will be tough to get this done by the end of the week. Then again, he doesn’t really have a choice.

Wednesday, 8pm:

Tim has finally managed to get what he thinks is a complete set of data into a spreadsheet. Now all he needs to do is use it to create attractive charts that management can interpret quickly. Not exactly one of his greatest strengths. Now, where’s the folder from that PowerPoint training he did last year?

Friday, 5pm:

Tim’s desk is littered with chocolate bars, empty energy drink cans and dirty coffee mugs. He looks exhausted – because he is. He prints off the final page of his report, puts everything in a binder and walks over to Stephan’s office. Finding it empty, he places the report on Stephan’s desk. Then he trudges back to his PC to go through the emails he wasn’t able to answer during the day. But he’s in no hurry. He knows he’ll be spending most of the weekend in the office anyway…

As I said, not a pretty picture. Fortunately, one year on, and things have improved radically for Stefan and Tim. Why? Because they implemented Matrix42 Service Management, a fully integrated solution recognized by ITAM Review as best-in class. They use it together with Microsoft Power BI, which Acme gets for free through its use of the Microsoft stack. So, let’s see how the same scenario plays out today using this combination of state-of-the-art technologies.

Service desk analytics with Matrix42 Service Management and Microsoft Power BI

Tuesday, 9.30am:

With a fresh mug of coffee in front of him, Stefan sends an email to Tim. It’s a request for a service desk analytics on incident resolution since the deployment of Matrix42 Service Management and Microsoft Power BI. Deadline: Lunchtime, at the latest.

Tuesday 9.45am:

After a weekend at the beach, Tim is refreshed and raring to go, when he sees Stephan’s email come in. He smiles as he remembers how he used to dread moments like this. He reads the request, and knows immediately what he has to do. His integrated, centralized Matrix42 Service Management system contains all the incident resolution information he needs. With a few clicks, he exports it into a format that can be easily imported into Microsoft Power BI. Once in the system, Power BI’s dashboard engine automatically creates charts that present all the key figures in a clear, easy to interpret format. Open incidents, closed incidents, time to resolution… it’s all there, and it’s all understandable at a glance. Plus, Tim knows its easy for Stephan to access more detail within the dashboard. All he has to do is select an item or hover over a visualization to drill down into the underlying metrics. Plus, he can access a clear report page on every incident KPI by clicking once on the relevant tile. And the best thing is, this is only scratching the surface. It would be just as quick and easy for Tim to import comprehensive data on, for example, application usage. This would enable Stefan to make direct comparisons between incident analytics and application usage patterns. But first things first. It’s time to send Stefan the link to his report.

Tuesday, 10.30am:

Stefan receives an email from Tim containing a link. It takes him straight to the report he needs within the Microsoft Power BI interface. “Last year that would have taken 4 or 5 days, not 45 minutes,” he says to himself. He compares incident resolution rates for the first half of 2016, to those from the second half of 2015. And then he smiles. A BIG improvement. Time for the COO to find out how things have changed….

Look out for the next post in the series, where we find out how Service Manager Barbara Brown solves a CRM access crisis. Matrix42 Service Management and Microsoft Power BI can transform your service management environment too. With awesome service desk analytics!