IT Service Desk Planning for 2021’s New Normal
You may have already submitted your 2021 plans and budgets for the IT service desk back in September or October 2020. Which was no doubt even trickier than usual, with all the uncertainty surrounding the global pandemic and its continued effect on business operations.
Perhaps you were required to submit two plans for 2021? One where the global pandemic has eased/passed post-Q1 and another that assumes 2021 will still be full of pandemic-related challenges.
Plus, of course, there was likely also the need to bring about cost efficiencies in light of the economic impact of the pandemic – not only caused by the “first wave” height but also recognizing the ongoing effect that social distancing and repeat lockdowns might have in your countries of operation.
But what happens now as we enter 2021? We still don’t even know if a revised plan is needed. One that reflects both the current state of the world (which of course differs by country) and the current financial status of your organization.
To help you handle all of this uncertainty, I wrote this blog to outline a number of key considerations for undertaking your planning tasks as 2021 progresses.
What’s the ‘new normal’ for 2021?
In many ways, there’s no new normal yet and there won’t be one anytime soon. Many countries are still in a state of flux, with this impacting businesses, their IT departments, and their IT service desks. We simply need to wait to see how 2021 pans out and the changes this will bring.
In IT service desk planning terms, all we can do is to continue to plan based on what we expect to happen on the balance of probabilities. Which will, of course, differ country-to-country – with the wonderfully virus-free New Zealand at one end of the spectrum and my native USA at the other, along with many other suffering countries.
So, today, the new normal is the continued state of flux that we all are responding to as best we can.
And yes, I know it doesn’t help with our service desk planning. It’s more of a “current normal” but I’ll continue to call it the new normal because who in their right mind wants to create yet another buzz phrase with everything that’s going on?
Why IT service desk planning needs to change
In the last ten months of 2020, so much happened that impacted the IT service desk. Hopefully, all of this is reflected in your initial 2021 planning. But despite this, there’s still a need to keep re-planning as we start and then progress through the year. There’s more on this later, but first a little reminiscing.
I cast my mind back to previous years and my annual service desk planning that, while not a simple task, was still very much a delta on the previous year. With changes made to reflect any mandated budget cuts and realized efficiencies, requests for budget uplifts to reflect the net new demand, and monies for any improvement initiatives with positive ROIs.
If only our 2021 planning was that straight forward. Now there are many additional “variables” in play. Such as:
New ways of working.
For example, a proportion of end users might still be working at home and reliant on remote-worker services and support. IT staff might be too.
Then there’s the push for digital workflows across the enterprise – the “accelerated digital transformation” that the pandemic caused. All of this affects service and support needs and costs. As does the fact that there might also be a shrinking workforce to serve and support – that will continue to change throughout the year, hopefully with the staffing-level nadir coming sooner rather than later as the economy starts to grow back to where it was pre-pandemic.
Operational and project budgets.
For example, from being unable to sell and operate at full capacity to the knock-on that business-level and consumer-level economic issues are having.
Most organizations will likely need to spend less in 2021 while they weather the pandemic’s economic turbulence. So operational budgets will be cut, and projects will need to both deliver a rapid ROI and be focused on areas such as delivering new products and services, facilitating new ways of selling and wider customer engagement, and creating efficiency improvements that positively impact all three of cost, speed, and quality of service.
But what do these variables mean for your planning?
How 2021’s new normal affects IT service desk planning
Some might say that it’s easier to highlight what’s not impacted by the new normal than to list what is. But I’ll try to do the latter across some of the obvious planning areas.
As per the two examples above, volumes will change, priorities will change, and operational budgets will change as the year gets better or worse or perhaps stays somewhere in between.
Organizational structures might need to shrink, ideally due to what our human resources (HR) colleagues call “natural wastage.” But some people might need to be let go and/or vacancies left unfilled, with the employees who remain expected to do the proverbial “more with less.” The bottom line is that operational labor costs will be reduced, with battles fought to defend the important business role that the IT service desk plays.
Any budgets – both operational and project-related – associated with the accelerated digital transformation, across the enterprise, brought about by the pandemic are likely to stay. Especially given the anticipated ROI and the need to deliver and support what might be business-critical operations in a now distributed working world.
As for other business projects that impact the IT service desk, these will potentially be repeatedly reconsidered and reprioritized throughout the year, based on the immediate business priorities and the available resources. Which of course makes it even harder for IT service desk plans to fully reflect any future increases in demand for IT support services.
You can probably see where this is going now, but I’ll continue anyway.
As for any plans for IT service desk improvements, this will be a struggle without significant justification. It could range from people and process-related improvements, through the addition of efficiency-bringing automation, to the investment in a new ITSM tool.
Perhaps 2021 was supposed to be the year that your IT service desk and wider ITSM ecosystems transition to ITIL 4 adoption, while upgrading the corporate ITSM tool in the process. As with the earlier business projects, any service desk improvements will be scrutinized with a particular focus on short-term business benefits, and in the right areas. Many businesses are simply focusing on survival as the battle against the global pandemic, and its adverse economic impact, continues into 2021.
Not easy, I know!
What you need to do
This is best expressed in a number of key points:
- Realize that the old ways of service desk planning and forecasting are out, at least for now (and, depending on how things go, perhaps forever).
- Plans and budgets must be repeatedly revisited, with mandated cuts to be expected, as the year progresses (dependent on what is currently an “unknown”).
- Recognize that “agile planning” is likely to be the term used to describe what fills its shoes – this related 2017 article by Daniel Breston is worth a read “Agile IT Budgeting – Iteratively Creating Customer Value.”
- Appreciate that both business-as-usual and improvement initiative budgets will need to be fought for against competing business financial needs.
- To do this, IT needs to understand how it creates and/or increases business value – which involves better understanding its IT costs models – which is something that has been “on the cards” for the last decade in my opinion.
- Recognize that some “quick win” improvement initiatives will help with business-level cost reduction mandates, and help free up operational budgets to invest in any agreed-on IT service desk improvement activities. For example, by employing IT asset management (ITAM) capabilities, adding more automation, rationalizing applications, and revisiting service level agreements (SLAs) to remove unnecessary operational costs.
- Expect the unexpected – I think no one knows what 2021 holds (at least in the many countries that are still struggling to control and contain virus transmission). So don’t be surprised about the strange directions that your IT service desk planning might need to go in.
I’ve written a lot and could easily write more on this. But let’s take a breath to allow you to add your thoughts – what are you expecting to do differently, in IT service desk planning terms, in 2021? Please let me know in the comments.
