Chapter 7: Business Skills for Technical Professionals

CHAPTER 7:BUSINESS SKILLS FOR TECHNICAL PROFESSIONALS

A Guide to Customer Service Skills for the Service Desk Professional

Third Edition

Ch. 7: Business Skills

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OBJECTIVES

In this chapter students will learn:

• How to acquire and use business skills in the workplace

• How to use business skills to identify and justify improvement opportunities

• How to use presentation skills to communicate

• Advanced business skills for technical professionals

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BUSINESS SKILLS FOR TECHNICAL PROFESSIONALS

• Technical professionals are increasingly being challenged to ensure that a company’s technology enables its employees and customers to achieve their business goals

• To do this, technical professionals must acquire business skills

• Business skills are the skills people need to work successfully in the business world, such as:

• The ability to understand and speak the language of business

• The ability to analyze business problems and identify improvement opportunities

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TOPIC 1:ACQUIRING AND USING BUSINESS SKILLS IN THE WORKPLACE

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USING BUSINESS SKILLS IN THE WORKPLACE

PART 1 OF 8

• Some business skills are useful and increasingly required for a number of reasons:

• The business world is extremely competitive

• Trends such as automation and outsourcing mean that companies have fewer job positions

• People who have a mix of skills—including business, technical, soft, and self-management skills—create the greatest opportunities for themselves

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• Some business skills are particularly relevant to technical professionals

• These skills are useful regardless of the profession you enter

• You can acquire some business skills by simply observing and inquiring about the activities that occur where you work

• Your business skills will also grow as you acquire education and experience


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PART 3 OF 8

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Business Skills Relevant to

Technical Professionals


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•Customer service• Skills such as understanding the importance of

meeting customers’ needs and knowing how to manage their expectations

•Process management• The need for people who have experience

developing, documenting, and continuously improving processes is increasing

• Listening and communication• Two of the most basic skills needed in today’s

fast-paced business world


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• Writing

• Problem solving

• Financial management

• Making presentations

• Project management

• Conflict management

• Time management


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• Basic business skills can be learned on-the-job, through self-study, or in the classroom

• Customer service, problem solving, project management, conflict management, time management

• Skills such as financial management and human resources management important as IT techs advance in their careers


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• The business skills required for a service desk job vary based on:• The industry in which the company is engaged

• The job category

• The specific skills a company requires are determined by the company’s job description

• Some basic knowledge, such as service industry knowledge, and a willingness to learn are viewed as a positive.


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• Managers are increasingly requiring technical professionals who want to advance in their careers to hone and use business skills

• Developing and demonstrating business skills is an effective way to differentiate yourself from the competition and increase your opportunities

• If you are looking to advance your career, business skills are essential


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THE LANGUAGE OF BUSINESS

PART 1 OF 4

• Business - A commercial enterprise or establishment

• The term may also be used to describe a person’s occupation, work, or trade

• Nonprofit – A company established for charitable, educational, or humanitarian purposes rather than for making money; also known as not-for-profit

• The business skills required to work for nonprofit and for-profit companies are similar

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• Learn about your company (or a company where you want to work)

• Its mission

• The industry that it is in

• Its competitors

• Study the words that are used to describe your company, its mission, and its goals

• A “big picture” perspective will help you understand why certain technologies or data are viewed as highly important (strategic)


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• IT and business alignment – A process aimed at ensuring that information technologies support corporate goals and objectives

• Technical professionals who understand business can:

• Help business people understand available technologies and how best to use them

• Ensure that new technologies, when introduced, offer real value to the business


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TOPIC 2:USING BUSINESS SKILLS TO IDENTIFY AND JUSTIFY IMPROVEMENT OPPORTUNITIES

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IDENTIFY AND JUSTIFY IMPROVEMENT OPPORTUNITIES

PART 1 OF 4

• People working in a service desk hear day-in and day-out from customers who are having trouble using technology

• They have a unique opportunity to support the goals of business by working hard to:

• Eliminate or minimize the impact of business problems

• Identify improvement opportunities

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• Service desk tools and technologies are useless if they do not provide and produce meaningful information

• Analysts play an important role by collecting data on a daily basis that becomes information

• Failing to record events and activities accurately and completely can have very negative results for the company, the service desk, and the service desk employee


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PART 3 OF 4

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• Forward-thinking companies use data to spot trends and discover the root cause of incidents

• People working in a service desk can continuously capture the data and information needed to determine customers’ wants and needs

• People interested in a support-industry career must learn how to interpret data and share and add value to information


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Performing Trend Analysis:

• Trend analysis - A methodical way of determining and, when possible, forecasting service trends

• Trends can be positive or negative

• Trend reports provide service desk management and staff the information needed to

• Formulate improvement plans

• Communicate achievements

PERFORMING TREND AND ROOT CAUSE ANALYSIS

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PART 2 OF 7

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• Trend analysis involves looking at a set of data and viewing it from different angles in an effort to identify a trend

• Trend reports make it possible to:

• Determine the most common and frequently occurring incidents

• Identify anomalies

• Anomaly - A deviation or departure from the average or the norm


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PART 5 OF 7

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Performing Root Cause Analysis:

• Used to determine why incidents are occurring so the company can take steps to prevent incidents in the future

• Determining the root cause requires analysts to look beyond the obvious and seek an answer to the question, “Why?”

• Root cause is not always related specifically to hardware products or software systems

• It is often related to how people are implementing or using technology


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• Trend and root cause analysis work hand-in-hand

• Root cause analysis is the more difficult of the two disciplines

• Companies that fail to capture and then eliminate root cause put themselves at risk for incidents to happen again

• Ultimately, customers would prefer that incidents be prevented


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COMMUNICATING THE FINANCIAL BENEFITS OF IMPROVEMENTS

PART 1 OF 9

• Service desk managers are under pressure to:• Demonstrate the value of service desk services

• Justify the funds and resources the team needs to deliver those services

• Members of the service desk team must learn to:• Justify and quantify the benefits of their ideas in

financial terms

• Budget - The total sum of money allocated for a particular purpose (such as a project) or period of time (such as a year)

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• To justify improvement initiatives:

• State the expected benefits in the form of goals

• Express those goals as metrics

• Metrics typically assess characteristics such as:

• Cost

• Customer satisfaction

• Efficiency

• Effectiveness

• Employee satisfaction

• Quality


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• Some characteristics are tangible, or capable of being measured precisely

• Cost, efficiency

• Other characteristics are intangible, or more difficult to measure precisely

• Customer satisfaction, employee satisfaction, quality

• Intangible characteristics reflect perception and are therefore more subjective

• Both tangible and intangible goals are important


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By establishing both tangible and intangible goals with goals such as quality and customer satisfaction as primary objectives, companies can achieve a balanced, customer-oriented result


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Employee Satisfaction

EffectivenessCost

Efficiency

Quality

Customer Satisfaction


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Calculating a Labor Savings:

• “Time is money” - Labor often represents a company’s single greatest expense

• Labor and benefits usually represent 60% to 80% of a service desk’s overall costs

• Saving time, will in turn, save money

• To calculate an hourly rate:

• $39,046 / 2,080 = $18.77


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PART 6 OF 9

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Labor Savings by Automating Password Resets


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• When actual data are not available, industry standard data (such as hourly rate) can be useful

• Cost per contact is a financial measure frequently used in the support industry

• Cost per contact - The total cost of operating a service desk for a given time period (including salaries, benefits, facilities, and equipment) divided by the total number of contacts received during that period

• Contact volume - The total number of contacts received during a given period of time


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PART 8 OF 9

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• Cost per contact can be used to:

• Benchmark a service desk’s services against other service desks or the industry average

• Compare the cost of operating a service desk to an external supplier (outsourcer)

• Benchmarking - The process of comparing the service desk’s performance metrics and practices to those of another service desk in an effort to identify improvement opportunities


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TOPIC 3:USING PRESENTATIONSTO COMMUNICATE

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USING PRESENTATIONS TO COMMUNICATE

PART 1 OF 8

• Presentations are an important form of communication in today’s business world

• They are used daily to:• Convey information

• Promote the benefits of ideas and opportunities

• Win approval for ideas and opportunities

• For professionals, presentations are an important way to build credibility

• The ability to make presentations can greatly influence a person’s standing in his or her company, community, and industry

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• Audience members are being brought together for a reason

• Their approval is needed to move forward on a project

• Their input is needed to formulate an action plan

• You need to make them aware of something or teach them something

• The main reason you are making the presentation is that You are the expert!


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Step 1: State your objective

Step 2: Know your audience

Step 3: Design the presentation

Step 4: Rehearse the presentation

Step 5: Deliver the presentation

Step 6: Learn from the experience


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Step 1. State Your Objective:

• A clearly stated objective helps you focus your thoughts and the thoughts of your audience

Step 2. Know Your Audience:

• This step greatly influences all future steps

• Determine what is important to your audience members

• Understand the background of your audience

• When in doubt, ask


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Step 3. Design the Presentation:

• Designing a presentation is like writing a story

• Begin with an outline

• Research your topic and collect facts that support your objective

• Develop visual aids that support and communicate your ideas

• Anticipate the questions your audience may ask and use visual aids to answer those questions


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Step 4. Rehearse the Presentation:

• Make sure that you can cover your material in the time allotted

• Make sure that you leave time for questions

• Rehearsing is different than memorizing

• Memorize your introduction and closing

• They are critical to setting audience expectations

• Memorize only the key points you want to make during the body of your presentation


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Step 5. Deliver the Presentation:

• Be prepared, confident, and enthusiastic

• When time is a constraint, ask the audience to hold their questions until the end

• If you run out of time for questions at the end, let the audience know that you will be happy to answer their questions after the meeting

• When possible, try to handle questions when asked


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Step 6. Learn from the Experience:

• Most mistakes made when making presentations are the result of overlooking one of the steps previously discussed

• Take time after each presentation to evaluate your performance and determine how you can improve

• If evaluations are provided, view the feedback you receive as constructive and figure out what you can do to improve

• Presentation skills are essential if you want to educate, inform, obtain information from, build consensus with, and communicate with others


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TOPIC 4:ADVANCED BUSINESS SKILLS FOR TECHNICAL PROFESSIONALS

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ADVANCED BUSINESS SKILLS

• Advanced business skills are critical skills for more senior technical professionals• Managing projects

• Conducting a cost benefit analysis

• Calculating ROI

• An understanding of these concepts will enable you to make the most of learning and growth opportunities

• To excel at advanced business skills, technical professionals require a blend of formal training and experience

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MANAGING PROJECTS

PART 1 OF 10

• Project - A temporary endeavor undertaken to create a unique product, service, or result

• Service desk professionals may:• Complete projects

• Support the end product of a project

• Initiate projects

• Technical professionals must understand • Project management concepts and tools

• How to work successfully on a project team

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• Project management - The process of planning and managing a project

• All projects, regardless of their size, require some planning and have the following:• A clearly defined scope

• Well-defined deliverables

• Clearly defined acceptance criteria

• An established start date

• An established end point

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Scope

An agreement between the customer of the project and the supplier about the project’s end product and includes a description of the acceptance criteria to be used to evaluate the project’s success

Acceptance criteria

The conditions that must be met before the project deliverables are accepted



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• For large projects, the project scope is typically defined by a project planning committee made up of project stakeholders

• Project stakeholder - A person or group who is involved in or may be affected by project activities

• Project scope includes:• Project overview

• Project deliverables

• Project objectives

• Considerations and concerns

• Change control plan



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• Project scope must be approved by the project sponsor

• Project sponsor - The person who has ultimate authority over the project• Responsible for ensuring that the project is aligned

with the organization's business goals

• Not typically involved in day-to-day activities

• Project manager - The person who leads the project team and is assigned the authority and responsibility for overseeing the project and meeting the project’s objectives



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Project manager responsibilities include:

• Developing and maintaining a project plan

• Directing project activities

• Creating project status reports

• Preparing and participating in project reviews

• Resolving project plan deviations

• Resolving and escalating to management, if necessary, issues that pertain to the project

• Administering project change control



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• Project plan - A summary document that describes the project, its objectives, and how the objectives are to be achieved

•Work breakdown structure (WBS) - A task-oriented breakdown of the work to be done

• The WBS is used to:• Logically arrange the tasks to be completed

• Define milestones

• Assign resources to tasks, create schedules, estimate costs



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• A critical project manager responsibility is communicating on a regular basis with all interested parties

• Project status reports typically include :• Accomplishments this period

• Accomplishments planned next period

• Resources required next period

• Considerations and concerns

• An updated project plan

• Ongoing communication—before, during, and after the project—is critical to a project’s success



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• Technical professionals can learn about project management by:• Observing how projects are run

• Trying to understand the keys to project management success

• If you are interested in being a project manager:• Take advantage of training that is offered where

you work

• Seek out self-study opportunities

• Serve as a deputy, or assistant, to another project manager



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CONDUCTING A COST BENEFIT ANALYSIS

PART 1 OF 4

• Cost benefit analysis – A business calculation that compares the costs and benefits of two or more potential solutions to determine an optimum solution

• A cost benefit analysis can be simple or quite complex

• Because of the time and skill required, the cost of performing a complex cost benefit analysis can be considerable

• Companies typically offer guidelines that determine the level of detail required

• Guidelines consider factors such as the size, cost, and impact of the proposed solution

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• In its simplest form, a cost benefit analysis uses only financial costs and financial benefits

• Financial costs may be:• One time (nonrecurring)

• Ongoing (recurring)

• Some companies assign a numeric value to intangible benefits

• Intangible benefits are important and must be taken into consideration


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Intangible benefits include:

• Better information

• Improved communications

• Improved customer relations

• Increased customer satisfaction

• Improved employee morale

• Increased knowledge

• More accurate solutions

• More proactive service


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• The end result of a cost benefit analysis is the identification of the best solution to a business problem

• It answers the questions:

• Which of the proposed solutions is the best solution?

• Is the proposed solution worth the cost?

• The key to whether a solution is worth the cost lies in the goals of the organization

• Each company must decide what benefits (tangible and intangible) are worth to their organization


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• Return on investment (ROI) – A business calculation that measures the total financial benefit derived from an investment and then compares it with the total cost of the project

• ROI = Net Benefits / Project Investment

• A simple ROI uses only financial costs and benefits

CALCULATING RETURN ON INVESTMENT

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• Calculating ROI can be much more complex as benefits can also be intangible

• Intangible benefits are important and must be taken into consideration

• ROI typically states the return on investment in percentage terms.

• ROI% = Net Benefits / Project Investment X 100

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• Some companies determine the time it takes to recover an investment when calculating ROI

• Payback period - The period of time over which the benefits of an investment are received

• Payback Period = Project Investment / Net Benefits X 12 Months


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• Some companies establish guidelines relative to the use of payback period when making purchasing decisions

• If the payback period is less than six months, purchase the product immediately

• If the payback period is greater than six months, consider the purchase in light of other budget expenditures

• If the payback period is greater than one year, consider the purchase in a future budget


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• ROI can be a complex and time-consuming calculation and is therefore typically reserved for larger technology investments

• In its simplest form, however, ROI is a useful way to communicate the worth of even a small investment

• ROI answers the questions:

• What do I get back (in return) for the money I am being asked to spend (invest)?

• Is the return worth the investment?


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CHAPTER SUMMARY

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CHAPTER SUMMARY

PART 1 OF 5

• Business skills are useful and increasingly required

• Basic business skills can be learned on-the-job, through self-study, or in the classroom

• These skills are relatively universal and can be used regardless of a person’s chosen profession:

• Customer service, process management, problem solving, project management, conflict management, time management

• Skills such as financial management and human resource management are also important and become more important as people advance in their careers

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• People working in a service desk hear day-in and day-out from customers who are having trouble using technology

• Service desk techs have a unique opportunity to support the goals of business by using what they learn to:

• Eliminate or minimize the impact of problems

• Identify improvement opportunities

• Technical professionals must learn to use:

• Data to identify and quantify improvement opportunities

• Techniques such as trend and root cause analysis

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• Presentations are an important form of communication in today’s business world

• They are inevitable if you want to communicate your ideas and, more importantly, have those ideas accepted and acted upon

• Making a presentation is not an exact science, but there are proven steps that can be taken to ensure success

• The more often you present and the more varied the setting, subject matter, and audience, the more comfortable you will be



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• Advanced business skills are increasingly critical skills for more senior technical professionals• Managing projects

• Conducting a cost benefit analysis

• Calculating return on investment (ROI)

• A basic understanding of these concepts will enable you to make the most of learning and growth opportunities

• To acquire these skills, some study, even self-study, is needed along with experience



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• The business world has changed and technical professionals must change as well

• By acquiring and using business skills, technical professionals can:• Expand their opportunities

• Have more control over their career

• Rather than always being told what to do and how to do it, technical professionals with business skills can:• Propose new and better solutions

• Participate fully in bringing their ideas to life


CHAPTER 7 QUESTIONS

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Chapter 7: Business Skills for Technical Professionals