Services > Service Support
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 Overview of Service Support
Pinnacle Consulting is well versed in the ITIL v3 service life cycle framework. While the solution provides the basic guidelines for cradle to grave service provisioning, it is just a framework that must be tailored to your specific IT environment's requirements and constraints. We have the knowledge and staff to help you achieve the full ITIL life cycle solution or to implement simple ITIL best practices in a general phase of the life cycle. Below is a short description of each specific life cycle and how we can serve you in each area.
Service Life Cycle Planning
Many organizations view IT support as a fixed asset or tool that provides a service to their business mission, but has little return on investment (ROI). E-mail and service support centers fit this mold and are usually driven on basic IT derived needs and requirements that do not line up to the actual needs of business. In truth, these are services and functions that are part of a larger IT environment that has a well-defined service life cycle that can be driven by the needs of all stakeholders. When properly managed via specific life cycle processes and Service Level Management (SLM), this environment can provide in-depth insight to the Total Cost of Ownership (TCO) and identify areas for improvement for any and all services. Pinnacle Consulting provides end-to-end ITIL Service Life Cycle support to its clients and helps them to develop maturity into their IT support environment through repeatable and reliable processes.
Service Strategy Development and Planning
The decision to develop, field, and support a service (e.g., new e-mail services or a new business application) requires adequate planning and analysis to help ensure its acceptance and success (both business and financial). Many systems are deployed without proper analysis and fail to meet users/business needs and/or are deployed over budget. Pinnacle Consulting provides support for strategic planning and analysis to our clients. We work closely with all levels of IT management and end users to facilitate service requirements, identify existing cross functional services, identify service constraints, perform risk assessment, evaluate the demand, assist in the financial impacts of services, and develop/maintain a Service Portfolio for our clients. We will apply this approach to new service requests and to existing services that require modification based on Continual Service Improvement (CSI) monitoring.
Service Development
Once a service has been properly evaluated and deemed worthy of action (new or improvement) it enters the Service Development phase of the life cycle. This is where the output of the planning feeds the development process, requirements specification, constraints, demand and financial planning inputs are used to develop service solutions. Service Level Agreements (SLAs) with clients, Operation Level Agreements (OLAs) with other internal IT organizations (e.g., networks), and Underpinning Contracts (UCs) with external vendors (e.g., ISPs or service center contractors) are all a key piece of the Service Level Management framework and developed in this phase of the lifecycle. Specific availability, capacity, and security needs are built into the SLM framework with Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) which are monitored and serve as a measurement of service performance, compliance, and acceptance. The Service Development phase also updates the Service Portfolio and creates/maintains a specific Service Catalogue which contains a list of all services offered by an organization. Pinnacle Consulting provides our clients with full Service Development support. We also integrate with separate application development efforts and represent the operational service needs of an organization. For example, when an application is outsourced and not incorporated with an IT organization plan, we will work with all parties to carry IT strategic planning requirements into the developers environment and help them with availability/capacity/security needs, SLM (SLA, OLA, UC) coordination and development, and provide them with IT specified KPI and monitoring requirements of the new service. Pinnacle Consulting will incorporate all of the Service Design solutions into a Service Design Package (SDP) and pass the SDP to the next phase of the Service Life Cycle, Service Transition.
Service Transition
Many times the success or failure of an IT solution can be forecasted when its deployed into a production environment. A Service that is not well planned may crash because capacity expectations were too low or because the service was not built to meet expected KPIs. During the Service Transition phase services are tested against their target requirements to help ensure that they meet business and IT needs. At this point services fall under configuration and asset control and key knowledge is captured to be deployed with the service. Pinnacle Consulting provides deployment test services to our clients via direct support or through coordination with an Independent Verification and Validation provider. We also provide liaison support to the IT Operations teams during initial deployment of a service to impart knowledge to the support team. Pinnacle Consulting has also provided our clients with COTS knowledge-based solutions and developed robust business intelligence systems for specialized GOTS solutions.
Service Operations
Successful service support is based on a balance of business/user needs and specific IT requirements. Many times these are two diversely opposing entities. The key to avoiding problems related to this balance is to properly document SLAs with specific target KPIs, openly negotiating these SLAs with your business/user environment, monitoring the SLAs, reporting the results with all stakeholders, and most importantly communicating with your users, keep them trained and informed on SLAs, outages, and other issues that impact the business environment (e.g., planned outages). Consistent and reliable IT support is based on people, processes, products, and partners. Pinnacle Consulting works with our clients and their stakeholders to provide knowledgeable, well-trained staff to support their services. We work with our client to document and streamline operations support processes to reduce response times and service outages. We provide knowledge-based solutions to augment our processes and speed recovery. Pinnacle Consulting also implements customer self-help solutions for simple processes which frees up critical IT assets for more complicated support issues. Our staff deploy automated monitoring tools that collect historical availability and performance data to feed the SLM processes and help identify areas of improvement for IT management. We leverage existing or recommend new incident/problem tracking solutions and help our clients automate repeatable processes within the system. Pinnacle Consulting also partners with key vendors and external service providers to augment the operations support ability of any IT organization.
Continual Service Improvement
Improvement is the base building block of a strong organization. Evaluating existing process and procedures as well as forward thinking new solutions are critical for IT organizations in a world where technology leaps forward every six months. Service solutions that were not cost effective or technically feasible five years ago are now common practice solutions. IT is the mandate of all IT service organizations to grow with their environment. Continual Service Monitoring provides the mechanism for justification and proof for that growth. Basically CSI is the constant monitoring of all service KPIs and analyzing the performance, capacity, availability, and value of the in-place services and passing recommendations for change back to the other pieces of the Service Life Cycle (i.e., Service Strategy, Service Development, Service Transition, and Service Operations). Pinnacle Consulting works closely with our clients to baseline service processes, develop critical success factors, and KPIs for each service in their cycle environment. We evaluate service, technology, and process metrics to determine if a service is meeting business requirements and SLAs. When situations warrant, we help our customers generate get well plans for services that are not meeting their target goals and help them continually improve services using Deming's Plan-Do-Check-Act model and the ITIL 7-Step Improvement Process.
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