The success of a business or service is tied to the human factors like relationship management, communication, motivations, aspirations, org. of human chain, delivery models, planning of human resources etc – Yet WE (the community) most often than not neglect, if not completely ignore the human aspect of BSM.
So what are the various “Human” dimensions/perspectives of BSM
- Skills: If you thought you can get BSM/Service Assurance implementations done by a bunch of system engineers with expertise on a bunch of tools; you are heading for a disaster. What you need is someone who can envision solution, understand the organization, communicate the ideas and implement them with agility. System engineers are an important part of the implementation, but they have biases towards what they know best which works out ok if what they know can scale to the needs of the organization.
- Ability to work with end users is another very important aspect for the success of the BSM solution; a word of caution here – If you heard sales presentations saying BSM is only for VP’s, Directors to know the “global strategic view”; stay away!! BSM belongs as much to the VP’s as it belongs to the technician “Joe” sitting in the Operations Center trying to understand why his walk in the datacenter and him pulling the cable can cause a loss of millions of dollars.
- P2P of value chain: No P2P is not peer to peer but people to people communication of “value” of BSM solution and understanding the importance of communication of service impacting information to all expected stakeholders.
So, next time you are working on BSM implementation, try this – WALK AROUND!! Ensure BSM is a part of every individual goals and objectives, the value that the VP’s and Director’s are expecting out of the solution is communicated to as many folks as possible. Also, the value that the technician Joe is expecting is communicated back completing full cycle of “value” flow. That is what makes the business better!! Have you ever seen all of the aforementioned happening in a BSM implementation? I can bet that the answer in more than 80% of the cases is “NO”; and we ask why 8 of 10 BSM efforts fail to meet the proposed expected value.
BSM will only be “BS” if WE(the community) miss out on the perspective which ensures the alignment of the most important asset/pillar for the success of a business i.e. “Humans”.
