This past week was definitely one for the record books. In the past 7 days, the new Global IT Service Desk at work went live. If you missed it, this is what I have been doing for the past six months. Our company decided about a year ago to bring the IT Help Desk back in-house. We outsourced it several years ago, but the relationship had not gone as expected. It was costly and the (internal) customer satisfaction was low. It was a tough decision to leave my position as Manager of the IT group that supports engineering to take on the help desk (later rebranded as the Service Desk) project at the same company. Most of my peers thought I was crazy, but I felt that I could do it better than anyone else. Building a global support department from the ground up in six months certainly was exciting. Having good backing from our IT staff and the rest of the employees certainly helped. Monday the moment arrived to take calls and take them we did. While there are still a few kinks to work out in some of the processes and education, it was generally successful. On time, and on budget – that’s the way I like them.
The second big news this week was that our CIO and Director of Technology Services were terminated. Since taking the Service Desk Manager position in July, I have been reporting to the CIO. As of Monday morning, I’m reporting to his boss, the CFO. Talk about having your “A game” all the time! I am really grateful to people like Mark Horstman and Michael Auzenne of Manager Tools for all their help over the past few years. While I don’t consider myself “C” level material, it certainly helps to know what they expect and try my best to be effective and deliver results.
2009 certainly is shaping up to be a year of change. Here’s hoping the changes are all positive in the long term!
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