Today, IT is expected to take on a more strategic role, one that goes beyond support to create business value and move the innovation agenda forward. Yet IT departments are unable to fulfil this mandate having to cope with increased demands for support with lower budgets and headcount. If companies are to flip the odds…

“Service outage! Help!” These words (or their variations), have preceded notable losses of millions and billions of dollars in the 21st century. From large corporations to SMBs, no one is immune to the effects of downtime – whether planned or unplanned. However, the earlier an issue is noticed, the faster it is acted upon and…

To illustrate how essential IT systems are to the proper functioning of the business, system administrators should use a number of metrics to communicate key KPIs with non-technical leadership. This can help justify the overall budget of the IT department, as well as the future growth of systems and resources. Uptime of key systems One…

In the last decade or so AI has gone from a buzzword to table stakes. Data reveals that organizations that have adopted AI into their service management strategy have begun to reap the benefits. It is therefore imperative for businesses to invest in Intelligent Service Management to not just empower their agents but also keep…

We marked our calendars, counting down the months, days, and minutes. Now, the day we’ve all been waiting for is here: the 60th anniversary of the computer password!! Since its beginning in an MIT lab in the fall of 1961, we’ve developed a complex relationship with the password – even the inventor of the computer…

As a modern enterprise your digital infrastructure – in all likelihood – is a multi-tiered, evolving, and expanding combination of services built on next-gen technologies. This dynamic configuration of servers, networks, applications, routers, etc. provides you with the agility to respond to rapidly changing customer demands. But it also tests the resilience of your digital…

Customer service is hard. Measuring the value of good customer service is even harder. However, only if you have quantifiable data on how well your support team is doing can you improve existing processes, make better staffing decisions, and ensure customer happiness. The best way to get these insights is by measuring customer service key…

How to build a Customer Experience Strategy There are many moving parts in play when trying to explain, let alone execute, an exceptional customer experience. Therefore it truly takes a village and a good game plan to get things done effectively. Staying on top of your customer experience strategy is vital as the customer behavior…

Turn offboarding woes into wows using Freshservice An employee’s last day at work is almost as significant as their first one. It commemorates all the learnings, experiences, and memories they have gathered during their journey in a company. Imagine on a day like that, when you are full of nostalgia and maybe relief (wink wink),…

Privileged accounts are a key part of the cyberattack chain and involved in almost every security breach today. Protecting privileged user accounts and, increasingly, machine accounts (non-human accounts) is a key priority for every security-conscious organization today, and central to addressing many regulatory requirements and enabling zero trust. Privileged account access can enable a threat…

Customer preferences are evolving just as quickly as technological advances! This can have a significant impact on your business and its internal operations. Such fast-paced evolution demands an equally agile change management function. Organizations that focus on the mechanics of change management but ignore the principles and intended outcomes are likely to make mistakes. But…

In the era of digital workplaces, AI has emerged as a catalyst in enabling simplified, intelligent, and intuitive ITSM and ITOM environments. From increasing workflow automation, reducing IT staff workload to reducing downtime and outages, AI can help accelerate your service delivery and provide meaningful business insight. Latest research from Freshworks and IDG on “Right-sizing…

Active Directory user accounts can get locked out due to a number of reasons, especially when working remotely. Windows systems can cache credentials for users. Yet, cached credentials causing account lockouts is a major problem for remote users. Cached Active Directory credentials To understand the purpose of cached credentials, let’s look at the normal login…

Customer experience is key to gauge how your customers perceive your brand. The reaction that customers have in response to the way your company treats them is crucial. Businesses have to work hard to attain and retain customers, for which keeping an eye on customer perception matters throughout their lifecycle. You have more influence than…

Batman or Spiderman? Superman or Thor? Flash or Falcon? The infatuation with and intense debate over Marvel and DC superhero and villain supremacy among comic book aficionados is a year-round musing, but always intensifies during the months when the latest movie hits the big screen. In conjunction with the new Loki (Marvel) series now streaming…

Service Desk Defined The service desk acts as the primary support mechanism in organizations, managing customer contacts for assistance and access to services. Their primary purpose includes the following: Receiving and responding to requests for support across multiple communication channels Prioritizing the requested work based on its impact on the business Communication of incidents and…

Specops Software survey highlights social engineering vulnerabilities among IT service help desks. 48% of organizations do not have a user verification policy in place for incoming calls to IT service desks, according to Specops Software, the leading provider of password management and authentication solutions. The information was uncovered as part of Specops Software’s survey of…

Is my service desk investment paying off? Is my service desk delivering true business value? Are we incurring costs that are not under control? Are we able to leverage the service desk beyond IT use cases? If your current ITSM solution makes you question its true value and reliability, are you even using the right…

When we think about increased IT support efficiency, we might think of faster and/or cheaper IT service desk operations. But now, post-pandemic, or what is being called “the new normal”, there’s a hunger for “better, faster, and cheaper” IT support. This recognizes key modern business priorities, such as: Emphasis on outcomes and value creation Need…

Digital transformation is about improving your digital footprint, digitalizing processes and most importantly – changing your company culture. The preparation for – and execution of – transformation is critical which means setting both clear goals and defining an approach to undertaking the change. A key part of that is being agile before, during and after…

Purple Fox is malware that was first discovered in 2018 but has seen a recent rise in proliferation as hackers take advantage of a new attack method: weak passwords used over the SMB protocol. SMB (Server Message Block) is a protocol (mainly) used by Windows computers to communicate with other network devices like printers and…

When it comes to running a Human Resources (HR) department successfully, it’s a balancing act of maximizing budget and productivity. HR is a core part of the enterprise but is often up against flat or shrinking budgets. A lot of time gets invested into searching for ways to eliminate full-time employee hours spent on tedious…

With the Oscars taking place over the weekend, Specops refreshed their breached password list and revealed the most popular movies used in leaked passwords. According to new research, which analyzed more than 800 million breached passwords – a subset of Specops Breached Password Protection, which contains over 2 billion passwords breached passwords – fan favorite…

Transformational changes continue to impact ITSM. While IT service management embraces new technologies, most organisations don’t currently have the high-level capabilities to match their ambitions. Freshworks has collaborated with the Service Desk Institute (SDI) to produce a report that determines how IT professionals feel about these new advances. The report aims to show the current…

Buying a modern service desk tool won’t solve all your problems in and of itself. Although these tools are designed to ensure general best practices are met, service desk tools must also be configured to address your organization’s specific essential protocols. In a recent Info-Tech research shows that tiered service desks with a first-tier generalist…

Remote team management has always been different for team managers and leaders. Not just challenging, but different. Not having the luxury to rub shoulders often and not having the liberty to have the entire team under one roof has compelled leaders to acquire new and innovative approaches to remote leadership. And while leadership styles and…

AI – the new normal prerequisite Business priorities are shifting. Employees’ expectations are rising. Simply put, the world around us is changing. And so should your service desk. AI is everywhere, and now it is redefining ITSM to provide end-users with a superior experience. Why wouldn’t they, right? While building a self-service culture around IT…

The hardware and software required to deliver IT services are critical to running today’s organizations from an operational perspective – not to mention representing a major investment. It’s therefore crucial to ensure these IT assets are effectively managed, controlled, and protected. It’s also essential that any risk associated with the deployment and use of these…

How to Gain Executive Buy-in for ITSM Technology is critical for improving employee productivity and organizational efficiency, but getting new technology into the hands of those who need it most often takes time—a long time. The technology buying process can be complicated and unwieldy, filled with short- and long-term budget considerations and several stakeholders across…

Ivanti has signed a definitive agreement to acquire Cherwell, a global leader in enterprise service management (ESM) solutions. Cherwell has, for a long time, been a direct competitor of Ivanti in the ITSM space. Both Ivanti and Cherwell featured in the 2020 Gartner Magic Quadrant for IT Service Management Tools report, with Cherwell listed as…

Moving to a new ITSM solution is never easy and let’s face it, most people hate the software they use at work. Business software is often clunky, expensive, difficult to setup and frustrating to use. Countless hours are wasted trying to customise these solutions and they often require expensive professional services to get everything to…

The Complete Service Desk Health Check… . We’ll help you be the best you can be with our 4 point improvement plan. Our complete approach to establishing Service Desk excellence follows a structured process. We can help you identify where you want to be, where you are now, and how you can improve to deliver…

A successful CMDB can be vital for an organisation, or rather it should be! . The implementation of a CMDB, should herald the dawn of a new era: The transformation of an organisation from being a reactive and Technology/System managed based Service Provider, to being a truly proactive Service based Service Provider A CMDB enables…

Watch this video 2 minute video now. . . Whether you’re migrating applications to the cloud or ensuring your CMDB is accurate, you need a solution that can account for every change and over a period of time, observe the behaviour of your application for successful migrations and ongoing service delivery. Learn more about FireScope…

Develop Essential Skills for the Digital Era with ITIL® 4 Managing Professional ITIL® 4 Managing Professional builds on the content in the ITIL® 4 Foundation, to provide practical guidance for people who work in a wide variety of IT and digital roles. The Managing Professional (MP) stream provides practical and technical knowledge about how to…

What is Agile Project Management? It’s no secret that the Agile Model is fast becoming the preferred way to manage projects. Organisations, teams and even project management software are increasingly responding to a demand for more adaptive and evolutionary processes. And for good reason. In a fast-changing business world that needs to respond to rapid market and…

Pink Elephant’s E-learning training solution for organisations. Training for large teams and organisations can be difficult, time-consuming as well as expensive. Our Pink e-Learning Portal is the perfect cost-effective training solution for large teams and organisations that you and your colleagues can use at your desk or on the move, one that provides access to multiple world-class accredited…

We want you to obtain the highest-quality ITIL® 4 training. That’s why we are encouraging you to do some comparative shopping! Before you commit your organisation’s training investment to ITIL® 4 training, you will most likely want to research a few training organisations and we encourage you to do this in order to take full…

Get 35% off the examination fee for your ITIL® 4 Advanced Course. Pink Elephant South Africa is please to announce the ITIL® 4 Examination Promotional offer from PeopleCert and AXELOS which is valid till the end of 2020! Take advantage of this special offer and get certified in the globally sought after ITIL® best practice,…

The Service Catalogue Perspective: Do you really know what you want? . Service Catalogues seem to be the hot topic at the moment with many organisations deciding that they want one as indeed they should. A Service Catalogue can be an incredibly useful tool that helps raise the level of understanding between business and IT…

Imagine what you could achieve if your CMDB was service-aware, always up to date and required no effort to keep up. That’s the power of FireScope Secure Discovery and Dependency Mapping. . Organisations that attempt to track IT service configuration through manual efforts cannot keep up with the rapid pace of change and complexity in…

Our PinkScan is the only independent and objective assessment service of its kind and it can analyse the maturity of any number of your ITSM Processes! . All companies are most likely aware of their IT process capabilities. But what is not immediately obvious is whether these processes are operating at their optimum level, or…

10 Improvements Your Organisation Can Put in Place Using ITIL® 4 Ever feel like your organisation is on a treadmill trying to keep pace with change, with technology and, of course, changing technology? Savvy organisations know that to just keep pace with – much less try to get ahead of – their competition, they must…

Streamline and Adapt your HR Service Management. Make a profound impact on the quality of your colleagues’ daily work experiences and bring positive change to the whole enterprise. Cherwell HRSM is a purpose-built solution to automate and simplify the myriad of HR tasks associated with employee on-boarding, off-boarding, and role changes—and to integrate these tasks…

As our industry transforms and matures, last century standards for cross-team communication become less and less efficient. And in today’s digital world, the tiniest technical glitch can have huge consequences—requiring swift and flawless communication. Whether it’s a datacenter outage, a cyber-attack, an application failure, or a manmade issue, they’re all critical events which support centers…

Freeware to help address password challenges associated with remote workers. Password Notification enables IT admins to configure password expiration email reminders to be sent via their own SMTP server, letting IT admins communicate password expirations to remote users. Many password expiration reminders work well while in the office or on-network, but fail to notify users…

What IT Asset Management Looks Like in a World That Has Gone Fully Remote… Moving an entire company remote is more challenging than people think. For example, most medium to large-scale businesses have processes in place for onboarding and training new employees on both the hardware and software required to do their job. When you…

Outsourcing – it is still a viable proposition! Business end users are benefiting from increased availability and diversity of applications and devices, driving increased expectations for technical support wherever and whenever they need it. At the same time, cost pressures on the business are driving the need to migrate support to lower-cost channels and delivery…

8 benefits of remote learning / digital education! . With millions of professionals around the world working remotely for the foreseeable future, online training will no doubt reach even higher levels of popularity. . Technology has changed the possibilities within teaching and learning. Classes, which prior to the digital era were restricted to lectures, talks,…

Stay ahead of the game with the upcoming ITIL4 Specialist certification High-Velocity IT. . Many organisations have come to realise that to compete in today’s global economy they need to intensify their agility, speed-to-market, cost-effectiveness, and responsiveness. This means there is an increased focus and need for organisations to integrating new technologies, as well as…

AgileShift® has become more than a buzzword . The global pandemic has caught virtually every organisation off-guard and has seen many carefully detailed Business Continuity Plans ripped to shreds. The sudden changing of our carefully orchestrated business lives has been traumatic and has forced virtually every style of business to rework how they do business.…

Secure your remote workforce today.   If you’re not already using BeyondTrust’s Remote Support or Privileged Remote Access solutions, the free evaluations of these products has been expanded to 90 days to help you stay secure through this difficult time and help you manage the current remote workforce surge.   These solutions can: Enable remote…

Don’t be an april fool, stay in school! . Pink Elephant’s Virtual Classroom courses allow you to take part in our classroom training, without leaving the comfort of your own home or office! . Instructor-led virtual classroom courses can be taken online from anywhere – all you need is access to the Internet. With virtual…

Introducing An Even Smarter Way to Make Work Flow Cherwell Service Management 10.0 will dramatically improve IT efficiency, employee productivity and really moves us forward from an innovation perspective. SO, WHAT’S NEW? CSM 10.0 introduces expanded channels, new models of collaboration, ground-breaking machine learning and more. Smart Collaboration and Self-Service – Instantly bring the right people…

Support Remote Work Securely. . Our technology partner, BeyondTrust, is offering their Secure Remote Access solutions for free for three months, to help organisations support an increased remote workforce during the current pandemic. In times of crisis, good security practices are often the first thing to go. As COVID-19 has spread around the globe, many…

Join one of our virtual classroom courses or self-paced online courses from the comfort of your own home . Virtual-classroom Courses: Pink Elephants Virtual Classroom courses allow you to take part in our award-winning classroom training, without leaving the comfort of your own home or office. . How it works: Classes are delivered online by one of…

HOLY ITSM CONFERENCE, BATMAN!   From the moment Batman swooped into the conference centre in his Batmobile for the Sunday evening welcome reception and exhibition showcase opening through to the half-day workshops on the final day, Pink20 rocked the Bellagio in Las Vegas! But, don’t take our word for it…   Day 1 – Batman…

5 Vital elements of an Enterprise-Class HR Service Management Solution: Human resources departments are put in place to find outstanding people who can drive outstanding results. Finding these well-suited people, with the skill sets your company requires, is essential to remain competitive. However, at many companies, the vast majority of HR’s time is spent on…

A Checklist For ITSM Program Success: When establishing an IT Service Management (ITSM) improvement program, the most common questions that arise tend to be: “How do we get started?” “What is the goal?” “What critical knowledge do we need from People, Process, Product and Partners perspectives?”, etc. This is understandable, especially, since the ITSM program…

“A Service Catalogue or a Service Request Catalogue” The term Service Catalogue is commonly misused and can lead to confusion! Often the term is incorrectly used to describe a User Self-Service Portal, which is also colloquially termed as a Service Request Catalogue. This blog seeks to identify the source and effects of this confusion and…

Three Key Traits of the Business Relationship Manager Role: The Business Relationship Manager Role Embodies a set of competencies (knowledge, skills, and behaviours) that foster a productive, value-producing relationship between a Provider organisation and their Business Partners. These competencies can be leveraged through organisational roles (for example, in an IT Provider, the CIO typically has…

ITIL® 4’s Managing Professional Transition Course expires in October 2020!   The clock is now ticking on the ITIL 4 Managing Professional Transition (MPT). The ITIL Managing Professional course was launched with a one-year expiry date last year – and the countdown to its retirement in October 2020 has now begun. ITIL® 4 supports the existing investment that…

8 Questions you need to ask about your Change Management process We are often confronted with a belief that selecting a service management toolset will magically instill the discipline of service management within an organisation. It has been said many time before but having a service management toolset, even a really good one, only allows…

Understanding ITIL® 4. ITIL® 4 expands on previous versions by providing a practical and flexible basis to support organisations on their journey to the new world of digital transformation. It provides an end-to-end IT/digital operating model for the delivery and operation of tech-enabled products and services and enables IT teams to continue to play a…

Save time and money with Specops uReset® now!  Are password resets and account lockouts exhausting valuable IT resources?  We have an easy, cost-saving solution for you: Want to know how much you can save? Contact us on info.africa@pinkelephant.co.za For more info on our Automation Services, click here. For more info on all our services or…

Pink Elephant voted best large training organisation in the Netherlands!   Our Dutch colleagues took home GOLD in The Best Educator of the Netherlands (BOVNL) awards. On Thursday, January 9th of January 2020, the best Dutch training organisations from 2019 were again announced by Springest, the largest training comparison company in Europe. The Best Educator…

Self-Service isn’t Self-Serving! The Internet has transformed the way we shop – to the point where we take it for granted that a couple of clicks on a site such as Amazon will deliver a product to our doorstep the following day. It is easy to forget that the e-commerce world has had to learn…

Unify and Simplify Service Experiences for All Employees The award-winning Cherwell® Service Platform allows you to automate workflows, integrate systems, and improve employee productivity for departments inside and outside the traditional boundaries of IT.  Their innovative solutions for HR, Security, PPM, and Facilities, combined with codeless configuration, provides a simple and cost-effective way to make…

Organisations often expect a lot from self-supporting Agile project teams in today’s world. In a lot of organisations, the team velocity is the only KPI they notice and it is important to understand the influence of team dynamics on the velocity. Looking at the Agile manifesto, there is value some statements, like we value responding…

The Casualties of Frameworks Going to War In principle, the primary goal of an IT service management (ITSM) framework is to provide a published body of knowledge (BoK) so professionals can improve their ability to deliver value to the larger community they serve. However, most IT organisations struggle with a silo mentality regarding culture, processes,…

The many ways a Service Catalogue enhances business value… The Service Catalogue is an invaluable resource to the business. It plays a crucial role as the point of access to all products and services offered by IT and other departments. A Service Catalogue is used to define what an IT department does (and does not)…

PINK ELEPHANT ANNOUNCES THE LAUNCH OF THE ITIL® 4 FOUR ADVANCED COURSES! Further to the release of the new ITIL® Managing Professional Transition certification, Pink Elephant South Africa is excited to be the first to announce course dates for the industry’s first ITIL® 4 Advanced courses for the Managing Professional stream. The ITIL 4 Specialist –…

Blacklisting weak and exposed passwords is crucial. Read this business case to learn why blacklisting weak and exposed passwords should be a critical part of making sure your organization’s password policy is successful: Specops Password Policy Business Case Specops Password Policy helps you increase password security in your Microsoft Active Directory environment. You can use…

The King Price IT Service Desk – Underpinning Customer Experience. Today’s modern business is delivered on a platform of increasingly sophisticated technology powering operations across the organisation and usually resulting in an intimate interface with the customer that allows for the participation in the fulfilment of the service required and delivered. These days, time constrained…

5 Reasons Why Implementing ITSM is More Critical Now Than Ever Before. IT Service Management (ITSM) is the most widely followed paradigm for managing IT resources. Why do these organisations implement ITSM? Through a process-oriented approach, ITSM empowers IT teams to take a more structured approach to service management, increase transparency and accountability of the…

Cherwell introduces a Beyond Trust Integration! The BeyondTrust Integration mergeable application (mApp) provides functionality that enables secure, real-time remote support sessions. Using the mApp, CSM technicians and Customers can launch remote support sessions directly from CSM to encourage real-time collaboration and fast resolution of IT issues. Session details (ex: Chat conversation history) can then be…

CMDB – Offline Source of Trusted Data or Ongoing Updated collection of actual Data? Many organisations struggle with keeping track of what is within their IT enterprise environment and at best hope that they have a handle on IT asset controls for financial management governance.  Many IT operational groups have their own view of what’s…

Special ITIL® exam offer! a Do you want to get your ITIL®4 Foundation certification, or are you determined to obtain the required credits to become an ITIL®4 Managing Professional? a PeopleCert have two amazing offers for you! a 1. ITIL®4 Foundation EXAM: 30% off ITIL 4 Foundation exams This is exclusively for ITIL® v3 Foundation…

Pink Elephant SA runs Root Cause Analysis Specialist™ course (RCS) Albert Einstein said: “We can’t solve problems by using the same kind of thinking we used when we created them.” So why do we do Root Cause Analysis?  Average enterprises suffer more than 61 hours of downtime each year and an initial 54% of that…

6 Ways To Be A great Service Desk Manager. The Service Desk sees everything, speaks to everyone and deals with everything from forgotten passwords to Major Incidents. They are the unsung heroes of IT and are the IT single point of contact for many enterprises. Managing these heroes is no easy task, so we’ve compiled…

King Price Chooses Pink Elephant! The 1st of August 2019 sees the Pink Elephant meeting the “king” following a three-month transition of the King Price Service Desk environment to the Pink Elephant Global Service Centre in Woodmead, Johannesburg. Leading with a PinkScan™ ITSM Maturity assessment, Pink and King Price developed a strategic roadmap that culminated…

Calling all “ITIL Experts“… Are you ready for your next challenge? You invested countless hours, successfully manoeuvring your way through the multiple layers of the ITIL® v3 qualification scheme. You’ve become an “ITIL Expert, or are very close to it. Now you’re ready to apply your talents on your next adventure. Well, here it is… A…

Leading Organisational Transformation Winston Churchill once said, “There is nothing wrong in change if it is in the right direction.” Whether people perceive change as heading in the right direction or not, most fear change. How many times have you tried to introduce a new way of doing an ordinary business activity and been asked:…

What is the difference between a Help Desk and a Service Desk? By Kate Hamblin, IT Management Consultant @ Pink Elephant South Africa   “What’s the difference between a Help Desk and a Service Desk?” A question I frequently get asked on training courses. The Oxford English Dictionary states: Help – make it easier or…

According to “The Agile Service Management Guide”, Agile Service Management involves: “adapting Agile and Scrum values and practices to IT Service Management (ITSM) processes, process design and improvement activities.” Yet, elements of the Agile Manifesto can appear to contradict with tenets of the IT Service Management. For example, the favouring of: “Individuals and interactions” over “Processes and…

Take a look at the top trends to expect in the ITSM space in 2019 with Troy DuMoulin VP, Research & Development Pink Elephant “Well, another year has come to a close and it feels like it went by much faster than the last one! Or perhaps 2018 seems to have flown by on a rocket-propelled hoverboard because so…

The recent launch of the ITIL® 4 Foundation certification course and ITIL 4 certification scheme – and the retention of ITIL v3 certification courses – have left many folks with questions about which path they should take from here. Should you continue your ITIL v3 certification – or move directly to ITIL 4 certification? This…

Holy ITSM Conference, Batman! Calling all IT superheroes! Hop in your Batmobile and make your way to Pink20. Now in its 24th hugely successful year, our annual event is globally recognized as the world’s premier IT Service Management Conference. We live in a business era of superhuman challenges. Is your IT team up to the…