Speaker 0 | 00:07.459
All right, well welcome to another Dissection Popular IT Nerds, where we’re allowed to geek out with our fellow nerds and where we get to talk about technology with those that know the language and are interested in what we’ve got to share. Today I’m excited to introduce David Cole who believes in a heavy focus on ITSM and the value it brings to IT. So, David, tell us a little about yourself and why today’s topic is so important to you.
Speaker 1 | 00:32.646
Well, thank you, Mike. Yes, my name is David Cole. I have been in the IT industry for about 15 years now. Started with AT&T as an Internet support specialist and then moved up from another company called Impro Industries where I was a service desk. I started as a service desk analyst and moved to a service desk lead. And then I got to the… great company I’m working for now in RadSource Technologies, where I have started as a help desk technician and moved up to IT director within the span of four years. This issue, this this ITSM is a very focal point to what I do. I would not be where I’m at today without it because it is a platform structure that builds upon. just normal everyday IT service. That’s kind of sometimes we forget that that’s a very important thing when it comes to building an IT platform. You know, we we go into the actual technical infrastructures, we go into the networking infrastructures, but we never seem to go into the customer infrastructure, customer portion. That is what it is, whether some believe it or not, you know. We deal with customers on a day-to-day basis. Yeah,
Speaker 0 | 01:59.139
they’re the internal customers. And, you know, let me give you for a second, because, you know, for me, I grew up with help desk, just help desk and like ticketing system. And ITSM seems to be a refinement of that. Can you talk about what you feel are some of the differences between help desk and service desk or service management? You may have been headed right there when I interrupted you, but. Oh,
Speaker 1 | 02:29.222
no, no, no, absolutely. So, you know, when we consider help desk, help desk is more of a it. I guess I guess what I’m saying is it can be more diverse. It can you can be working on actual customer or employee issues while you’re there at your actual desk and you can actually be doing it in the office as well. It’s more of a kind of a homestead, but mobile to where most of service desk when you’re an actual service desk analyst or a service desk representative, you’re completely assigned to that area. You know, you’re not actually going on and actually fixing actual computers or working into the actual computers. I guess the desktop support where the help desk, you’re you’re you’re kind of you’re kind of moving a step above that to where you can actually start that process. That’s, you know, that’s normally how it goes.
Speaker 0 | 03:26.579
Right. So then talk to me a little about that position that you held as a service analyst. Were you doing, were you truly looking at the system and doing an analysis of what was flowing through the system and the metrics that were being collected? Or were you looking more at like what was going into the system and trying to. analyze that information and find those hidden nuggets that are in there or that hidden wisdom that those systems gather for us.
Speaker 1 | 04:02.930
It was more of gathering that is more of fact gathering that information, getting things put into the system, such as the employee information, employee system setup, setting up the actual note. Just like networking for getting, you know, using a lot of heavy of active directory was a big portion, creating certain groups for. I want to say customers, but, you know, I say customers all the time because they’re considered employees and customers. That’s like a. Yeah,
Speaker 0 | 04:40.028
I always thought of them the same way, because because to me, customer service was important. You know, I myself had like 10 years of customer service doing bartending and things like that. And so that focus on customer service, was huge to me so i always think of them as customers so by all means keep calling them customers um they’ll let us know they’ll call and complain if if they’re upset yeah i know i think they’re listening to us absolutely but i mean it and that’s how you know the service desk i was it you
Speaker 1 | 05:11.721
know it was my first real you know i did the internet support for at&t right but that was more you know, learning the system. I, you know, always say when I was there and I don’t know if, you know, a lot of people, I was there when U-verse first came out and, you know, we, we started that. So, you know, I was actually dealing with actual customers. I know U-verse is a taboo subject for some people, but yeah, I was, I was doing that. So I never really got into the actual, you know, computer portion of the process, working with certain systems like Active Directory, really going into. At the time when I was there, Exchange, you know, we have Office 365 now, but, you know, I did a lot in, you know, Exchange when it was set up before Office 365.
Speaker 0 | 06:00.382
Right. Back in the day of U-verse, that was the same time that we had, all of us had Exchange on-prem. We weren’t, we didn’t have SaaS models for email or there was, I mean, Gmail was out there, but it really wasn’t at that point or it was just starting to go get out there. Right. It hadn’t been adopted anywhere near like it is today with the, what is it, Google, I can’t even think of the name of it. But so that analysis position, what I think I hear you talking about is like the creation of the workflows around like onboarding a new employee. There’s not much to that. You create active directory. You give them their computer account. you add them to the Active Directory work groups or groups so that that hopefully, you know, you’ve got these things set up so that now provides some permissions in SharePoint and OneDrive and all kinds of different systems by that group measurement. Add them to group emails and all of those things. Otherwise, it’s a checklist that you have to go through and do each one of those individual things, which I’m sure you started off doing that. But as you’re… building it in inside of the ITSM, you start to have this thing that’ll walk you through it versus you having to look at that Excel spreadsheet or that paper document when you’re onboarding somebody.
Speaker 1 | 07:28.805
And, you know, it’s funny because that’s one of the biggest and funniest things as far as with, you know, ITSM, as far as the change of it, the way it is now than the way it was even seven years ago. You know, I mean, just looking at SharePoint and everything, it’s just, it’s just so fascinating. how extensive Office 365 is, the massive things you can do with that helps a lot with the systems. I mean, I don’t even think I can’t remember what the tool was that we used as far, you know, we use Microsoft Teams now, but I can’t remember what exactly Microsoft found previously before we use Teams to communicate. But I’ll forget it. So the tip of my tongue, I can’t think of it.
Speaker 0 | 08:12.213
Yeah, it was for work. No. work groups god windows for work oh god i’m showing my age yeah it was it was skype for business and then part of that it was um oh link and that it was yeah and there’s another iteration part of that and at that point i i and actually all the way up until teams it was all just that communication platform it was either just text IMs or maybe, you know, as it became Skype for Business, then we had some video added to it. But it wasn’t anywhere near the collaboration tool that Teams is today.
Speaker 1 | 08:55.934
Exactly. And honestly, that word that you just used is the biggest thing that I live with today and what brings me so passionate about ITSM, and that’s collaboration. I mean, I preach it to my team now. collaborate collaborate collaborate it’s it’s such a especially not just with us but with other departments other areas because you know and and you know this it gets a you know sometimes gets a bad reputation of you know we’re not the most friendliest people in the world and we’re not the most nicest people with um i don’t tell secrets right no there’s no secrets about this they know it we know it
Speaker 0 | 09:43.367
Just let me sit down.
Speaker 1 | 09:46.069
And it’s so funny because that’s you know, that’s the way I wanted to build the infrastructure I have today at Radsource Technologies. I wanted it to be, you know, I didn’t want it to be just if they if someone comes up or someone puts in a ticket and they come up and they say, oh, there’s an issue with it. Oh, well, that was an easy fix. Well, you could have did it yourself. No, I want them to feel that. comfortable enough to be able to come to us and talk to us every day. I always say my door is an open door policy. You know, always come in and talk to me. Make sure that, you know, because you want to communicate. You want to know what’s going on. Because the minute that there’s an issue, you know, everything’s great in the IT world when everything’s running all right. But as soon as something happens, you know, it’s IT. It doesn’t matter what it is. It doesn’t matter what’s going on, what it is, what happened. It is. And it’s not, hey, well, what’s going on? What issues are you having? It just won’t work. Just fix it. You know, those are things that are a constant thing that I’ve seen in the past, you know, 10, 12 years. And I’m pretty sure it’s been longer than that, you know. But that’s why I believe of building a better customer service oriented establishment with the group I have now. And I have a very young, young group. I mean, my team, I think the average age is 22, 23.
Speaker 0 | 11:12.816
Okay. Ooh, interesting. So all fairly young and new. How many of them? It’s not really relevant, but how many of them are degreed? How many of them?
Speaker 1 | 11:22.479
Go ahead. All of them. Very good question. All of them are.
Speaker 0 | 11:26.020
Okay. Associates or bachelors?
Speaker 1 | 11:28.480
Bachelors.
Speaker 0 | 11:29.621
Okay.
Speaker 1 | 11:30.401
I do have one.
Speaker 0 | 11:31.021
I don’t have one anymore.
Speaker 1 | 11:33.282
Well, it’s, and you know, I guess I’m. And it’s weird because, you know, we’re in a great state of Georgia here, but they have, I mean, the IT platform for all of the colleges here are amazing. I mean, I cannot stress that enough, whether it’s Georgia Tech, University of Georgia, the University of North Georgia. I mean, these I mean, they have a very good structured platform and all of my guys and girls have have went and just. Yeah. So, yeah, yeah, they all have degrees. It’s it’s it’s really, you know, unique because that’s an early age. You know, I mean, I do have like one or two of them are like twenty five and twenty six. But and I have. Oh, and I do have one. Oh, I guess I call him old guy like me. He’s 40.
Speaker 0 | 12:25.557
So,
Speaker 1 | 12:25.737
you know, I know. Right. Well, and it’s and it’s but but but it’s good. It’s. It’s just something I guess I believe in my I always when I when I when I started at improv and I eventually became, you know, I got the service desk and a technical lead. I have this theory to myself that I believe that we should start. You know, it’s great to have experience. There’s nothing wrong with having experience. Experience is amazing. But let’s having some of the younger people that are just freshly coming out. just freshly starting, you know, they have focus and that drive that they want to succeed. And they believe that they should be at the level of others. So they’re going to go harder and be harder as far as getting what they want. And, you know, I I never got to implement that until I got here. And yes, there are ups. There have been ups and downs because, you know, there’s a different structure when it comes to. the younger generation to, I don’t want to call myself older because I don’t think I’m old. Season. 45. Yes, season. That’s a much better term. But there is, and this is part of it, IT service management, because some of the things that you think of as would be common sense customer service things, sometimes it’s, I guess the dialect will confuse because-Okay.
Speaker 0 | 13:56.844
So here’s a question in a- kind of a challenge or almost um around exactly what you’re talking about right there with with this younger generation a majority of your your service people being of that generation um you know i had i struggled with my my team and and i had a diverse group all the way from others that were with me in the 50s um all the way down into some of these kids that are just coming out of um uh college or having associates and he pick up the phone, just call them. And the generation that’s 25 and younger, and maybe even older than 25, really don’t, they hate calling people on the phone. They don’t want to use the phone for a phone. And they’ll, but they’ll also, they’ll go out and find the information too. So they’ll do those searches. They’ll figure things out a little faster and find that information without having to go read the manual. so to speak. How do you what do you see around that? And, you know, one of the other things that I want to let the audience know is that some of the things that David has done recently, Brad source. is they’ve seen a 400% growth. When you started, you were alone in the IT department, and there were 50 coworkers, and now you’ve got 200 coworkers and an IT team of around 10. You mentioned interns, and I want to cycle or circle back to the interns, but let’s talk about that difference in the change in dynamics. So they’re probably contacting your… co-workers or customers through Teams and through IM more than they are calling them and more than they are emailing them? Or are they using email? Or how are you dealing with that?
Speaker 1 | 15:55.496
Well, that’s why I actually used Freshdesk to build a ticketing system. And most of their contacts usually, it’s a cross between the ticketing system that they use to contact them with. But that’s… It’s more for documentation because they’ve got to make document, document, document. But a lot of the other is is through teams, you know, and it is hard for that generation. I mean, you know, there’s been constant. There’s been times when I’ve said, OK, guys, why don’t you just go over there and talk to him? I mean, if you think talking to him on the phone is, you know, difficult, think about going over there and having to talk to him. But that’s what. But it builds their character. And that’s what I’m trying to build. I’m not trying to, and I tell them this all the time, I’m not trying to build a worker. I’m trying to build a future leader. I want them to be leaders. I want them to be able to do what I do, be able to talk to CEOs, vice presidents, managers, and then just be able to explain it, especially with the systems that I have, because, you know, I have two different groups. I have my system side and I have an ERP side, which, you know, they’re, they’re focusing my NetSuite administrators. They have to talk to people constantly. I mean, they have to actually talk to the CEO or vice presidents, you know, it’s, it’s, it’s a big thing. So they have to get those communications to where it can’t just be. through Teams. They have to do verbal communications, whether it’s through the phone. Yeah,
Speaker 0 | 17:37.526
they got to work it in on meetings and talk to these guys, especially the ERP group. Now, system admins, system admins can kind of disappear into the back room. They’re like, you know, just give me a pizza, man. Slide that red bull under the door.
Speaker 1 | 17:52.450
Yeah, exactly. And it is. And that’s what they have to do. And that’s one of the first things, you know, I, you know, when I have, I wanted them to, you know, and. This, like I said, this is just my way of doing things. You know, it wasn’t OK, well, let’s go into this meeting and, you know, I’ll do everything. No, I want them to put to the fire. They have, you know, because this is something that they’re going to have to do with these positions that they have. They have to know those communications. That’s why I think that, you know, that’s why we do a lot of collaboration in the actual IT room that I have. them. You know, we collaborate, collaborate, collaborate and talk through things because I want them to be comfortable talking. I don’t, you know, I mean, unless the employee is, you know, across the country, which we have, you know, all over the country, you know, I really encourage them instead of calling that person, go talk to them, set up a meeting with them, have a face-to-face interaction with them, let them know. What’s going on? Let them know that you’re concerned. Let them know what the issue is. I mean, that’s that’s honestly that’s part, you know, and I said it before. I think that we forget that that that is a pivotal part of I.T. is communication.
Speaker 0 | 19:20.764
I mean, it’s definitely something that is a common thread amongst all of the interviews I do. You know, and there’s a lot of talk about being able to do the business speak. But. But at the very least, going and talking to the person and finding out, well, what’s your goal? Because there’s lots of times where they say, I need you to make my Excel dance this way. And yeah, I can make it dance that way. But why? Because there may be, I may know of a report that’s going to pop out the exact answer that you’re trying to wedge out of Excel.
Speaker 1 | 19:58.361
Yeah. And, and exactly. And because, you know, a lot of people have that thing where, you know, they’ve, or, you know, there’s that, there’s that employee or customer who’s actually looked at a book for a couple of days and say, Hey, I’m the. I know exactly what I’m doing. If I tell you that I’m doing this, this is the way it needs to be. And then they mess it up and it’s, oh, you got to fix it for me.
Speaker 0 | 20:19.938
Yeah. And if you don’t, then it’s your fault. Back to the, you know, it’s got electricity running through it somehow. So it’s IT’s fault.
Speaker 1 | 20:29.605
Absolutely.
Speaker 0 | 20:30.806
When somebody outside of IT would ask me, what do you do? Or what are you responsible for? If it’s electricity or runs code, it’s my fault somehow.
Speaker 1 | 20:40.773
You know, I, um. And I hardly tell this story. And it’s funny because my wife and my wife actually worked for AT&T. She started as an Internet support specialist. But and she got me to the she helped me get the job and get set up there. Well, right before I had decided to move to Georgia because we were in Florida before and I was talking to this elderly lady and. I guess you understand this was in 2009. I mean, things were a lot different. I mean,
Speaker 0 | 21:19.497
I know that’s crazy because,
Speaker 1 | 21:21.758
jeez, I mean, it’s so crazy, but things were a lot different.
Speaker 0 | 21:26.440
We were on like our second iteration of the iPhone. Yeah. The Android phones were just really starting to get some traction. Yeah.
Speaker 1 | 21:37.085
Yeah, it was crazy. Well, she was asking for, she had called up and said she was trying to get virus protection. And I was like, okay, well, what type of computer do you have? What type of program you have? And she was like, well, I don’t know what that is. And I said, okay, well, what type of computer do you have? And she said, I don’t have a computer. So my mind is just boned. I don’t know what she’s talking about. I was like, well, ma’am, what do you need virus protection for? She was like, well. I need virus protection. I went to the store and they said, all I need is windows. So I’ve got windows in my house. And I didn’t know what to say after she said that. Because I was thinking, okay, you went to the actual store, bought this virus protection. I don’t know what you thought this was for. And you’re talking about you got windows in your house, but you have no computer.
Speaker 0 | 22:28.435
Oh, man. It just reminds me of that. And it used to be an email. It was never a meme or anything. Do you still have the box the computer came in?
Speaker 1 | 22:38.987
Exactly. Exactly.
Speaker 0 | 22:41.488
I’m going to leave it at that. If you don’t know what I’m talking about, then someday you’ll hear it.
Speaker 1 | 22:47.490
You know? It’s just one of those things that just reminded me of how people are just going to figure out what they want to figure out no matter.
Speaker 0 | 22:58.955
Yeah, I can’t even imagine. Oh, yeah. You know, I was… Actually, I got a phone call from a friend the other day, and he was trying to get on a Zoom meeting. And I spent like 10, 15 minutes talking to him and trying to help him out. And he lives in an assisted living, so he’s older. And I was like, you know, I just can’t envision what you’re trying to tell me. Go grab one of the nurses. See if they can help you with this. And he finally goes and gets one of the nurses, and they come back, and they’re like, oh.
Speaker 1 | 23:35.102
you don’t have any internet connection later oh i would have never thought to ask that question that’s well you know and it’s funny because that’s like the first that was the first servant that’s like the first i.t question is you know when someone has a computer um
Speaker 0 | 23:53.674
did you turn it on yeah have you turned it off and on you know
Speaker 1 | 23:59.178
Exactly. I mean, it’s one of those things. And it is different with the times. I have this thing where I have my guys always once every so often, I’ll show them a product back in the 80s to 90s and ask them, do you know what this is? Just because they’re so young. And I forgot what it was. It was a VCR. It was an 8-track tape. It was an 8-track tape and I showed it to them. Oh, my goodness. They did not know what was going on. I even showed it to my daughter because she was 16, and she looked at me and was like, what is this?
Speaker 0 | 24:36.820
I had one that thought they were like, they knew it. They nailed it. Oh, I know what that is.
Speaker 1 | 24:43.001
I know what that is. That’s a VCR tape.
Speaker 0 | 24:47.623
Oh, yeah. That’s so crazy. We keep thinking of different ways to test the youngins on, okay, what about this technology? You know what this is? Do you know why? No. Dial. Why do you dial somebody?
Speaker 1 | 25:02.304
Exactly.
Speaker 0 | 25:03.386
Invite somebody. Videotape. Because it’s not, we’re digitally recording things. We’re not videotaping anymore, but we still call it that.
Speaker 1 | 25:13.676
I know.
Speaker 0 | 25:15.236
Yeah. So let’s talk about the ITSM a little more. And what are the things that you find or where do you find value in it besides just the fact that it gives you a place to record tickets and make sure that somebody follows through on the tickets? How is ITSM metrics?
Speaker 1 | 25:36.849
Metrics, metrics, metrics, metrics. You know, determining who is actually coming as far as how many people you’re actually working with. You know, a lot of times with a lot of companies, and we had this, you know, we’re at Impro, and we’ve had this at, you know, here, the determination of how many tickets that you have can sometimes determine how many people that you actually need. You know, you have to make sure, you know, running those metrics and finding out that, hey, we have this many people. And we’re getting these many tickets. You know, like I said, when I first got there, we didn’t have anything. All we all I used to have the ticket before I implemented a ticketing system here. All that we did was just email, email me, email me, email. Well, trying to track all that, trying to be able to find out, hey, you know, even looking at times and dates or figuring out, hey, this person requested this. But you never got it done. What’s going on? Trying to. Trying to sort all that was just…
Speaker 0 | 26:42.078
Oh, man. And one of the things that I found out or found highly valuable about those is I’m trying to think of a kind way to say this, and I can’t. So this is part of the dark side of IT. This users or coworkers lie. And they’ll say, well, I emailed you, and what defense do you have? Unless you could prove unless you could find unless you could show that they didn’t and how do you prove that negative? You then you know, it’s so Well, I talked to you in the hallway. I talked to you when you were walking to on the floor That’s definitely one of the values of the system is trying to get everybody using that system so that the other managers can hold their people accountable and I can hold my people accountable for how well they responded, how quickly they responded, and whether they solved it or not, or whether they escalated it if they couldn’t solve it.
Speaker 1 | 27:42.237
And believe me when I tell you, trying to implement, that’s one of the things that has been growth for me as far as… getting into this position and getting these things changed, learning how to not force people, but convince. Forcing is one thing. If you force someone to do something, they’re not going to do it the way that you want them to. If you convince them, they’re going to do it the way. And trying to convince an entire group, especially as far as you get to, hey, you need to put a ticket in. Hey, don’t come and ask me this while I’m printing. Go I mean, it took it took it took months and months and months because we had to, you know, put that in everyone’s head, put a ticket, put a ticket. And there was of course, there was people that were upset. But like you said, it’s an accountability thing. You know, it helps with accountability as far as making sure that we’re doing what we’re supposed to be doing, not just them telling the truth, because there are times that, you know, what if, you know, I’ve seen it, you know, at. other places to where previous jobs where the customer claims they put a ticket in or they put a request in and they’ll say no yeah it’s yeah and it is and they’ll say to the moon that they’ve done it so i mean it’s you know you definitely want those accountability and metrics that you have so that you can be able to make sure that you’re providing the best service for that person
Speaker 0 | 29:16.292
This is one of the ways to upsell that too to those mid and those other coworkers is that, hey, I’m not doing this to get you in trouble. I’m asking for this so that I can hold myself and my team accountable for meeting these requests, for answering them, and how I answer them and how they answer them. If you approach it that way, it becomes less confrontational versus you’ve got to send one in or I’m not working on it. I ain’t doing nothing without a ticket. It’s, hey, I need this so that I can prove to my manager that I was doing something.
Speaker 1 | 29:59.577
And it’s not just, and the one thing I tell people, it’s not just, it’s not just. It’s all companies do this. Most big companies do this because they have to have those. They have to have those metrics. They have to be able to, you know, we’re building a system. You know, you can you can take that, you know, take it. You can take that system and build it into ERP systems, build it into your networking systems. And it all collaborates. ServiceNow is a big platform that does that. I mean, before I. Before I got my job here when I was working at Impro, you know, that’s one of the biggest tools that they use is ServiceNow. It is an amazing ticketing system that does just about everything that they need.
Speaker 0 | 30:52.824
So one of the things we always struggled with, and I wonder how well you’ve done with it, is, you know, I struggle to have somebody go back and consume or look at all of the data. that’s being captured by individual incidents and start to correlate for their current issues. The analogy I always like to use was, you know, putting on the Band-Aid, because we have a tendency to slap a Band-Aid on something that hurts. Find that sharp edge, and then we can get rid of that, and we can leverage our supply of Band-Aids somewhere else. But… How successful have you been with finding those nuggets of wisdom? How successful have you been with finding or creating some of those metrics? Because you were talking about that, and that’s one of the key pieces of it. ITSM is the metrics, metrics, metrics. Besides just the volume, what are other metrics? And were you ever able to find those recurring?
Speaker 1 | 32:02.898
Absolutely. So one of our… biggest metrics you know besides slas we use a lot of you know and i’m trying to use one of the ones i have as an example and it always comes back to my netsuite team one of the biggest aspects of using certain metrics is with with you know determining certain departments like we have a we have a actual customer service department that handles our you know, our actual machines for our systems. And one of the things that we use for metrics with them is to make a determination to ask to, hey, if there’s, if y’all are actually having this certain issue or if something’s certainly going on that all of you seem to not be able to put something into the system because, you know, they have to use the system constantly, especially NetSuite, what exactly is going on? Is it all of you that are doing it? Let’s see. Let’s look at every last one of you that’s put in a ticket on that certain issue, because you can break those systems. You could actually, especially with what I use now is Freshdesk. And one of the biggest things that we can do with Freshdesk is do reports that can make a determination of a certain amount of people as far as if they’re having those issues, if there’s a group, what’s going on with it. And. we can look at each one of those tickets that they all put in and say, okay, well, the determination is that all of y’all are having the same problem. We need to step back and look at what’s causing that major issue.
Speaker 0 | 33:45.447
Okay. 300 plus categorizations of different types of issues. And I just got to the point where we weren’t getting any valuable information out of it. And because it took three minutes, three to five minutes to click through all of those because we forced them in the workflow of the ideas of the ticket. I just wiped that off and said, okay, give me five classifications. Is it desktop? Is it network? Is it, you know, give me these five and move on. And then let’s start looking for the recurrent issues and start digging into it just to expedite the speed with which people could start tickets and start working on the solution.
Speaker 1 | 34:30.752
Yeah.
Speaker 0 | 34:31.692
Yeah. What can I go ahead?
Speaker 1 | 34:34.633
We kind of. So when we are when we’re looking at it, the first thing, you know, because you want to look at the three or four basic things, you know, is it an incident management? Is it problem management? Is it a change management? So you want to so you want to make sure if it’s one of those, those three things are going to be your main things, incident problem or change, because that’s. that’s what’s in the that’s what’s going to be even is even incident and problems some you know They seem to correlate with each other. That’s part of the idea.
Speaker 0 | 35:09.548
I was going to ask you for a definition between the two.
Speaker 1 | 35:12.411
Well, you know, I’m trying to I’m trying to make sure I say it correctly, because I guarantee you, if I don’t, there’s going to be because, you know,
Speaker 0 | 35:20.918
your team can come back at you.
Speaker 1 | 35:22.819
You know, and an incident is something that happens. I guess you would say it’s rare. It’s not something that’s reoccurring to where a problem is something that they’re constantly having.
Speaker 0 | 35:36.058
Right. OK.
Speaker 1 | 35:36.818
Makes sense. And and and it’s you know, you want to make sure that you get that. And even then, you still want to have with those requests, too. So I usually have I try to I try to keep it as incident problem request because putting change, that’s something, you know, which is basically a request. Change and requests are the same. Exactly. And for us right now, I think we’ve broken it down to two just incident and request. Well, problem and request, because some people even have an issue with, say, an incident. But if you break those down to those two levels and then go from there, you know, you’re going to have to have a category of whether it’s an issue with the network, whether it’s an issue with always network. Yeah. You know, an actual hardware issue. ERP, you know, there’s going to be a breakdown of those things. You’re going to have to break them down. Now, y’all breaking them down to 300. That I can’t imagine.
Speaker 0 | 36:40.242
It just grew over the years. And, you know, we acquired other businesses and we had, you know, company, department, manager. You know, we just had so many different things. It was ridiculous. Yeah.
Speaker 1 | 36:55.848
Now, we’ve broken it down to because. we’ve kind of broken it down to that level to where we have manager issue problem. We even have it to where we can, if there’s an issue or if there’s a problem with that person, we’ll even have that, we’ll even set it up to have that manager involved if it’s something that’s necessary for him to be involved in. But, I mean, you’re going to have to break some of those categories down. You’re going to have to break those categories down to have them to where, You want to be as specific as possible so that not only to understand what the issue is, but to be able to give a good explanation to that person of how that issue was resolved. Because you’re going to have to get a resolution or explain to them that, no, there’s no fixing to that issue. We’re going to have to do something else.
Speaker 0 | 37:54.033
I want to dive into a little bit more of your experience. experience and the things that you’re learning and growing on right now that, you know, helped get you from being one of the service analysts into this director role. Talk to me about building this team because you’ve gone from a team of one to a team of 10 and you’ve got all of these young ins and you talked about an internship. Talk to me about that and the growth of that because that itself is a whole journey. and learning how to do that. What are the things that you feel that you’ve learned over the last few years doing that?
Speaker 1 | 38:34.240
Well, besides the fact that I’m a lot older than I seem. No, it has been one of the most blessed experiences I’ve had because I realized it’s that old adage, if you’re the smartest person in the room, then you need to get to a bigger room. And I feel that, you know, and that’s the biggest thing. I feel that the people that I have on my team are just so intelligent, but not just that, but they’re just, they’re so, I guess the word I’m looking for is, you know, I want to say, I don’t want to say conversationalists,
Speaker 0 | 39:17.830
but,
Speaker 1 | 39:18.870
you know,
Speaker 0 | 39:19.631
they-There’s an irony to that, but go ahead.
Speaker 1 | 39:22.532
I know, right? But they they they wanted, you know, when I picked them, I just I didn’t pick for just, OK, well, they know, you know, they know how to use the system. They know what they’re doing. They seem to have the smarts up there. No, I needed people that were not afraid to be able to have a conversation. And in this day and age, that’s hard, you know, an actual face to face conversation. And that was one of the biggest things. Well. There’s only a few, you know, I always tell I have an IT help desk technician. I have only one right now. And I tell him all the time that. It’s a temporary position. The reason why is because all four IT help desk technicians have moved on to other things. They’ve all been promoted in-house. My first IT technician, he he ended up becoming because he you know, his his main focus was network. And at that time, I had an actual vendor. I was helping us with network. So. I worked with him and he was able to teach him all the functions of that network. And he’s now and, you know, that was four or five years ago. He’s now the senior network administrator for the entire company. And then the second IT help desk technician I had, he’s he’s actually my IT manager in charge of everything while I’m gone. And I mean, he’s as smart as the whip. I, you know, I purposely pick these people, you know, myself. There was no I actually am. I’m about to use another another system. I actually use LinkedIn to find all these people. Every person that I found just about from LinkedIn. And I sent them a message, asked them if they wanted to get an interview. I saw what they had on there. And I just, you know, I made sure, you know, I’ve had people come in here that, you know, for these interviews that I’ve talked to that, you know, yes, they knew their stuff. I mean, it was like talking to a road.
Speaker 0 | 41:32.944
Yeah, so I find that really interesting because, you know, I traditionally would, I’ve actually left it to my help desk manager or my service desk manager, and I’d have them write the job description of what they’re hoping for, and we post that out on the job boards, the different ones. But you’re actually talking about going and doing the headhunting and the recruiting yourself through LinkedIn. Yes. That’s interesting. Yeah. The growth that you had, I inferred that you were dealing with a single location, but you’ve talked about having people all over the country, too. So how many different locations are you dealing with?
Speaker 1 | 42:14.726
Three locations, four locations actually right now. We have a location. We have three locations here in Georgia, and we have one location in Las Vegas. But we also have like a sales and service team. Our field service and sales service technicians are all over the country.
Speaker 0 | 42:32.560
Okay.
Speaker 1 | 42:33.380
So, yeah. So we’re, yeah.
Speaker 0 | 42:35.921
The co-workers are spread out everywhere. The IT team is, how spread out is the IT team amongst the four locations?
Speaker 1 | 42:44.665
We don’t have anyone technically in Las Vegas, but they’re spread between our Beaufort office and our Lawrenceville offices. So they’re between those two offices.
Speaker 0 | 42:55.969
So give me, I did not do well at geography before part of those. locations.
Speaker 1 | 43:02.472
They’re not even 20, about 35, 40 minutes away.
Speaker 0 | 43:05.855
Okay, cool. Not too bad, but it’s still enough that you can end up with different cultures in both of those different offices and, or, you know, the locations that we had were about 45 minutes apart and we ended up with an us versus them mentality between the two groups, which was a little frustrating and it was something that was. I tried to continue to bring everybody together to make more of a cohesive team, but there was still some of that, you know, oh, those guys always get this or those guys always get that. Have you run into that even with a small team?
Speaker 1 | 43:44.655
I’m going to be honest with you. No, because I was afraid that was going to happen. And that’s one of the reasons why I’ll spend. day, you know, I’ll spend it at the corporate office where I’m at right now, as far as the area, but I will also take at least a day, at least two days, one or two days a week to make sure that I’m over at the other office, you know, making sure that everything’s okay over there, especially with my team. I, they’re my family. I mean, I, I mean, I know that’s like a corny thing to say now in this nowadays, but these guys, I would, you know, and I’m not saying that because I hope they listen to this or nothing like that, but I would not be where I’m at today without their assistance. I mean, they’ve helped me. Yes, I was I was I was a person of one. And then, you know, I had some ideas, made some changes. And, you know, I started growing and getting these positions within the span of four years. You know, my second year I was supervisor. My third year, I became manager, then director. But I would not be that way without the help of these guys. So I want to make sure that I take care of each and every one of them and make sure that that. If there’s an issue that they’re having, they can come talk to me. If there’s problems that they can’t figure out, we all sit down and figure that out together. You know, one team, one fight. I guess that’s the Navy person in me because I was in the Navy. But, you know, that’s, you know, that’s just one of those things I believe in.
Speaker 0 | 45:23.094
So let’s swing directions one more time.
Speaker 1 | 45:27.077
Okay.
Speaker 0 | 45:28.058
What are you thinking about or what are you AI, AI and ML? and LLMs, you know, all of these things that are coming at us now. I see AI and what it’s doing for, like, the phone system and the UCAS and that collaboration. How much do you foresee it affecting the ITSM? Because I see it affecting it huge, but they’re not talking about it yet. But give it a year. And… Every one of the ITXMs, all three of them that you mentioned, will be talking about it. I guarantee they’re already working on incorporating it in.
Speaker 1 | 46:07.839
I was going to say, I thought I saw something the other day from a Fresh Desk letter. I get everything about them talking about AI. Yeah, yeah, I’m pretty sure I did, yeah.
Speaker 0 | 46:18.766
They’d be foolish if they weren’t automatically already starting to look through every one of the tickets that we’ve put into the system, all of the descriptions, all of the interactions, and start really… you know, digging out those problems, as you call them, within the system so that we can go fix problems and remove all of those recurrent issues. So I foresee that. I foresee the ability of the technicians that are answering the calls as they’re talking to the person that suddenly a screen pop is happening, telling them, OK, try this, And it’s not just a set script, but it’s a dynamic script based off of what the system is hearing in the phone call. So these AI systems are going to listen in on our calls and suggest solutions.
Speaker 1 | 47:12.933
And that’s, you know, honestly, that’s I don’t know if that’s a bad idea. I don’t think that’s not I don’t think that’s a bad idea for that. I don’t need to even. Yeah, I mean, it’s going to definitely, you know, when I was in AT&T and we had it to where. We set it up to where, OK, we had a basic process flow to where if you, you know, there was never any thinking from us. We always had to follow that process. Customer call in, ask for this, go to this. If this didn’t work to go to this, this and this. And then if this didn’t work, go here, here, here. Yeah. I mean, that’s kind of the only difference now is that, you know, it’s going to be fully functioning. that if you have that problem, it’s probably going to think five steps ahead and tell you exactly what you need to do. It’s very interesting. I mean, I would think that most of the systems are going to go with that, especially the bigger brand systems like Zendesk, ServiceNow.
Speaker 0 | 48:16.187
They’re all going to learn from the call center because actually that’s what we’re seeing the most growth of this right now is the call centers are doing it. I mean, in one sense, what you were working with at AT&T was a call center, but it was that blending between that service desk and call center. And so the call centers are really leveraging this, but the Zendesk, ServiceNow, FreshDesk, ZohoDesk, all of them are going to latch onto this too. Either that or they’re going to wait for somebody else to build everything and then they’ll just buy a module and integrate it.
Speaker 1 | 48:49.681
Exactly.
Speaker 0 | 48:50.821
And then charge us for it. So you got any final thoughts for me? You got any other nuggets of wisdom to drop? What’s one of the barriers that you broke through? What’s one of the things, one of the challenges that you ran into in your career that you remember struggling with and overcoming?
Speaker 1 | 49:14.931
I guess the initial, the biggest thing I had was actually getting into the field itself. I went to school, I got sent to Kaiser University through the military in Florida, in Jacksonville, Florida. And I did four years, you know, got my bachelor’s degree. And regardless, you know, when I moved here, it was, OK, you have your degree, but how much experience do you have? And it was not, you know, and even though I didn’t have that experience, you know. I you have this mindset that if you have that education, that’s all you need. And that is like the biggest misconception that most people think that if you if you go to school. You’re going to get, you know, I mean, and God bless them. But, you know, I’ve actually looked at things where it says, you know, you know, especially with the interviews I’ve done within the last seven years. You know, the first thing that the person thinks is, OK, well, I’m supposed to get seventy five thousand dollars as soon as I get out of school. I’m supposed to get eighty to one hundred thousand dollars as soon as I get out of school. That’s exactly what I’m supposed to get. And it doesn’t work that way. And I’ll admit, I had that mindset. And I didn’t go to, it’s not like I was in school, like when I was a kid, you know, I went to school in around 2014, 2015. So, I mean, and this was after AT&T. I mean, this was after AT&T. So I went to school, and then I figured I was going to get, and then when I finally got the position, which was in pro industries, you know, I thought I knew as much as I. I thought I knew so much and realized that I didn’t know anything. You know, I didn’t know the whole concept of actual business IT to where, you know, especially service desk IT learning. You know, one of the things I will say and I’ve done, there’s not many schools that initially teach you the entire aspects of Windows, Windows products such as Active Directory. You know, you don’t know, you know, you know, and I’ll never forget it. I had this I had a wonderful, wonderful lady. She was my service desk manager and she came to me one day and she said, you know, you said you were experienced in it. Windows and you were experienced in Active Directory and you were experienced in this. And then she her voice got real high. She’s like. well, you really weren’t at all, were you? You really showed that you really didn’t know any of these things. And when she said that to me, I felt like as big as an ant because I thought I knew so many things. And it just, I remember going home feeling dejected that, God, she made me feel like I was as big as an ant. I didn’t know what to do. And I went home and I was talking to my wife and she was looking at me, you know, she’s my biggest supporter. Wonderful, wonderful, wonderful woman. biggest supporter I’ve ever had. And she said, okay, well, let’s think about it. Let’s talk. You’re doing okay. You’re still getting up. And when I woke up that next morning, I said, I’m going to prove her wrong. And that’s what I’ve done my entire life. That’s the biggest thing. If there’s any takeaway that I can say to anybody, if anyone listens to it, people are going to tell you that you can’t do, especially in the IT world, you’re not going to be able to do this. You’re not going to be able to learn this. Prove them wrong. That’s all you got to do.
Speaker 0 | 52:55.312
Go figure it out. We’ll find the information. Go dig it up. That’s so much of IT right there is just being willing to go learn. Yeah. I don’t have an answer right now. Let me go research that and I’ll get back to you. But make sure you get back to them because it’s showing that you can’t be trusted.
Speaker 1 | 53:15.457
I tell my guys all the time, if you can’t find it, Google it.
Speaker 0 | 53:18.758
Yeah. Here, Google foo. How strong is your Google foo?
Speaker 1 | 53:22.499
There you go. There you go.
Speaker 0 | 53:24.780
Oh, man. So so cycling back and kind of following up with what you were just talking about. Yeah. The what I thought I knew and what I actually knew when I got out and had that bachelor’s were completely different because I didn’t take advantage of any of the internships. So in those internships, they’re valuable both to people like you did who are trying to create a team. When I was starting to build my team, I was looking for college students who. Just could give me like 10 to 15 hours a week. And I just bring them in and help them cut their teeth on the help desk, get them talking to people, interacting, learning how to troubleshoot and do that kind of stuff. That helped me supplement the team, find people or have a pool of people to churn through to look for those bright stars. And there’s some. these associate campuses out there and I’m not even sure what to call them besides associate campuses that have like externships they paid or they they would have their students go and work for a company for 120 160 hours so that they got some experience so that when they left that program they could always go and say okay I worked at this organization for you know two months and and it helps your career get started and get moving. So good advice.
Speaker 1 | 54:57.092
Yeah, we did. When we started this internship, it was actually this summer. We had an issue with our database and we needed help with getting that cleaned up. And it was just happened to trying to hire another company to get help in there. No, let’s just get a few interns in here and let’s see what they can do. And they were amazing. They did an excellent job of helping us clean up the database. And. I was talking to our HR manager and I said, hey, is there, you know, we’ve got the majority of it done. Most of them went to school because they had to go back to school in August. And we said, well, there’s a couple who are requesting this day. Can we keep them on for maybe, you know, and the biggest thing I tell them is if this is going to affect your school, you’re not going to do it. But, you know, they wanted to do, they said, if we can do two days a week, that would help. And It’s giving them, like you said, giving them the experience, letting them actually deal with the work environment. I actually have them in meetings and let them see how meetings go. I want them to get the whole aspect of how business is run.
Speaker 0 | 56:07.467
Yeah, it’s important that experience and just just sitting in the room and being present to listen. And they don’t have to participate and give you feedback. Maybe they see something that I didn’t. But as long as we have that conversation, give them the experience and give them a chance. But it’s important if you’re listening and you’re new to this stuff, grab those experiences, learn. And heck, if you’re sitting on the help desk or on the you’re working with that ITSM, ask for that opportunity to sit in that meeting, you know, and just learn. And we always used it as a proving ground, not only to let them cut their teeth, but to let them find. the area of IT that they liked. You know, you can send them into development. You can send them into networking. You can send them into system admin. You can send them. We’ve had people go from IT into operations and start working in operations. And they enhanced that. They found themselves interested in the type of work that the business was doing and got a chance to grow there. And then they had that IT knowledge, too, so that they became even more valuable to the rest of their team members. Because now, you know, somebody’s having some simple, how do I make Excel dance this way? Oh, here, I got you. You don’t need to put in a ticket. I got you. And that helps their coworkers.
Speaker 1 | 57:38.235
Exactly. I mean, it’s just, you know, you should always try to see. Because I think that was one of the biggest things. I had a professor, Dr. Figueroa. He would always tell me that. You know, the biggest misconception is that if you say I’m in I.T., oh, you’re just working on a computer and that’s it. You know everything about that computer. That’s all you know. And you’re supposed to know everything regardless of it. No, there’s different points of it. I mean,
Speaker 0 | 58:05.952
yeah,
Speaker 1 | 58:06.372
it was it. I mean, the spectrum is so, you know, I I tell them all the time, you know, there’s more than just systems. There’s more than just networking this morning. just software. There’s more than just programming. You’ve got to build to those aspects and figure out what you want to do.
Speaker 0 | 58:26.402
Yeah. And one of the ones that we haven’t touched on, and it’s its own whole speciality now, security. Oh, man.
Speaker 1 | 58:34.888
Oh, my goodness. You know, that’s a big one right now. I have two of my guys, they actually, that was my IT manager, that was his major. And I believe, gosh, I can’t remember. I think my NetSuite supervisor, I think it was, it was at our computer science, but I know my IT manager, that was his major, was on security. Yeah, security. And he’s just showing it every day. I mean.
Speaker 0 | 59:01.649
It’s good. A huge place for him to be is in that choke point in there. Although it’s a lot for him to do and it’s hard to wear those two hats, especially with security. It’s got to be something that’s 365, 24-7.
Speaker 1 | 59:16.730
Yeah. And my network and my senior network administrator, I call them, you know, they act like brothers because they work together so well and they work together with those with those things. I mean, they both complement each other as far as with working with each other, especially with our security portion. Plus, we also have a vendor that we help with that helps us with it. You know, we went and got we went and. looked at a few systems because when I first got here, we really didn’t have a true security system that was, you know, it wasn’t something that you see, you know, I mean, and I went to a lot of different. conventions just to take a look at some of the best ones and we ended up getting the checkpoint which you know i’m promoting checkpoint but i believe hands down you know they’re one of the best there is we’ve we’ve had so many you know when i when we first did our first pen test i mean we had um the sheet was about the sheet of information of issues that we had was probably as big as a dictionary i mean it was we had so many faults and so many hits And by the time the next year rolled around with the help with that system, I mean, it knocked it down 75, less than 70, 75 percent of it was knocked down. So, I mean, it’s a very important tool to have with it. I mean, cybersecurity now, you know, we get hit each and every day. I run tests with our employees just about each and every day just to make sure that keep them on their toes at least two to three times in a span of. three months to make sure that they’re not opening up attachments. They’re not supposed to be opening up, making sure they’re not clicking on emails. We have to, you know, it’s a constant thing that we have to do. I don’t probably told my secrets. If you hear, they’re going to know now, oh, that’s what he’s doing. That’s why I keep getting that information. But, you know, it’s got to be done.
Speaker 0 | 61:17.127
Now we all have to do that. I mean, it’s a constant thing. It’s now it’s just part of every life is having those, those phishing campaigns that are driven by the IT department. which is like, it’s frustrating that we have to do it, but it’s something that we’ve got to make sure that everybody keeps on their toes for. Well, you know, David, this has been a great conversation. I really enjoyed our time together and that conversation and the focus on ITSM because everybody, you know, as we become directors and CIOs and get to those upper levels, we start to just take for granted that core component. of what IT does and that IT service. It’s just the cost of doing business. So it’s nice to talk to somebody that’s passionate about it and cares and still focused.
Speaker 1 | 62:10.079
Well, thank you for having me, Mike. Yeah, that is my focus. That is the one thing that I believe in. If anybody’s here, keep pushing. Keep pushing to that step. Don’t worry about it. Go ahead and try to get ITIL, which is part of it. and just keep going with your IT management. And, I mean, you can’t go wrong. Customer service, service to the customer is a most important thing in the IT field, whether some believe it or not. Yeah,
Speaker 0 | 62:38.996
the customer service is the only differentiator is the quick way I always say it. But as we come to another close of Dissecting Popular IT Nerds, I want to invite all of our listeners to comment and rate the podcast. Let us know how we did. So, please. Be sure to drop that like and let us know wherever you get your podcast from, whether it’s from the iTunes store or from Spotify. You know, just give us some feedback. We’d appreciate it. Thanks, everybody.
