Handling requests – Outlook is a NO GO

Surprisingly often mail is used to exchange important information about requests instead of using the organization’s request management tool. One could think that this happens mainly outside of IT when handling HR requests or requests to the finance department. Well, surprisingly enough this is found in many many IT departments.

So, why is this a problem?

• Information sharing Whenever information is exchanged via email the information for the Organization as a whole is lost because it rests in personal inboxes.

• Reinventing solutions over and over again If information is berried in emails others can not find already developed solutions. They often reinvent solutions for the same kind of request over and over again. For the Organization, efficiency and effectiveness drifts away and knowledge can not be converted to assets.

• Statistics are wrong Quantitative indicators are most likely not accurate because up to 40 % of communication is done via email. Performance Indicators like amount of interactions per case etc. are not reliable potentially leading to suboptimal decision making.

What can you do?

Check your request management tool for:

• Mention function Can you easily involve people to join information collection within a request’s note field and collaborate smoothly?

• Make the tool as easy to handle as emails The reason why people love email is the unstructured form. Unfortunately most Service Management tools are by far too complicated to support that. Simplify, simplify, simplify or use 4me.

• Explain to people why this is important If people understand why the usage of the request tool is important and the tool supports easy and smooth collaboration than email exchange will decrease.

• If you still get requests via emails you can simply forward that email to a specific address. The automator figures the original sender and registers the request for the sender with a friendly hint to use the tool for additional information exchange.