Pink Elephant expands on service offerings

Pink Elephant today announced the further expansion of its IT management best practice service offering to the market.

“In what looks to be a potentially challenging year, economically, our customers are asking us to deliver more solutions that focus on how to achieve the efficiencies driven by the various best practice frameworks we specialise in,” says Regional Director, Neil Petford, “and to this end, we have developed a series of workshops and introduced new globally trialled toolsets to enable the customer to practically realise those benefits, keeping within our cautious aggression approach to the African market.”

"With the advent of ITIL V3, Project Management for IT Service Management has been thrust into the limelight and has become a very important delivery mechanism for a successful IT service management strategy. It is with this in mind that Pink Elephant has launched a set of 'how to' workshops specific to project management, to assist project team members in delivering IT services,"adds Robert Kent, Director of Professional Services.

Complementing Pink Elephant's certified project management education, these workshops have been developed in order to bridge the gap that currently exists between formal Prince2 certification and the real business world. All of the workshops are aimed at practically showing how to apply the various processes and products that can be found within Prince2.

To complement this approach, Pink Elephant has also included a PMBoK (Project Management Body of Knowledge) Fundamentals workshop, which gives people insight into the toolsets required to execute project management effectively. These toolsets are found to be useful in executing the Prince2 methodology more effectively.

Based on market analysis and demand, Pink Elephant has also launched the three-day internationally accredited and certified Kepner & Fourie: “Thinking works - problem solving and decision-making” workshop. This workshop relates directly to the ITIL V3 Problem Management process, and specifically, the logical steps required to effectively identify and resolve the root cause of one or more service incidents. Says Ian Clark, ITSM Director at Pink: “This workshop provides our customers' problem management staff with a common approach and language that will enable more effective participation in the operational management of the company at a time when the economy demands a proactive stance.” A unique aspect of the workshop is its emphasis on application to own-job concerns.

Focusing more towards the people aspect of the organisation, Pink Elephant has also introduced the globally acknowledged “ABC of ICT” series of events. The attitude (A), behaviour (B) and culture (C) within ICT organisations are often seen as inhibitors to the introduction of service-orientated excellence, and this workshop series seeks to create dialogue and discussion to bring organisationally unique ABC issues into the open.

Once identified and accepted, recognised action and outcomes can be planned and agreed under the facilitation of a Pink Elephant Management Consultant. “We have found these events to be particularly useful in strategic IT planning sessions,” says Clark, “where sometimes a technology solution overlooks the importance of the attitude of those assigned to deploy and use the tool.”

“We have designed these products with our customer requirements in mind, as well as using them as a further tool to enhance the skills of our service desk resources, which operate within those customer environments,” adds Petford. “All indications are that we are moving into difficult times where the realisation of efficiencies will be key and the practical application of best practice theory comes to the fore. We will maintain our objective to be the brand that organisations look for to deliver that goal.”