Hello… am I a subscriber?

When registering for pay TV, one typically initially selects a package from a catalogue. This package consists of numerous channels to can select from. You select the channels you are interested in and then, hopefully, all goes well and you can watch the channels you have selected.

When placing a query at the provider, the provider will know who you are, what package you have and what channels you are entitled to. This allows the service provider to manage a profile on you, which then aids them in targeted marketing campaigns. These are usually quite annoying, but when you have a problem, this profile breeds a feeling of confidence in the service provider.

When we look at ESM, we typically only carry data relative to who the person is, but why not build a profile of the person too. What applications does s/he use, what levels of access does s/he have, what does his/her operating environment constitute?

This information becomes important when incidents, problems or changes interrupt the production environment.

Would it not be useful when doing change planning to understand exactly how many users you will be impacting? Again, would it not be useful in the case of a network outage to rather send a targeted notification via SMS to the relevant people and not the whole campus/organisation?

This fact also remains true with the on-boarding and off-boarding of employees. When someone joins the organisation, they would typically have a role, and this role entitles them to certain artefacts inside the organisation. As part of the on-boarding process, why not subscribe the employee to each of the artefacts assigned to him/her, including software. This will have the net effect of having a user profile with various counts of attributed artefacts. When this same employee leaves the organisation, it becomes much easier to off-board him/her as the organisation would know exactly, via this subscription mechanism, what the employee profile consists of and thus what should be returned or removed.

Make use of the service catalogue

The result should be that the organisation is in a better position to determine perceived risk, impact as well as aid in the management of service expectations from a user community perspective. All of this should result in an improved and more professional service experience, which should breed confidence in the ability of the service provider.

Most modern service management tools currently in the market have the ability in some way to manage subscription. This would typically be initiated from the service catalogue and then managed to ensure the subscription profile stays relevant and accurate. The ability of the service management tool to highlight the customer subscription profile at operations time would also result in an improved understanding of the manner that the customer should be handled, as well as the user behaviour, as it would typically also be easier to trend the user and the role due to this combined view of data artefacts.

Another potential beneficial outcome of subscription should be an improved view of the service management and organisational community. When the service provider does some introspection for capacity planning, this understanding of the organisational profile will also provide some insight into environmental usage and relevancy.

Where to start?

Starting the usage of subscriptions can be perceived as a mountain, but doesn’t have to be. As everyone in the market knows: “Keep it simple.” Start with a well-known and understood application and limit the subscription profile initially to individuals. Use this to investigate and streamline the process; use a couple of weeks to bed this down and integrate this into the operational environment, don’t just leave it as part of master data. Then market this new capability to the organisation and identify the next item.

Understanding what our customers and users are up to and what our operating environment consists of provides a mechanism to understand, manage, save and justify cost. An understanding of the user community profile provides a better service experience and introduces confidence from the community to the service provider, which breeds a more professional operating and service environment.

The use of subscription can help if addressed correctly.

Good day…. I am a subscriber!