Shoe Repairs And Several Other Things When I Was 7
My Dad repaired most of our shoes believe it or not, I can hardly believe it myself now. With 7 pairs of shoes always needing repairs I think he was quite clever to learn how to “Keep us in shoe Leather” to coin a phrase!

He bought several different sizes of cast iron cobbler’s “lasts”. Last, the old English “Laest” meaning footprint. Lasts were holding devices shaped like a human foot. I have no idea where he would have bought the shoe leather. Only that it was a beautiful creamy, shiny colour and the smell was lovely.

But I do remember our shoes turned upside down on and fitted into these lasts, my Dad cutting the leather around the shape of the shoe, and then hammering nails, into the leather shape. Sometimes we’d feel one or 2 of those nails poking through the insides of our shoes, but our dad always fixed it.

Hiking and Swimming Galas
Dad was a very outdoorsy type, unlike my mother, who was probably too busy indoors. She also enjoyed the peace and quiet when he took us off for the day!

Anyway, he often took us hiking in the mountains where we’d have a picnic of sandwiches and flasks of tea. And more often than not we went by steam train.

We loved poking our heads out of the window until our eyes hurt like mad from a blast of soot blowing back from the engine. But sore, bloodshot eyes never dampened our enthusiasm.

Dad was an avid swimmer and water polo player, and he used to take us to swimming galas, as they were called back then. He often took part in these galas. And again we always travelled by steam train.

Rowing Over To Ireland’s Eye
That’s what we did back then, we had to go by rowboat, the only way to get to Ireland’s eye, which is 15 minutes from mainland Howth. From there we could see Malahide, Lambay Island and Howth Head of course. These days you can take a Round Trip Cruise on a small cruise ship!

But we thoroughly enjoyed rowing and once there we couldn’t wait to climb the rocks, and have a swim. We picnicked and watched the friendly seals doing their thing and showing off.

Not to mention all kinds of birdlife including the Puffin.The Martello Tower was also interesting but a bit dangerous to attempt entering. I’m getting lost in the past as I write, and have to drag myself back to the present.

Fun Outings with The camera Club
Dad was also a very keen amateur photographer, and was a member of a camera Club. There were many Sunday photography outings and along with us came other kids of the members of the club.

And we always had great fun while the adults busied themselves taking photos of everything and anything, it seemed to us. Dad was so serious about his photography that he set up a dark room where he developed and printed his photographs.

All black and white at the time. He and his camera club entered many of their favourites in exhibitions throughout Europe. I’m quite proud to say that many cups and medals were won by Dad. They have been shared amongst all his grandchildren which I find quite special.

He liked taking portraits of us kids too, mostly when we were in a state of untidiness, usually during play. Dad always preferred the natural look of messy hair and clothes in the photos of his children.

The role of technology in business is more important than ever before. There is new pressure on IT and financial resources to help other departments, such as Human Resources, Facilities and Customer Service, automate their business processes. In addition, tech-savvy end-users are demanding self-service for everything they do.Traditionally, companies have utilized manual forms or purchased singularly focused, point tools designed to automate specific functions driven by separate business requirements and funding streams. Unfortunately, these Business Process Management solutions are usually disconnected from the business, require extensive customization and are too expensive to fit the budget constraints of a single organizational unit. Not to mention the burden on IT to acquire, maintain and support multiple point solutions.The fact of the matter is that most organizational units are interested in automating similar workflow activities. For example, receiving a request from an end-user, assigning that request to a team member, obtaining approvals, tracking and reporting progress, and so forth.At the same time, organizations are trying to cut costs and seek inventive ways to get more out of their current systems.Responding to the DemandHow does an organization respond to the demand for business process automation solutions without breaking the bank or placing undue burden on IT resources?A single solution that is:
Agile enough to meet the rapidly changing demands of today’s business
Flexible enough to meet the needs of various organizational units, their processes and their users
Secure enough to maintain confidentiality between data from varying organizational units
Simple enough to deliver value in a short time and without customization
Extensive enough to integrate with a variety of department specific tools
Beyond ITIT Service Management solutions that are based on the ITIL (IT Infrastructure Library) framework are a perfect match for non-IT business functions. ITIL is a set of guidelines that advises on how to run IT as a business. These are loose and generic guidelines that can easily be translated to other organizational units.All organizational units provide some sort of service. For example, Facilities provides cleaning, office equipment and safety services. All service providers receive requests, they manage approvals, they require metrics and following a process will likely help business run smoothly. ITIL has helped IT move from constant firefighting to more careful planning, better communication and structured service delivery. Leveraging standardized best practices to help non-IT organizational units “run like a business” certainly cannot hurt.Non-IT Business Process Uses· Facilities Management· Human Resources· External Customer Support (Call Centers)· Accounting· Security· Legal· Sales Tracking· HIPAA Patient Management· Training· Marketing· Project ManagementGetting StartedMany organizations that have extended their ITSM solution to other departments started the journey with a Service Catalog. The catalog of services demonstrates that business services can be requested and automatically tracked. Presenting business services in a simple and familiar structure to users encourages them to formally submit requests.If you are having trouble demonstrating how an ITSM solution can extend to non-IT business processes, create a sample business service catalog to start. Stock this catalog with services from various departments, such as requestable office furniture, name change requests and keyboards and mice. Demonstrate to the other organizational units the diverse functionality and intelligence that can be configured to route the requests to the proper teams based on automated workflow. For example, the process employed when there is a request for a New Hire. The new hire requires office space, furniture, telephone, and IT equipment. The fulfillment process involves the coordination of tasks across multiple groups including HR, facilities, telecommunications, and IT.Without automation the on-boarding process will be chaos.Just imagine the ability to request office space for a new hire within a service-catalog, automate routine maintenance checks on fire alarms and report on trends within your external customer service department, all in a process controlled environment.BenefitsLeveraging the once traditional ITSM functionality (such as ticketing, service catalogs, self-service portals, change management, approvals, knowledge management, service level agreements and workflow) for non-IT Service Management using standardized best practices makes a lot of sense operationally and financially.
Achieve better return on IT investments – Extending a single Service Management solution across organizational units has a much lower total cost of ownership
Justify budget spend – Allow disparate business units to share the cost of a single solution
Improve service quality – Deliver faster response to end-users/customers through self-service, automation and knowledge sharing
Improve internal communication – Share knowledge and connect end-to-end processes across multiple departments such as HR and Facilities
The marked similarity between IT processes and non-IT processes, from submitting a request, accepting the request, verifying the entitlement, gathering approvals, fulfilling the request and verifying the successful fulfillment with full audit trails, tracking and reporting, makes extending the right IT Service Management solution to non-IT processes a no-brainer.Better processes, fewer manual errors and automation will lead to lower costs, employee morale improvements, and much happier customers.In ConclusionIn order for businesses to excel in today’s increasingly competitive environment and remain agile in the midst of constant change, organizations need to automate processes wherever possible. At the same time, IT is being pulled in a multitude of directions and assisting non-IT units with business process automation is not at the top of the priority list. Presenting a solution that consolidates all of the requirements of various organizational units, is simple to implement and extend, and makes process automation available where it did not previously exist, may cause IT leadership to move a “shared service management solution” up on that priority list.