All posts by Menken

What’s the big deal about conferences and Expos?

Articles, Resource Hub

Yesterday we returned from a week long trip to Orlando, FL, to attend the Service Management World Conference and Expo as an exhibitor.

Coming from Australia you may think we are mad for traveling halfway across the world for a 3-day conference and to be honest, at times I had that thought as well. Especially when jetlag kicked in, which can be brutal at times.

For years I’ve avoided going to conferences because I was under the impression that in this modern day business environment you don’t need to attend conferences anymore. However, this week has proven me wrong, very very wrong.

So what’s the big deal about going to a conference? In one word: PEOPLE.

Today’s technology is amazing – we can have instant video meetings with anybody around the world and do deals with people we never meet in person because everything is done via email and web portals.

We have virtual teams in multiple locations and clients in 100+ countries. Most people will never meet us in person as there is no direct need for this effort to be able to sign up for our toolkit subscriptions or to purchase an instant download product.

There is however something profoundly magical about interpersonal connections. Meeting with a person face to face where you can read their body language… is priceless.

Sitting across the table from somebody and really listening to the other person, directly, without being distracted by annoying headsets or notifications on your screen. Finding yourself fully engaged in the conversation with that other person and learning about their business career and what makes them excited. You don’t get that easily in a video conference or phone conversation.

In a conference situation you also have the opportunity to spend a bit more time outside of the official meetings to get to know the person behind the businesscard. This is perhaps my most favourite reason why there is value in attending these industry conferences. You meet people who are interested in the same topic, work in the same industry and deal with the same challenges and issues.

When you have discussions with people who work in the same industry, you can’t help but learn new things. New insights into a familiar situation. New approaches to an issue you’ve been struggling with for a while. Or perhaps something super simple that you completely overlooked until somebody new points it out to you. 

The job title doesn’t define the person – there is so much more to a person than their status or rank in a business. At a conference you’re amongst peers, you’re there to learn from the keynotes, breakout sessions and from the conversations at the breakfast table. I find that often the biggest learning, the gold nugget, shows up in the least obvious way.

That’s most likely the reason why your head is spinning at the end of a 3-day conference and you can’t wait to get back to your normal job. Make sure though you build in some processing time to absorb everything that you’ve learned and to find a way to implement this in your job going forward. Don’t try to do too many things, just 1 or 2 things done well is a much more valuable outcome.

So what did I learn? Mostly that there is absolutely a business case for attending conferences as a learning tool. I learned how much I enjoyed talking with my peers in the industry, to learn from our clients on how they use our products and services and the difference it made to their business.

But I also learned that in this current environment of AI, machine learning and IoT developments, it is the people who are the glue of the industry. And I don’t think that this will change any time soon.

So there it is – can’t wait to see you all in Las Vegas in April, where we’ll be exhibiting at the Support World Live Expo (www.hdiconference.com/) – see you there!

Best practice for CIOs

Articles, Resource Hub

“In my role as CIO I wanted to implement best practices to be sure we were doing the right things without wasting resources. I just couldn’t find any manuals to follow. Turns out, there was no manual for being a CIO. There was no manual for creating a better organisation or for digital transformation, and that kept me up at night”

That’s what Gerard Blokdijk – CEO of The Art of Service – told us when we spoke with him about the reason behind the Self Assessment Toolkits. 

He’s been on a mission to empower professionals to unleash their potential and building Self Assessment Toolkits have been pivotal in this journey

One of the main tasks of a CIO is to translate the company’s vision into an IT Strategy that can be implemented at an operational level with the technology and skills available to you. Often, the first step in this process is to benchmark your current performance against best practices.

This benchmark can be done in the form of a Self Assessment. A Self Assessment gives you a current status overview, a line in the sand to give you clarity and understanding where IT Strategy adds value. This benchmark also visualizes where the weak spots / areas for improvement are, which makes it a perfect exercise before you allocate resources for an improvement project.

When you look at self assessment questions, it’s important that you answer them based on your own personal opinion and experience. This becomes even more important when you fill out the Self Assessment with your team. Each individual in the team answers the questions differently – but keep in mind that the ultimate answer to each of these questions is:

‘In my belief, the answer to this question is clearly defined’.

You can go even further and ask for documented evidence, rather than just opinions. This will move the questionnaire more into an auditing realm as you require evidence to substantiate the answers.

Some of the most important management requirements for IT Strategy are listed below. For each of these questions, think about your current role and try to answer them truthfully. 

Are these requirements identified, assessed, implemented and documented? Or is there room for improvement of IT Strategy processes in the organization?

The management requirements are across 5 different phases, which coincide with the general life cycle of a business process. These phases loosely align with Deming’s Quality cycle: Plan – Do – Check – Act (PDCA for short).

  • Plan what you are going to do
  • Do what you planned for
  • Check / study and analyze the results of what you did in the previous step
  • Act accordingly – improve the activities, measurements and expected outcomes.

To help you to understand the style of questions you can ask during a Self Assessment, we chose a selection and placed them in the appropriate phases:

Phase 1: Recognize the value of IT Strategy for the overall business

  • How are the IT Strategy’s objectives aligned to the group’s overall stakeholder strategy?
  • What are the expected benefits of IT Strategy to the stakeholder?
  • Does IT Strategy create potential expectations in other areas that need to be recognized and considered?
  • Why does IT-business alignment continue to be an important issue for CIOs?

At the start of the engagement it’s important to identify why we even bother to work on IT strategy. What is the reason for this investment? Why is IT Strategy important to the business? It’s also an opportunity to learn about the benefits of IT Strategy in general to a CIO.

Phase 2: Define what IT Strategy means within the context of our business

  • What are the Roles and Responsibilities for each team member and its leadership? Where is this documented?
  • Has a high-level ‘as is’ process map been completed, verified and validated?
  • Has the direction changed at all during the course of IT Strategy? If so, when did it change and why?
  • What are the environment requirements to your organization?

While it’s interesting to learn about IT Strategy in general, the next step needs to be around the increased understanding of what IT Strategy means.

This part of the Self Assessment focuses more on the way your business is organized and how IT Strategy will make a difference within the context of the company and current business processes.

Phase 3: Measure & Analyze How IT Strategy is currently performed

  • Is it cost effective and/or good business practice to contract out for special competencies?
  • What data was collected (past, present, future/ongoing)?
  • Is the management process adequate for ensuring that issues will be addressed?
  • Does your organization systematically track and analyze outcomes related for accountability and quality improvement?

Even though you didn’t have a playbook, or best practice around IT Strategy, this doesn’t mean you didn’t do anything about it. No organisation is a true greenfield scenario when it comes to implementing IT Strategy processes. That’s why we need to identify the current activities and the resources utilized currently within the IT Strategy implementation processes.

The questions in phase 3 revolve around identifying what is currently being done and how well we are analyzing the raw data that is collected.

Phase 4: Improve the IT Strategy processes

  • How can the IT-business alignment be improved?
  • Where are your core business applications developed and/or running?
  • What does failure to properly align IT with your organizational strategy result in?
  • What is the optimum choice of a consumerization of IT strategy to realize business benefits?

This is where the rubber meets the road – how do we use all the information from previous phases and use that to our benefit to improve the IT Strategy processes? The questions in this part of the assessment are meant to make you consider the various areas within IT Strategy that you can improve on and what that improvement is going to mean for the business. Can you effectively measure the results from your improved IT Strategy processes, and what would that look like?

Phase 5: Control & Sustain the IT Strategy Objectives

  • How do you leverage business models and IT strategy to plan your digital business transformation initiatives?
  • How will the day-to-day responsibilities for monitoring and continual improvement be transferred from the improvement team to the process owner?
  • Is there a control plan in place for sustaining improvements (short and long-term)?
  • Are services really cheaper and better outside your organization?

The final maturity step is to create the ability to control and sustain the IT Strategy processes and the deliverables. It’s wonderful to be able to achieve a specific result once, but it requires a lot of effort, skill and determination to create a system where the results can be controlled, sustained and predicted.
Focusing on these questions in the Control and Sustain parts of the Self Assessment questionnaire will help you to focus your attention to those activities that truly matter.

While a Self Assessment won’t be a play-by-play handbook it will give you the roadmap to succeed during your journey in your position. And to be honest, at your level of competency you have grown beyond the need for a play-by-play handbook as you want to bring your personal touch to the business and the department you’re managing.

The Self Assessment for IT Strategy will clearly show the gaps in your knowledge, understanding and the communication breakdown within the company. It clearly shows you a path to leadership by addressing what you don’t know.

IT Strategy Toolkit: store.theartofservice.com/it-strategy-toolkit-best-practice-templates-step-by-step-work-plans-and-maturity-diagnostics

If you’re interested in Digital Transformation, why not try this toolkit: store.theartofservice.com/digital-transformation-toolkit

How savvy CIOs get ready for 2020

Articles, Resource Hub, Strategic Planning

What are the top 3 challenges for CIOs

The role of the CIO is to lead your team to stay ahead of the game. The problem is: the game changes all the time. The rules change, the goal posts are placed in new positions and you weren’t even aware of it.

The biggest danger for CIOs is to assume you are on top of your game. Hubris is the Achilles heel of many organisations, especially when all your KPIs and reports are based on lag-indicators forcing you to look backwards at the company’s performance in the past.

The truth of the matter is that you don’t know what you don’t know. And what you don’t know can and will (most likely) hurt you and your organisation

You need smart people in your team who are on the lookout for what is important now and in the future. People who analyse the current situation to be able to project a risk profile moving forward. 

However, it may help to know what your team should be looking for. It is important to stay aware of what is being used successfully by peers in the business to be able to make informed and educated decisions for your own company. What are the main topics that your peers globally worry about, work on and create strong analytical data around?

We conducted research amongst C-Level executives and senior professionals in the USA, Canada, UK and Australia to find out what topics are top of mind in 2019. What are the topics they research, invest in and need to know more about.

It’s no surprise that security, risk management and Cyber security are in the top 3, in addition to subjects relating to regulation and compliance. Data Management and Data analysis also featured in the top listing but just fell outside of the top 3.

For CIOs it seems to be most important to understand what the most commonly used applications, methodologies and quality standards are. Finding trends in your industry may help you be more effective and efficient in the way you run your department or company. You don’t want to run the risk that you’re overlooking something and getting caught out on a regulatory or compliance issue, just because you didn’t stay in touch with the latest trends. (After all: “I didn’t know”  is not a valid excuse )

1. Security & Risk Management

  • ISSEP
  • GIAC Certified Forensic Analyst
  • Technical Surveillance Counter Measures
  • NIST Cyber Security Framework
  • Cyber Threat Hunting

Businesses are investing in formal security management training for their staff to improve the skill levels of IT Professionals. This is an ongoing commitment in the understanding of IT security and the growing impact of Cyber security on normal business practices

We were surprised however by the interest in Technical Surveillance Countermeasures (e.g. bug sweeping), however with the intensifying financial pressures in the industry and the opportunity for corporate espionage it becomes more important to ensure that trade secrets don’t get into the wrong hands.

Questions that you may want to ask your team:

  • Are there any data/devices that are not backed up?
  • Who is responsible in your organization to assist in preparing for and responding to a data breach?
  • Are you effectively using existing data to drive your security decisions?
  • How much data should you keep and for how long?

2. ( Cloud Based ) Business Applications

  • Finance
    • NetSuite
    • Quickbooks 
  • Marketing
    • Salesforce Pardot
  • SharePoint
  • Mulesoft

Over the past few years many business applications have moved to a cloud based delivery model. This industry has matured in such a way that Finance applications like NetSuite now support many medium to large size businesses through their cloud based applications, where Quickbooks online is used by mostly small-medium sized businesses. With the addition of QuickBooks Enterprise, more medium sized businesses appear to choose to stay with Quickbooks rather than switching to NetSuite or other ERP applications.

Mulesoft (a salesforce subsidiary) has been around since 2006 but the need for enterprise API connectors and analysis capability is growing with the adoption of more cloud based enterprise applications.

Questions to ask relating to these business applications are:

  • Is a market surveillance visit or other special audit required to show evidence of effective
  • implementation?
  • How does the effort compare to on-premise ERP implementations?
  • Does a corrective action plan include the implementation of sufficient and effective controls in
  • order to eliminate the cause of similar potential nonconformities?
  • Are there related tools that can be easily implemented to gather data?
  • How do you get your data out when the contract is done?

3. Regulation, Governance & Compliance

  • SOC 2
  • COSO
  • CGEIT (Governance of Enterprise IT)

A quick Google search tells us that “The SOC 2 report focuses on a business’s non-financial reporting controls as they relate to security, availability, processing integrity, confidentiality, and privacy of a system, as opposed to SOC 1/SSAE 18 which is focused on the financial reporting controls.”

Which makes total sense that it is mentioned in this list with COSO which focuses mainly on internal controls. As a CIO you need to be able to sustain the internal controls around security, availability, integrity, confidentiality and privacy of a system and the data that is contained within this system. Out of these, confidentiality and privacy are becoming more important to safeguard with the increase of phishing scams and ransomware attempts. It seems that each week there is a news article about a large organisation being breached and private client date being leaked with various levels of negative impact.

Questions to ask in relation to governance and compliance often revolve around audits and data privacy. For example:

  • Do your audit reports contain sufficient detail to facilitate and support the certification decision?
  • Is the scope of the audit adequate?
  • Is the mandate given to the audit team clearly defined and made known to your clients?
  • Do you monitor how suppliers protect sensitive information?
  • Do you use contractual agreements to protect confidential information?
  • Are information systems subject to periodic penetration tests?
  • Do you perform more rigorous background checks on people who will be handling sensitive information?

When you understand the questions to ask, you can uncover the unknown and potential dangerous issues and challenges that would otherwise remain hidden. 

When you don’t ask the questions, people will assume everybody understands the importance and that we’re all on the same page. It’s only when we consciously make an effort to ask the questions that the discrepancies become apparent and areas for improvement surface.

Article by Ivanka Menken, CEO The Art of Service

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I never really understood Seth Godin, until now…

Articles, Resource Hub

I never really understood Seth Godin, until now…

Seth Godin did a fabulous podcast on Akimbo last year called ‘shun the non-believers’ on how to respond to negative feedback on your products or services. In this podcast he talks about the fact that every product or service will have negative feedback, 1 star reviews etc. (and how you really should question a product that only has 5 star reviews…) 

In this podcast he mentioned two really important points:

  1. Define your ideal audience, the people who you are making your products for. When these people complain about the product, LISTEN. Listen very carefully and make quality improvements. But for all the others…
  2. When people complain about your product or service and they are not part of your ideal audience, simply say “Thank you for checking out our product, I’m sorry it’s not for you”.

While I really enjoyed listening to this episode of the podcast (Seth has such a soothing voice, I’m sure it does something fabulous with your brain waves or something) I never quite understood what he meant, and was afraid to use this approach in business. 

Until now…

“It is too detailed for a student or beginner IT graduate”

That was the feedback I received from a potential client after we completed a live demonstration of our Self Assessment Toolkits.

This filled me with so much joy!

Why, you may ask?

Well, because it means that while we fully stand behind our product and are super proud of the quality and value these self assessments offer to our ideal clients, it is not a product for everybody and I now was able to say: “ Thank you for checking out our Self Assessment Toolkits, I’m sorry it’s not for you” 

After which we moved on to discuss what type of client really loves our products and sees the value of the Self Assessment for their careers and the betterment of the company they work for.

As a beginner in the industry you are most likely going to be overwhelmed by the 1000 questions in the Self Assessment questionnaire. You may not know how to approach this as you probably don’t know the answer to most of the questions. Or you feel out of your depth because you don’t know where to go and find the answers to these questions. You prefer to have the basic theory spoon fed to you in bitesize chunks.

And that is fair – but to be honest, there are a number of resources available to help you get a basic understanding on the subjects.

The Self Assessment toolkits are designed to help start the conversation about the subject, whether this is a new methodology, technology or approach to business. The questionnaires help with the identification of gaps in awareness and knowledge with the organisation.

Each business is different, has different goals and requirements based on their mission, vision and customer expectations. 

That’s why management consultants, senior project management professionals, VPs and C-level executives love the self assessments and how these products help them to understand where to focus resources for improvement projects. When you need to make informed and educated decisions about the future of the department, team or company you can never have too much detail. 

Want to know more about the Self Assessments and find out if they provide value to you? Book a live demo with me so I can show you exactly how it works.

Ivanka Menken

Book a Video Conference Meeting (Toolkit demo)

Not being able to answer these questions may cost you more than you think

Articles, Documents, Resource Hub

Not being able to answer these questions my cost you more than you think

When your consultancy assignment is all about Disaster Recovery Service Level Management (DR-SLM), you want to make sure you are well prepared.

It could be a disaster in itself when your Service Level Management process is missing vital bits, or when the agreements haven’t been signed by the proper people in the organisation. (To just name the first two things that came to mind)

To help your client in their understanding of the importance and impact of Service Level Management during a Disaster Recovery, it may be a good idea to prepare by doing an internal check.

This internal check can be done in the form of a Self Assessment. A Self Assessment gives you a current status overview, a line in the sand to give you clarity and understanding where DR-SLM adds value. This benchmark also visualizes where the weak spots / areas for improvement are, which makes it a perfect exercise before you allocate resources for an improvement project.

However, when you look at self assessment questions it’s important that you answer them based on your own personal opinion and experience. This becomes even more important when you fill out the Self Assessment with your team. Each individual in the team answers the questions differently – but keep in mind that the ultimate answer to each of these questions is:

‘In my belief, the answer to this question is clearly defined’.

If you want, you can go even further and ask for documented evidence, rather than just opinions. This will move the questionnaire more into an auditing realm as you require evidence to substantiate the answers.

Some of the most important management requirements for Disaster Recovery Service Level Management are listed below. For each of these questions, think about your current role and try to answer them truthfully.

Are these requirements identified, assessed, implemented and documented? Or is there room for improvement of Disaster Recovery Service Level Management processes in the organisation?

The management requirements are across 7 different phases, which coincide with the general life cycle of a business process. These phases loosely align with Deming’s Quality cycle: Plan – Do – Check – Act (PDCA for short).

  • Plan what you are going to do
  • Do what you planned for
  • Check / study and analyse the results of what you did in the previous step
  • Act accordingly – improve the activities, measurements and expected outcomes.

To help you to understand the style of questions you can ask during a Self Assessment, we chose a selection and placed them in the appropriate phases:

Phase 1: Recognize the value of Disaster Recovery Service Level Management for the overall business

  • Do you need any special (e.g., flood) insurance now?
  • Are the services provided by your organization identified?
  • What are the expected benefits of Disaster Recovery Service Level Management to the stakeholder?

Obviously, these questions are quite high-level as they test whether or not you recognize the value of Service Level Management and Disaster Recovery processes in general. At this stage of the organisational maturity you’re looking at the big picture of what can happen during a disaster and what the value would be of formal processes.

You also want to ensure there is a clear and obvious benefit of Disaster Recovery SLM seen by stakeholders and budget holders. Having this kind of support is crucial at any stage of the project, but especially at the start.

Phase 2: Define what Disaster Recovery Service Level Management means within the context of our business

  • What are the compelling stakeholder reasons for embarking on Disaster Recovery Service Level Management?
  • Exactly what type of expertise is required?
  • What critical operational or security controls require implementation prior to recovery?

The next phase is a step up in the business process maturity. There is a clear understanding of the value of Service Level Management in the context of Disaster recovery but we now need to identify what that means for our business.

The discussions with the executive team and the stakeholders should be more targeted towards the specific benefits for the business. Create clear definitions of the input, expectations and output for the processes. Ensuring that the expectations and deliverables are clearly defined within the boundaries of the business requires strategic thinking.

This step takes the whole program beyond a ‘cookie cutter’ approach. Especially when you think about Disaster recovery processes it is important to do everything within the business requirements. Skipping this step may cause you to spend too many resources on tasks and deliverables that do not provide any added value to the business.

Phase 3: Measure How Disaster Recovery Service Level Management is currently performed

  • How large is the gap between current performance and the customer-specified (goal) performance?
  • Are disaster recovery and business continuity programs based upon a business impact analysis?
  • Are there current service level agreements/documents of understanding with all service providers for your critical business processes?

When you start doing the Self Assessment you will most likely realise that you already do some of the activities around Disaster Recovery Service Level Management. Just because you didn’t officially name the processes doesn’t mean nobody thought about doing this.

That’s why these self assessment questions are so valuable. It brings out in the open the decisions that have already been made, the processes and activities that are already providing value. So don’t think a self assessment is only to find out the gaps, or to realise there is so much more you need to do. Also consider doing this self assessment to find out where to celebrate your successes.

Most of the time though, going through a self assessment like this will create the realisation that while you’re already doing some of the steps, the activities need to be consolidated and delivered more consciously to achieve better results for the business.

Phase 4: Analyze how Disaster Recovery Service Level Management is performing

  • Were any designed experiments used to generate additional insight into the data analysis?
  • Does the DRP designate the retrieval procedures of the stored data?
  • Do you have formal agreements for an alternate processing site and equipment should the need arise to relocate operations?

It’s one thing to measure what you currently do, but the raw data won’t give you insight in the benefits for the organisation. That’s why you need to have structural analysis processes to turn the raw data into information that makes sense for Disaster Recovery.

Running Disaster Recovery Service Level Management is all about consciously taken decisions. You need to document what you do and why so that when (if) the disaster occurs everybody knows exactly what is going to happen. This takes the uncertainty out of a very stressful situation.

Phase 5: Improve the disaster Recovery Service Level Management processes

  • Were any criteria developed to assist the team in testing and evaluating potential solutions?
  • How much of the IT effort goes to firefighting rather than enabling business improvements?
  • Are there policies in place to address post-disaster redevelopment?

It goes without saying that the self assessment will uncover many areas for improvement.

Some of the improvements will focus on the technical infrastructure and how you create agreements to keep utilizing the technology during a disaster. Many improvements however are around the continuity of the processes and procedures. For example question about the policies to address post-disaster redevelopment.

The improvement projects will help shift your business from a reactive approach to DR-SLM to a more proactive approach. The proactive approach helps the business with the risk mitigation and management strategies and to forecast the potential impact of disasters on the future of the business.

Service Level Management and the Service Level Agreements play an important role in this shift as it helps to understand what everybody’s role is in case of a disaster and where the responsibilities lie for the steps taken to continue to deliver the service and to manage expectations.

Phase 6: Control the Disaster Recovery Service Level Management processes

  • How should your organization prioritize DR/BC planning with so many other important priorities?
  • Which process must consider Business Continuity Plans as a major part of its own planning?
  • Do individuals responsible for contingency planning understand responsibilities?

It’s one thing to have a plan that is supported by processes, it’s a totally different level of sophistication to have control over every step in the process.
To control the outcomes and the various deliverables of DR-SLM, you need to appreciate and understand the interdependencies of the various business processes. You also need to check the dependency on internal and external suppliers, especially where Service Level Agreements are concerned.

Phase 7: Sustain the Disaster Recovery Service Level Management Objectives

  • Who does what for DR plan maintenance?
  • Do you have an adequate level of skills and competencies to manage the current and planned workload?
  • What happens if a key supplier suddenly shuts its doors ?
  • Are enterprise and IT objectives linked and synchronised?

The final maturity phase in the Self assessment looks mainly towards the future. How can we control the quality level and outcomes of the processes around disaster recovery and service level management? How can we sustain the way we deliver the expected level of services, even when the business scales? How do we anticipate the response to a disaster even when there are many new external influences?

All these questions need to be considered. It doesn’t matter that you don’t have clearly defined answers to these questions (yet), at least now you know that these questions matter and that this is something that you may need to look into for the future strength of the company.

By now you have an appreciation for the fact that these questions provide the basis for important strategic and tactical discussions, while offering a clear pragmatic approach to the implementation of the ideas for improvement.

You won’t be able to answer all 1000 questions, that’s not the intent behind the self assessment. The idea is to identify the questions you must have an answer to, to avoid expensive mistakes or oversight in relation to your Service Level Agreements within the context of Disaster Recovery.

When you perform these self assessments with regular intervals, they will give valuable insight into the growth in business process maturity, and tangible benefits from the implementation projects. Closing the loop back to the stakeholders and those responsible for the budget allocation becomes easier and with better business context.

Article by Ivanka Menken, CEO The Art of Service, author of Disaster Recovery Service Level Management  Self Assessment Guide.

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Bio:

Ivanka Menken is a serial entrepreneur and the owner and Co-Founder of The Art of Service since 2000.  Ivanka specialises in creating organisations that manage their services in a sustainable and customer driven manner. With 20+ years of management consultancy experience and an education degree, Ivanka has been instrumental in many organisational change management projects in The Netherlands, USA, Canada, New Zealand and Australia for both government agencies and private corporations.

Ivanka beliefs that education and training is at the foundation of every successful enterprise. Ivanka has been a guest lecturer for a number of Queensland universities on the subject of IT Service Management and Organisational Change Management and proudly featured as one of “Australia’s 50 Influential Women Entrepreneurs” in 2016.

While running The Art of Service, Ivanka authored a number of publications on IT Service Management, Cloud Computing and Customer Service. She also completed her Entrepreneurial Masters Program at MIT and served on the board as the second ever female President of the local Entrepreneur’s Organization chapter.

Link to Disaster Recovery Service Level Management Self Assessment book: store.theartofservice.com/disaster-recovery-service-level-management-assessment-toolkit-best-practice-templates-step-by-step-work-plans-and-maturity-diagnostics/