A heptad

The most oddest of events on Sunday night led me to thinking about how important a CMDB is to IT service management.

A realisation that ANY business that is involved in customer service, very highly likely, depends on some type of configuration management database, that tracks and maintains, the types of services and assets used to support clients and end-customers.

So what happened?

Lets just say a particular home output device that sends 1s and 2s was getting throttled.  A murky situation.

After having logged a maintenance ticket via the landlord portal, I decided to see if I could get a flange plunger and try fix the problem myself.
With approximately 90 minutes remaining till closing time (10pm) for the local Woolworths and Coles stores..  I thought no dramas… Out I went….

I didn’t return home until well past the closing time.

The first Woolworths I visited at Beecroft didn’t have it. The on-duty store manager said they usually have something, but they’re out of stock. They checked their systems and recommended I 'try Cherrybrook, they should have 4, the Thornleigh store might have some, but we're not sure'.

Ok sweet.. So off to Cherrybrook.

Same deal. Guy checks the aisle, then system and says something along lines of, oh we can only check if we have the actual code number for the item. By now it was just past 9 and I thought, I might give Coles a try.

So off to Coles Castle Hill.

Same deal. Empty in aisle… Ended up chatting with the on-duty store manager, she goes, sorry we don’t any in stock…. I ask if they can check other stores…. 'sorry our system doesn't allow it'.

Next on my list was North Rocks Coles..
Same deal again (see a patter yet?)..
But this time I had someone who was willing to be a bit more helpful and even checked for stock out back. But when he checked his portable device, he commented that their systems are not always in synch and recommended I try Carlingford.

I thought great!, Carlingford also has a Woolies.. I might get lucky.
- on reflection .. Even I'm surprised by my level of optimism on a Sunday night

By now the time was close to 9:45pm

Anyways..  So store manager at Coles Carlinford goes… 'nah we don’t stock those anymore'

Woolies guy says the same thing.

Now with minutes left to 10pm, I thought I can probably just make it Thornleigh… And I did.

And yep, you guessed it. Same deal. A heptad!

Having worked in IT service management for the better part of now coming upto 20 years, I can attest that excellent customer service relies on seamless ITSM processes (eg: incident, problem, change etc) that in turn depend on a bulletproof CMDB system.
The lifecycle process for assets and services play a huge part in knowing exactly
- what services are being delivered,
- the type of services and attributes,
- upstream and downstream dependencies etc.

Surely both Coles and Woolies have systems in place that allow them to accurately track stock inventory across all stories showing numbers and availability /non-availability and if it is on back-order etc.
 

The only use-case that comes to mind that might introduce errors with stock levels is if shop lifting was rife across all stores.
I'm honestly quite surprised that a plunger was not available across SEVEN different stores.

Anyways.. Off to Bunnings come Monday.