Have you ever noticed that the better your Service Desk gets, the more it gets taken for granted?

You’ve risen to every challenge – solved more incidents faster than ever, improved service uptime, built an amazing self-service portal, and you’re even managing service requests and changes – But somehow, you’re being excluded from key decisions and initiatives.

Service Desks who only focus on providing technical support and “break/fix” services, will quickly find their role limited to supporting back-office systems – with little perceived value to the front-line business of their organization.

Engaging with other teams is difficult unless they’re actually resolving an incident. It seems like the better we get at providing support, the more we are put into that box:  “Oh those are the tech support people – we only talk to them when something goes wrong”.

Yet, for many organizations, the Service Desk is the most critical interface between IT and other business units.  The more we understand about how the business works, the more we can provide proactive, business-focused services that increase the importance and role of the Service Desk.

We know that the business is being transformed by Digital Technology, but how do we become part of that journey?  And how do we change our role to stay relevant and valued?

The PeopleCert Accredited ITIL 4 Practitioner: Service Desk Practice Course helps practitioners and managers to explore how to make and keep their organization’s Service Desk relevant and valuable throughout an organization’s digital journey.

In the PeopleCert Accredited ITIL 4 Practitioner: Service Desk Practice Course you will learn how to:

• Define the scope of the Service Desk to meet changing business needs
• Integrate your Service Desk into your organization’s value streams
• Coordinate different types of activity, from incident handling to managing service requests and changes
• Communicate the proactive role of the Service Desk as part of business initiatives and decisions

Click Here to learn more about the course.

Click Here to save $100 on the PeopleCert Accredited ITIL 4 Practitioner:  Service Desk course and exam package (List Price $599/Your Price $499).

Have a group to train?  Contact Us for Group Discounts.

We contacted PeopleCert to find out if individuals who hold the ITIL Master Designation fall under the 3-Year PeopleCert recertification requirement and the answer is YES.

Because ITIL Master is a designation and not a separate exam, it is renewed in the standard way.  For example, if a student takes a new course/exam, then all ITIL 4 certificates the student has obtained, including ITIL Master, will be automatically renewed.

On Friday July 28, 2023 PeopleCert, the international ITIL Certification body Accredited GogoTraining’s eLearning ITIL 4 Specialist:  Monitor, Support & Fulfil course.  This course is taught by award winning ITIL Expert David Cannon helps students achieve their ITIL Practice Manager and ITIL Master designations.

The new Practice Manager Certifications are based on the recently updated ITIL 4 Practice Guides that are filed with useful guidance and many new features that have never been seen in previous versions of ITIL.  For the first time ever each ITIL 4 Practice Guide contains definitive capability criteria for each practice that is mapped to the ITIL maturity model that shows how to apply them in your organization.

The new ITIL 4 Specialist:  Monitor, Support & Fulfil Certification enables ITIL Practitioners to:

• Master the top five ITIL 4 Practices
• Achieve the ITIL Practice Manger designation
• Achieve the ITIL 4 Master designation
• Recertify all ITIL 4 Certifications for 3 years

If you or  your organization would like to learn more about these great certifications and how they can help you achieve organizational excellence, we are here to help.

Click Here to contact us via email or call 877.546.4446.

Attention all ITIL 4 Managing Professionals

There is a clear and easy path for you to achieve the ITIL 4 Master Designation and recertify.  PeopleCert has initiated a Recertification program.  The program requires students to recertify every 3-years.  There is a lot of information we need to share with you so please read to the end where we will share a very special offer with you.

Key Points

1. Recertification is only required for ITIL 4 Certifications.
2. If you received your last ITIL 4 Certification before June 2020, then your certifications must be renewed by July1, 2023 to keep them active.
3. If you received your ITIL 4 Certification after June 2020, then you have 3-years from the date of your last certification to renew.
4. If you do not renew before your certification expires, then it becomes inactive, and your certifications will renew for 3 more years when you take of the actions below.

How to Recertify

There are 3 ways to recertify.  We will discuss them all here and give you the pro’s and con’s.

1. You can pay for and take the same exam again.
   • We think this is the worst way to recertify.  It is expensive and you really get nothing in return, but renewal.
2. You can pay $122/year for 3-years for a MyAxelos subscription and record 60 hours a year of study on the MyAxelos site .
   • This is the most expensive way to recertify when you consider what your time is valued at.
3. You can take a new course, gain a new certification and recertify everything – This is a really good option, and we are not saying this because that is our business.

How Taking A New Course Gets You Recertified

Taking a new course is a great option because PeopleCert has just released the New Practice Manager Certifications and they have  2 GREAT Features:

• It offers 1-day Practice Courses with Certification exams – Very, Very Economical.
• It offers a 3-day Practice Manager course and exam that is required to become an ITIL Master.

The New Practice Manager Certification Gets you the ITIL Master Designation

Ok, for those of you that read to this point – thank you.  Here is the scoop.  ITIL 4 Master requires you to hold the ITIL 4 Managing Professional, Strategic Leader and Practice Manager Designations and you automatically become an ITIL Master.

• For those of you who hold the Managing Professional designation, then you only need to take 2 courses to become an ITIL Master (Digital & IT Strategy and the new ITIL Practice Manager course, Monitor, Support & Fulfil).
• If you hold the Managing Professional and Strategic Leader Certifications, then you only need 1 course to achieve ITIL 4 Master – the new ITIL 4 Practice Manager course, Monitor, Support & Fulfil).

SPECIAL OFFERS

This offer may not be combined with other offers.  Please note that the Digital & IT Strategy course will go into your account when you make your purchase.  The Monitor, Support & Fulfil course will be available late July  2023 and we will contact you to find out when you would like to activate the course.  Purchasing the package now during the pre-release sale, locks in your savings.

PeopleCert’s ITIL Recertification Program goes into effect July 1, 2023 and it starts with ITIL 4 Certifications.  Earlier Certifications are exempt.  The program requires students to recertify every 3 years.

How Do I Know When to Recertify?

• If you received your ITIL 4 Certifications prior to June 2020, then you must renew your certification(s) by July 1, 2023.
• If you received your ITIL Certifications after June 2020, then you must renew 3 years from the date of certification.

What if I Hold Multiple Certifications?

The good news is that you do not need to recertify each certification. When you recertify one of your certifications, all of them automatically update.

How Do I Recertify?

PeopleCert offers 3 ways to recertify.

• You can take one of your certification exams over. You have to pay for it, take it and pass it.
• You can take a new course/certification. When you take and pass the exam, all of your previous certifications are updated.
• You can purchase the MyAxelos Subscription for $122/year and take 20 hours of classes/year or $366 in total plus 60 hours of study.

Which Method of Recertification is Most Cost Effective?

PeopleCert is releasing a new series of ITIL courses under the heading of Practice Manager. These courses are 1-day and the certification exam is the lowest cost of all the exams – only $237. With these courses you can gain a new certification, valuable knowledge and recertify at the lowest possible price.

The MyAxelos Subscription is well priced too, but you have to allocate 60 hours of your time to achieving your CPD’s. When you factor in what your time is worth, this option becomes very expensive. Paying to take the same exam again, seems like the biggest waste of money. The other options are more economical and give you the opportunity to enhance your skills.

There are 32 ITIL 4 Certifications and 28 Certification Exams. How could this be possible?

The short answer is that students achieve the Practice Manager, Managing Professional, Strategic Leader and ITIL Master designations after they take the certification exams in that category. There is no extra exam to achieve the designation that covers the courses in the respective category.

For example, ITIL 4 Managing Professional consists of 4 courses and 4 exams. When completed students hold the designation for each exam taken PLUS the exam for the category which is ITIL 4 Managing Professional.

• ITIL 4 Specialist: Create, Deliver & Support
• ITIL 4 Specialist: Drive Stakeholder Value
• ITIL 4 Specialist: High Velocity IT
• ITIL 4 Specialist: Direct, Plan & Improve
• Complete all 4 courses & exams and you achieve the ITIL 4 Managing Professional designation.

Same holds true for ITIL 4 Strategic Leader. When students complete the 2 courses in this category, they hold the designation for each certification and automatically hold the ITIL 4 Strategic Leader Title.

• ITIL Strategist: Direct, Plan & Improve
• ITIL 4 Strategist: Digital & IT Strategy
• Complete both of these courses and you achieve the ITIL 4 Strategic Leader designation.

Same for Practice Manager – Only a bit more complicated. With Practice Manager there are 3 categories each with 5 individual courses/certifications and an option to take each course or to take 1 course that is 3-days long and covers the same information.

Take up to $200 off on PeopleCert exams this May and receive the course for free.

Click on the link below to learn more:

• ITIL 4 Foundation Exam – $100 Off
• ITIL 4 Specialist: Create, Deliver & Support Exam – $200 Off
• ITIL 4 Specialist: Drive Stakeholder Value Exam – $200 Off
• ITIL 4 Specialist: High Velocity IT Exam – $200 Off
• ITIL 4 Strategist: Direct, Plan & Improve Exam – $200 Off
• ITIL 4 Leader: Digital and IT Strategy Exam – $200 Off

REMEMBER:

1. You have 12 months to use your PeopleCert exam voucher.
2. You receive 90-day FREE Access to the accredited course.
3. This offer expires on May 31, 2023.
4. Add Take2 for $75 to any exam (List Price is $120)

Rules: This offer may not be combined with otter offers. Offer is valid until May 31, 2023. All PeopleCert exam vouchers are valid for 1 year from the date of purchase. All exam voucher orders come with the Free Accredited corresponding GogoTraining ITIL course. Course access is for 90 days. You can request to start your course at anytime. Exam and Take2 discounts are based on PeopleCert’s list price found on the PeopleCert website.

Want to know what you need to know to pass the ITIL 4 Foundation Exam?  Check out this great ITIL 4 Exam Tips Video by Dr. Suzanne Van Hove.

This Holiday Season, GogoTraining is giving away 1 ITIL 4 Managing Professional course per person.  If you are interested in getting ITIL 4 Certified, Contact Us Today and let us know which ITIL 4 course you would like to receive at no charge.

Please note that PeopleCert, the ITIL Exam Institute, requires students to purchase the exam voucher for their ITIL courses before they are granted access to the course.  To assist our students, we are offering exam discounts up to $200 depending on the exam required.

To find out more, Contact Us Today.

Wishing you the Happiest of Holidays and best wishes for the New Year ahead.

By Jim Ragle

When preparing to take an IT-related certification exam, one needs to decide whether to self-study using free content found online or to pay for an accredited, on-demand training course specifically designed to prepare you for the relevant certification exam.

I’ve had to make this choice several times.  And while I like to think of myself as resourceful and adept at filtering through online nonsense to find the good stuff, when it comes to certification exam prep it’s not worth the effort and risk to go it alone with free online content.

Choose the accredited training.  You’ll get certified much easier and faster.  Why?

First, let’s talk about the certification program content – the stuff that you will be tested on.  For most certification programs, that content is copyrighted by the owner of the certification program.  ITIL certification content, for example, is developed and maintained by Axelos, which is owned by PeopleCert.  Axelos/PeopleCert protect their copyright, as any commercial company developing content would do.  They make money by licensing that content to accredited training organizations and selling the certification (via an exam) to would-be practitioners like us.  As such, non-accredited training programs that do not license the ITIL content from Axelos/PeopleCert are prohibited from using the copyrighted content in their training offerings.

So, how can a free, unaccredited ITIL training program do a good job of training you for the exam if they aren’t allowed to share with you the copyrighted ITIL principles, practices, and methodologies?

One way they try to get around this is to simply provide free (or even paid) “practice exams” or sets of test questions you can review.  Just test questions and answers – no theory, no context, nothing taken from the copyrighted material (or not enough to raise any copyright issues). I’ve seen plenty of these free exam prep questions and they are often terribly written.  Here are some issues I’ve repeatedly seen in free exam prep questions:

• Only basic knowledge of English grammar is needed to select the right answer.  The question asks you to select the “action” that is most important in….whatever.  Of the four answer choices, only one of them (the right answer) is an action.  The other choices are simply not actions at all.  Trust me, your actual certification exam will NOT pull this trick on you.
• Only a basic ability to count is needed to select the right answer.  The question asks you to select the three elements of…whatever.  Each available choice is a list of items, but only one of the choices lists three things.  Again, you won’t see anything sloppy like this on a certification exam.
• Harder to spot are just wrong answers, where the available choices don’t contain the correct answer or the answer marked as correct is, in fact, not the correct one.  If you’ve not been exposed to the program content through training, how would you know that the answer is not D, but is actually C?  You are putting blind trust in these free test questions.
• Also hard to spot are questions that are simply irrelevant, off-topic, and thus highly unlikely to be on the exam.  Again, if you’ve not been trained, how would you even know that the question was irrelevant?  Why waste your time on this?

I’m not saying all the free exam prep content out there is bad.  It probably isn’t.  But how do you know if it’s good or bad if you don’t know the subject matter?  After all, you are admittedly a beginner if you are seeking a training course in ITIL Foundation V4, for example.

• As a beginner, can you spot training content that is wrong, misleading, or irrelevant and thus highly likely to not be on the test?
• Can you spot test questions that don’t include the correct answer in the available choices?  How would you know?

If you have a lot of time and are willing to wade through an abundance of ad-supported sites offering free sample test questions and can spot the red-flag test questions as described earlier, then maybe it will work for you.  However, you still have to pay for the certification exam, and there is a risk that you fail the exam and have to pay to retake it.  Are you willing to take that risk?

I’d rather pay for an accredited training program and save the time, hassle, and significantly reduce the risk of failing the test.  What you get when you select an accredited training program is the following:

• Actual content from the certification owner’s materials, which is what the test will be based upon.
• If the training program is specifically for certification exam prep, then it will be targeted to exactly what will be on the exam, nothing less, not much more.
• If the training program is good, it will likely be developed and presented by someone who is expert in the field and who can provide context, real-world anecdotes, and other supplementary information to help build a fuller understanding of the content, but still within the bounds of what will be covered on the exam.  This never hurts, as the test questions can and do change and sometimes they are situational and require more than just memorizing definitions.
• In addition to training content, good training programs include practice quizzes and practice tests, to help you gauge whether you are assimilating the content well enough to tackle the certification exam.

When I was preparing to take the ITIL Foundation V4 exam, I reviewed some of the free content (mostly free mini quizzes) and quickly realized this was a minefield.  After some research into accredited training programs, I chose the ITIL Foundation V4 training program offered by GogoTraining.  The course is structured as a series of modules (all on-demand) that include video presentations with accompanying slides, delivered by Dr. Suzanne Van Hove, who is a seasoned expert in IT Service Management and ITIL.  She brings vast, real-world Service Management experience to the training and does a fantastic job of adding context to the sometimes seemingly abstract concepts in ITIL.  Even with this additional context, the presentations were quickly paced – fast enough that I didn’t feel like I was wasting time but slow enough to follow (also, you can always pause and go back). Dr. Hove’s delivery is enthusiastic and animated, which helped make the training interesting and engaging.  Also, after every couple of modules, there are quizzes to gauge your progress and two full practice exams to take after finishing the course.  All helpful.  Most importantly, after taking the training, I immediately took the ITIL Foundation V4 certification exam and passed quite easily.

Accredited is the way to go, in my opinion.  And GogoTraining worked great for me.