3 Why Implement Service Management?

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One of the main objectives of ITIL is to assist IT service provider organisations “to improve IT efficiency and effectiveness whilst improving the overall quality of service to the business within imposed cost constraints”.

The specific goals of IT are to develop and maintain IT services that:

• Develop and maintain good and responsive relationships with the business

• Meet the existing IT requirements of the business

• Are easily developed and enhanced to meet future business needs, within appropriate time scales and costs

• Make effective and efficient use of all IT resources

• Contribute to the improvement of the overall quality of IT service within the imposed cost constraints.

Benefits realised by many IT organisations through implementing ITIL and processes based on “best practice” guidelines are:

• Continuous improvement in the delivery of quality IT services

• Reduced long term costs through improved ROI or reduced TCO through process improvement

• Demonstrable VFM to the business, the board and stakeholders, through greater efficiency

• Reduced risk of not meeting business objectives, through the delivery of rapidly recoverable, consistent services

• Improved communication and better working relationships between IT and the business

• The ability to absorb a higher rate of Change with an improved, measurable rate of success

• Processes and procedures that can be audited for compliance to “best practice” guidelines

• Improved ability to counter take-over, mergers and outsourcing.

Examples of some of the savings made by organisations include:

• Over 70% reduction in service downtime

• ROI up by over 1000%

• Savings of £100 million per annum

• New product cycles reduced by 50%.

However, care must be taken when developing IT Service Management within an organisation. It is easy to view and interpret ITIL as bulky and bureaucratic and as a result implement processes that inhibit Change rather than facilitate it. It is important that ITIL is implemented with an “adopt and adapt” approach so that effective and appropriate processes are put in place. This can only be achieved where business driven metrics, Critical Success Factors (CSFs) and Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) are put in place to measure the success of the process implementations and their continuous improvement. Quality and the measurement of quality, in business related terms, is yet another core principle of ITIL.

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