Software houses and other IT companies are always looking for ways to boost their efficiency and streamline ways of working. After all, it’s not enough to have a stellar team of developers and designers if you don’t effectively manage your processes and build trust and reputation among your clients. This is why it’s important to actively embrace IT Service Management and to have individuals within your company who act as ‘connectors’ between the worlds of IT and business management.
What is ITIL Service Delivery?
The Information Technology Infrastructure Library (ITIL) is an internationally recognized standard in IT Service Management. It is designed to increase businesses’ efficiency when it comes to service delivery and in doing so, better satisfy the needs of clients. There are many benefits to adopting an ITSM approach in your company. Here are just a few of them.
Improving workflows
One of the top benefits of an ITSM approach is the improvement of operational efficiency. Many businesses struggle to get on top of the multitude of tasks that need to be done on a daily basis to keep the company running. But by using best practices from service management you can maximize the value from the resources, improve your workflows and streamline your expenses. All of this means that you’re reducing waste and therefore improving your bottom line.
Reducing operational cost
Gartner projects that IT spending will reach a colossal $4.5 trillion in 2022, which a large proportion of that being spent on staffing costs and maintenance. Adoption of IT service management can help companies scale their operations more easily without the need to hire large amounts of IT operational staff – this is due to the automated features that reduce manual workload for IT service managers.
Reducing risk
Changes which are poorly planned or inadequately implemented can pose a significant degree of risk to a business. But the ITSM approach ensures that your company can implement changes in ways that reduce this risk. This is done through the adoption of formalised processes and policies, forming a smooth, effective change management process. This means that everyone in the company is aware of their role in the process, knows who the decision-makers are at every stage and know who to turn to for help when things go wrong.
Improving performance visibility
One of the primary benefits of the IT Service Management approach is the introduction of processes and rules that IT companies can follow to standardize and optimize their service delivery. ITSM can help to advance the maturity of processes across the organization, along the Capability Maturity Model Integration scale. The first two levels: Initial and Managed are poorly controlled and lack standardization. ITSM supports organizations to get to Level 3, which is a clearly defined process. The end goal is to reach levels 4 and 5, as below.
Level 4 – ITSM software captures data from the process and measures its performance. Based on the findings from this data, organizations can make further improvements and advance to the final stage of optimizing.
Level 5 – At this level, organizations consistently leverage performance visibility to drive ongoing performance improvement.
Improving Service Delivery and Customer Experience
Most IT businesses have both external and internal customers. The external customers are the organizations that the company works with, while the internal customers and the stakeholders within the business itself rely on its services.
ITSM processes support businesses to align their activities with client needs (both internal and external), reduce wasted resources and improve accountability. All of this results in a better client experience.
It also often leads to the implementation of a formal ticketing and incident response system which ensures more rigorous handling of incidents, and the assurance that they will be dealt with in a swift and efficient manner.
The crucial role of Service Managers and other ‘connectors’
The role of the IT service manager is important in that it connects with all parts of the business, ensuring that the IT functions within the company don’t operate in a silo and that they effectively serve emerging needs. IT service managers ensure the effective identification and implementation of service requirements throughout the businesses. They also implement the processes that are necessary to ensure that the services are well managed. This also includes having a thorough oversight of the resources (both human and material) which are needed to implement these services. Finally, IT service managers are instrumental when it comes to reporting performance against previously defined KPIs to do with service delivery. In doing so, they can provide highly valuable information to the CEO and senior management team on business performance overall.
In Summary
Effective IT Service Management is essential to the long-term success of any IT organization, bringing a wealth of benefits. If your company is looking to scale and formalize the processes that are needed for the effective delivery of services both internally and externally, it’s definitely worth hiring a team of Service Managers. At the same time, it’s worth conducting whole-company training on ITIL service delivery to ensure that all teams across the business understand the process and are invested in it.
