What does ITSM mean in 2021?
Information Technology Service Management or ITSM can be viewed as a subset of Service Science focusing on the various IT operations being carried out such as service delivery and service support to the customers. As opposed to the orthodox technology-oriented perspective towards Information Technology, ITSM has conceived more of a discipline looking after process-oriented management of IT operations. Between 60%-90% of the IT ownership goes into IT service management.
In 2021, IT service providers have an additional responsibility on their shoulders. They simply cannot just focus on the technology and the internal organisation. In order to gain a competitive advantage and maintain market superiority, they must also consider and pay special attention to the quality of the services they provide. They must focus on building a great relationship with the customers.
Since ITSM is about process-oriented management of IT operations, it also focuses on the movement of improving the processes such as the Business Process Management, Six Sigma, and the Total Quality Management (TQM) within an organisation. Therefore, ITSM is also responsible for providing a good quality framework in order to align activities related to IT operations and their interactions with business customers and user processes.
ITSM according to ITIL4
The evolution of ITSM best practice standards originated with the Information Technology Infrastructure Library or ITIL, which is the most widely adopted and recognised body of knowledge in the IT sector. According to the latest version of ITIL4, ITSM can be described as:
“The implementation and management of quality IT services that meet the needs of the business. IT service management is performed by IT service providers through an appropriate mix of people, process and information technology.”
Is ITSM relevant in the digital era?
Tony Price of Virtual Clarity and David D’Agostino of Nexthink conducted a great session entitled ‘Experience Level Agreements: Kicking the KPI Habit’ in 2018 and in that session, Tony identified that shift left has been misused to represent the passing of IT issues to the customer by way of self-service, all the while adding to the ongoing obsession with fixing issues – rather than preventing them.
David alluded to the context for this in that employees and customers have an experience of technology at home like a luxury dream-liner and go to work and experience that of an old army aircraft.
The enraged customer is becoming more prevalent and people are working in sub-optimal environments. The service desk generally hears about issues reactively – people will have complained to everyone including the Chief Information Officer (CIO) before issues are registered, by which time they are enraged.
Graph 1: Time Per Day Due To Technical Fails In Different Industries
Instead of focusing upon the creation of endless KPI reports, detailing irrelevant metrics, which takes man-hours, if not days of peoples’ valuable time, why doesn’t IT focus upon a proactive approach that has prevention as a critical success factor?
Digital Customer Experience is still an Experience
An experience is consumed, it creates a feeling within someone. A positive feeling is a positive outcome for a service provider.
Emphasis is usually placed on automating the service through the use of tools and processes to remove manual steps. Emphasis should also be placed upon the human element of any service. This could be to free up our most valuable assets at the support end to focus on higher-value complex tasks, giving them greater motivation and job satisfaction. Whilst the ability to pre-empt customer issues and to resolve them before an experience becomes negative is very powerful in positioning IT as a proactive, coordinated, intelligent function that has its customers at its core.
We strive to help our clients improve services in IT, from a people, process, and technology perspective. We have partnered with excellent tools that can offer automation at the service desk, for Service Request, Incident, and Change management, but also that can support and underpin Problem Management, Capacity, Availability, and Service Asset & Configuration – managing the estate, hardware, software, licensing – to ensure a better all-round experience for the customer.
What is the impact of COVID-19 on ITSM?
Ever since the COVID-19 outbreak impacted the United Kingdom, businesses were forced to move out of their traditional office environment and into remote-working locations. This transition needed to be quick, and as smooth as possible. A major part of the success behind such a rapid migration was spearheaded by the IT service organisations.
Digital Transformation Of Businesses
According to Gartner, 69% of the boards of directors have confirmed that the pandemic has accelerated digital business initiatives. While fields such as Finance, Marketing, Human Resources, and Administration have seen a drop of 2-4.5% in average budgetary changes, the IT departments have seen the largest boost of over 6.9%.
Graph 2: Average Budgetary Changes in 2020 Due to COVID-19
Source: Gartner, 2020
Clearly, the ITSM is an integral part of such a digital transformation. Essentially, the ‘what’ and ‘why’ of ITSM remain unchanged. It is the ‘how’ that has received a lot of attention in the post-pandemic era. New and advanced technologies such as Nexthink, are working on new ways of thinking such as Agile, DevOps, and Lean.
Growth In Popularity For ITIL4
ITIL4 is getting a lot more recognition than it used to as companies look for the proper guidelines and good practices to ensure that they provide quality services to their customers and secure their own future in what is clearly the beginning of an unprecedented era of technology and business working together in digital space like never before.
Output Vs Outcome
Before, the IT service providers only cared about providing outputs. This perception has changed drastically in 2021 as we are now looking to provide outcomes. Measuring the success or failure of a service based on their outputs rarely communicate the benefits that the customers received. Thus, organisations often make decisions that may not directly relate to the kind of quality that comes with their services. Conversely, outcomes are related to the performance levels of the services provided. These are the qualities of the service which are represented quantitatively to compare how they have improved over time.
Cloud IT Service Management
Cloud ITSM is a cost-effective, reliable, and secure solution used by organisations in order to manage Incidents, Service Requests, Problems, and Changes in order to support the customers by adopting cloud technology all over the world. The key features of Cloud ITSM include:
High speed of implementation
Reduced overhead costs
Increased capacity and sophistication in scalability
Easy and user-friendly interface
For further information on how we can help you to improve or automate services and to engage and develop your employees, get in touch.