itSMFI 2016 Forum Focus - September Forum Focus ITSMFI Sept 2016 | Page 12

The potential benefits from service asset and configuration
management relate to how the collected and managed data
is ultimately used, rather than from how much data has
been collected, for example: to support the incident,
change, problem, or capacity management processes. Thus,
before starting on any configuration and/or asset manage-
ment initiative, an IT organization must ensure that it fully
understands why it needs to adopt configuration manage-
ment, implement a configuration management database
(CMDB) or configuration management system (CMS), and
the data it needs to collect and manage.
You can find out more about configuration
management by reading What’s the Point of Configuration
Management? and Clearing Up the Myths of CMDB.
Knowledge
management
–
“The
process
responsible for sharing perspectives, ideas, experience and
information, and for ensuring that these are available in the
right place and at the right time. The knowledge
management process enables informed decisions, and
improves efficiency by reducing the need to rediscover
knowledge.”
As with service asset and configuration management, the
potential benefits of knowledge management are realized
from the more effective and efficient operation of other
ITSM processes – such as incident, change, problem, or
capacity management – rather than by directly using the
knowledge management process itself. After all, it’s
knowledge use (or exploitation) rather than knowledge
management that ultimately makes a difference to IT and
business operations.
You can find out more about knowledge management by
reading Knowledge Management Is Not Just About
Document Repositories.
Service level management – “The process responsible for
negotiating achievable service level agreements and
ensuring that these are met. It is responsible for ensuring
that all IT service management processes, operational level
agreements and underpinning contracts are appropriate for
the agreed service level targets. Service level management
monitors and reports on service levels, holds regular service
reviews with customers, and identifies required
improvements.”
A service level is defined as: “An agreement between an IT
service provider and a customer. A service level agreement
describes the IT service, documents service level targets, and
specifies the responsibilities of the IT service provider and
the customer. A single agreement may cover multiple IT
services or multiple customers.”
Beyond the obvious benefits of setting and managing
customer expectations through SLAs, and identifying
service improvements, service level management can also
12 itSMFI Forum Focus—September 2016
help to ensure that IT services actually meet customer
needs and to better define the respective responsibilities
of both service consumers and providers.
You can find out more about service level management
by reading How Can You Create an SLA that Helps to
Delight Your Customers?
Financial management for IT services – “The function
and processes responsible for managing an IT service
provider’s
budgeting, accounting
and
charging
requirements. Financial management for IT services
secures an appropriate level of funding to design, develop
and deliver services that meet the strategy of the
organization in a cost-effective manner.”
Financial management for IT services is not just about
cost cutting. While IT organizations and their parent
businesses might initially benefit from reducing costs,
the real value is in becoming more cost efficient, then
cost optimized, and then finally being able to
demonstrate business value – although these states
aren’t mutually exclusive nor a necessarily a linear
progression.
Differentiating Between
Desk and Service Desk
IT
Help
Similar to the potential confusion between ITSM and
ITIL, there are two other ITSM terms that can mean
different things to different people – “IT help desk” and
“service desk.”
The internal IT help desk – “the people you contact for
IT support or information” – was born in the late 1980s/
early 1990s to fix employee IT issues as they began to
have more and more access to IT in the workplace.
Interestingly, ITIL offers no definition for IT help desk,
and it is not even mentioned in the five main ITIL books.
On the flip side, most employees still think that they are
calling the IT help desk when they have an IT issue no
matter what the corporate IT organization call its IT
support facility. The term “service desk” is probably
totally alien to employees.
The service desk is an evolution of the IT help desk,
based on ITIL and the management of IT as a service,
where:
“A typical service desk manages incidents and service
requests, and also handles communication with the
users.”
Accordingly, a service desk does more than an IT help
desk – in that it also deals with service requests – but it
is often also differentiated by the adoption of an ITIL
mindset and how the received end-user requests are
handled, e.g. with service level targets and/or a more
customer-centric approach.