itSMFI 2016 Forum Focus - September Forum Focus ITSMFI Sept 2016 | Page 5

effectively, and is a means by which the customer
experience and interaction with products, services, and
the service provider organization is designed and
managed. Service management is also a transformation
method for any organization that wishes to operate as a
service provider organization.”
Source: USMBOK
So, in layman’s terms, ITSM is about:
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Customers
Services
Quality
Cost
Meeting business needs
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including the negative financial implications of
critical IT issues
Increased IT cost efficiency
IT and Business-Level Benefits from ITSM
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Increased business alignment
Increased I T service availability
Increased visibility and understanding IT
services
The ability to better support compliance and
regulatory requirements
All this goes way beyond the traditional view of
managing IT based on siloed technology domains such
as network, storage, and compute; ITSM is about
optimizing service delivery and the consumption of
those IT services.
The Generic IT and Business Benefits
from ITSM
Different information sources will list different benefits
available with ITSM. Some will relate to the IT organiza-
tion, some to the parent business, and some to both. A
few examples are:
IT Organization Benefits from ITSM
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A better understanding of business requirements
Repeatable and scalable best practice-based
processes
Defined
roles
and
responsibilities,
plus
accountability
Increased IT productivity through optimal
processes and enabling technology
Increased customer perceptions of IT and IT
service delivery
Better expectation management for business
stakeholders and employees
Increased control
The ability to measure and improve IT
performance
The shortening of the incident lifecycle and
potentially the prevention of incidents before
they occur (where “incidents” are IT issues)
The proactive identification of problems (repeat
IT issues)
Don’t Assume that ITSM Will Be New
to Your Organization
Before we dive deeper into what ITSM is, it’s worth
noting that you are probably already doing some ITSM
activities – it’s just that you don’t necessarily call it
ITSM. For example, any or all of the following are ITSM
activities:
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Business-Level Benefits from ITSM
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Better IT ability to react to the business’ need for
rapid change
Increased business productivity due to better IT
service availability and performance
Reduction in the business impact of incidents,
5 itSMFI Forum Focus—September 2016
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Responding to, and fixing, infrastructure,
application, or end-user IT issues – it’s incident
management
Providing new software or hardware, or access to
network resources – it’s request fulfillment
Providing “how to”-type assistance to end users –
it’s also request fulfillment
Managing changes to infrastructure and
applications in a controlled way – it’s change
management