ITSM or IT service management is a strategic approach that is used to execute the design, delivery, and management of the IT services within an organization in the most efficient manner possible. The aim of ITSM is to align the available information technology resources with the business goals of an organization.

What are the different frameworks in ITSM?

ITSM involves several different frameworks for implementing and monitoring IT management practices.

Some of the most popular ITSM frameworks are:

  • COBIT
  • Microsoft Operations Framework
  • Six Sigma
  • ISO 20000
  • TOGAF or The Open Group Architecture Framework
  • ITIL or Information Technology Infrastructure Library

What are the benefits of ITSM?
ITSM is more than the optimization of resources and people. Rather, it tries to deliver IT as a service in a consistent and standardized manner. ITSM clearly defines the different roles and responsibilities within an organization and develops solutions that best fit the business goal.

The benefits of ITSM can be IT-specific or business-specific. In some cases, it focuses on both.

The IT-specific benefits mostly involve an increase in efficiency and productivity of the IT sector within an organization, increased control over regulatory and compliance issues, better customer perception, and optimization of IT operations.

The business benefits involve an increased understanding of business needs, increased cost efficiency, and increased productivity from business operations.

ITSM is a very broad concept that involves the implementation of policies, quality management, and software engineering as compared to the other IT approaches.

An ITSM success story
A European organization in the public sector had a unique goal in their mind. They had a team of ITSM practitioners and the organization wanted their ITSM practitioners to configure their service management system all on their own without the involvement of programmers. The ultimate aim was to reduce the dependency of the organization on the services of programmers to configure their system.

The IT department of the company had more than 1,500 employees and the ITSM team itself consisted of more than 100 employees.

The goal was to integrate the organization’s service management system with third-party tools such as an in-house data mining solution and a monitoring tool to allow a larger number of the company’s top executives to take advantage of the available technology.

The newly configured ITSM system would have to improve workflows in order to support business operations.

One of the employees in the ITSM team was tasked with this specific responsibility. Within just three weeks, the employee had come up with a solution by himself without even attending a training session.

The result was that the newly configured service management system started being increasingly used by the company and the stakeholders in the organization were able to access the technology without having to rely on programmers.

The service management system combined adaptability and rapidness to make a solution that stood out. The ITSM soltution literally paid for itself in all aspects.

What are the obstacles in ITSM success and what are the best ways to resolve it?
Some of the greatest obstacles in ITSM success as described by employees are the software itself, the deployment process, and the complexity of the administrative processes. So the key to a successful ITSM solution is to combine proper functionality with administrative processes that are less complex.

In several cases, companies find that despite investments in the proper ITSM tools, the ROI remains much lower than expectations. Why is it so?

In most cases, a poor performance is responsible for an ROI that is less than what is expected. Often, a lack of integration and old technology are what is responsible for a drop in performance efficiency despite significant investments in ITSM.

The solution is rather simple.

How can you create an ITSM success story?
There are two things to keep in mind while trying to integrate ITSM solutions into your business operations.

Understand what your organization needs. Develop a clear picture of the outcome. This is exactly what the European organization did. They had a single goal in mind. Reduce the reliance on programmers and train their ITSM personnel to configure the service management system on their own.

Once you have defined your goal, the next step is to dedicate enough time to develop the process. In the above case, the organization allotted nearly a month to its ITSM employees to come up with a solution. In addition, they briefed the team about the specific goals the new solution would have to achieve.

The result was that the organization began generating a better ROI with the newly integrated system with minimal dependency on the programmers.

ITSM tools are simply an organization’s strategic partners.They can collect important data and present it in ways that are most beneficial to the organization. ITSM tools have built in business intelligence and they are capable of analyzing data and predicting the possible outcomes. These tools are also able to create several hypothetical situations and come up with answers to the problems that such situations may present in real life. ITSM tools require significant investments. This being said, if they are combined with proper operational management, they can dynamically improve the ROI of a organization.

Many organizations make the mistake of retaining existing tools without developing a proper decision criteria to integrate the old technology into the new technology. One of the most important aspects of retaining old technology is to ease the integration of existing tools with the newest solutions.

Ultimately, the right ITSM tool will increase the ROI and pay for itself. In addition, a proper ITSM tool can decrease costs in areas like administration, training, and several others. You will soon find that proper integration of ITSM tools reduces the costs in your IT budget.