Chaos to value: the IT Service Management journey

A new paper from Hornbill examines the initial stages of the ITSM maturity journey, starting with the ‘chaotic’ initial steps and explaining how the adoption of ITIL can provide fast benefit, setting the stage for further maturity. Patrick Bolger, CMO of Hornbill, explains

The journey of service improvement can take the IT organisation from the reactive and technology-centric focus characterised by the helpdesk, to a vision of business-centred services which drive value to the ultimate benefit of the organisation.

The purpose of IT Service Management (ITSM) is to integrate IT strategy and the delivery of IT services with the goals of the business, with an emphasis on providing benefit to customers. The ITSM journey demands a shift in focus and culture, from managing IT within separate technology silos, to managing the end-to-end delivery of services using guidance from best practice frameworks such as the IT Infrastructure Library (ITIL).

A service lifecycle approach

The current version of ITIL (v3) advocates a service lifecycle approach, starting with Service Strategy and moving through Service Design, Service Transition and Service Operations, with Continual Service Improvement closing the loop and feeding back into Service Strategy.

Unlike a journey, which has a final destination, the service lifecycle is more like a round-the-world trip. The traveller spends time planning the journey and embarks with excitement and trepidation, visiting destinations where the culture at first seems alien. After a period of time they settle into the culture and once familiar with the territory, they move on. As soon as they have arrived back at their starting point, they start the journey again, but on this second trip, they view the journey differently. Countries that were once alien are now familiar, so they visit the areas that have the most to offer and take in some new destinations to broaden their cultural horizons.

The ITSM journey also requires planning and involves taking in new cultures. One of the greatest mistakes made by adopters is to embark on a project to ‘implement ITIL’, without fully understanding the challenges they are trying to address, or setting measurable targets that enable them to identify when their goals have been achieved. ITSM programmes are initiated with high expectations of what can be achieved but aspirations are often tempered by common barriers to adoption, such as lack of resources (time, people and budget), cultural resistance and lack of business sponsorship.

For organisations adopting ITIL as the foundation for service improvement, the full framework is unfamiliar territory and can appear overwhelming. The paper ‘Chaos to Value: the IT Service Management Journey’ examines the early stages of the ITSM journey, starting with the initial steps out of a ‘chaotic’ IT environment, with due consideration given to the IT organisation’s cultural readiness to adopt any given set of processes at every stage of growth and maturity.

Using lessons learned from other adopters, the paper advocates a steady progression through the phases of the ITSM journey and explains how adoption of ITIL can provide fast benefit, capture management attention and set the stage for the next leg of the journey so that momentum is maintained.

Download the full white paper at www.hornbill.com/journey

Case study

ASPIRE Academy for Sports Excellence in Qatar excels in service delivery using Hornbill’s Supportworks ITSM

ASPIRE Academy for Sports Excellence is located in Doha, the capital of the state of Qatar, in the heart of the Arabian Gulf. The wish of ASPIRE Academy’s founder HH Sheikh Jassim Bin Hamad Al -Thani, was to create a world-class sports and educational institution which is able to develop elite champions who are highly educated leaders.

The rapid growth of the organisation was a catalyst for the service functions to invest in new help desk software, to provide a customer-focused and single, streamlined support administration and IT service management to its 480 staff and students.

“As an organisation, we want to operate on a world-class level and so it was important that our back-office services can support our business objectives. Hornbill’s solution has helped us to achieve our goal to create a corporate service desk that provides a single point of contact for all staff and student support services, ” said Ahmed Sharifai, senior IT services officer at ASPIRE.

ASPIRE selected Hornbill’s Supportworks ITSM software to support its goal in providing a single point of contact for any enquiry to the separate business functions. In just three years the IT department has grown from six people to over 30, all of whom now use Supportworks ITSM customer service software to manage service requests.

“Increasingly we found that our processes were preventing us from accurately measuring the quality or performance of our service from our IT help desk. We were not matching customers’ needs and the lack of clear communication on tracking and monitoring services was resulting in a poor service,” explained Sharifai. “In addition, we lacked management information to support our decision making, which meant that we couldn’t support or keep pace with change that we need to in order to be a global player.”

ITIL best practice results in more efficient working

Following a review of service management software solutions, the IT Team selected Hornbill’s Supportworks ITSM for its compatibility with ITIL best practice combined with the benefits to be gained from consolidating support for diverse business functions on the same service desk software platform.

“We chose Hornbill’s Supportworks ITSM tech support software as it combines the business and technology focus that we required. As existing users of Supportworks helpdesk software prior to adopting ITIL, it was also a straightforward upgrade path for us,” said Sharifai

Using Supportworks ITSM for Incident, Change and Problem management has enabled the IT team to improve efficiencies. The ability to monitor and report on all aspects of its service provision has resulted in faster problem resolution.

Improved efficiencies reduce operational costs

“By using the single service desk software platform the IT team can handle incidents much more efficiently. Overall we have reduced our cost base as a result and we are able to report back to the business on specific performance criteria,” said Sharifai. “The business benefits have not only made us more efficient, we are more productive overall. The management reports have enabled us to become more proactive in our service delivery, which in turn has greatly improved our service. There is no doubt that Supportworks ITSM help desk software plays a significant part in our ability to meet our business objectives.”