ITSM Benefits

As technology has developed and become integrated with almost all core business functions, former impromptu attitudes to the delivery of IT have become outdated and inefficient. Fortunately, IT service management — or ITSM — has emerged as a proven strategic approach that closes the gap between the delivery of IT services and support for an organization’s business objectives.

At its most basic, ITSM is a collection of processes that includes the design, delivery, management, and improvement of IT services to benefit the end users within an organization. It’s focused on enabling an organization to implement processes that will most effectively align its IT services with its business goals.

How Does ITSM Relate to ITIL?

In the 1980s, the United Kingdom published a 30-volume work that codified all of the time’s best IT practices. It was known as the Information Technology Infrastructure Library — or ITIL — and was the brainchild of the British government’s Central Computer and Telecommunications Agency. It was also based on some of the best resources that were available at the time, including IBM’s Yellow Books that described systems management.

Today, the updated third edition of ITIL has been consolidated into five volumes about how strategy, design, transition, operation, and improvement affect IT service. As such, ITIL serves as a framework for organizations in need of IT best practices that will allow their business to expand and thrive.

It’s interesting to note the beneficial relationship between ITSM and ITIL. While ITSM helps companies establish the processes to deliver their IT services, ITIL is one of the most widely-used frameworks for building ITSM. In fact, according to some estimates, more than 80 percent of IT service desks currently use the ITIL framework. Those businesses are prime candidates for ITSM and the many advantages it offers.

Pros of ITSM

Once a company embraces the ITSM model and begins the journey of delivering IT in a more service-oriented fashion, several benefits emerge. Here are some of the most significant advantages of ITSM for competitive organizations of all sizes:

• Alignment with business needs: An IT problem has the potential to interrupt or even halt a business’s operations. To prevent this slowdown from happening, an organization must apply ITSM to elevate IT to the level of a valued partner of the overall enterprise. Once that’s accomplished, IT functions that are aligned with an organization’s needs are far more likely to effectively support day-to-day operations as well as future growth.
• Standardization and accountability: ITSM ensures that the delivery of IT is accomplished via a standardized method that conforms to all relevant policies, regulations, and accountability procedures, which makes IT service best practices standard and repeatable.
• Time and financial savings: One of the most distinct benefits of ITSM is its ability to help IT professionals be more productive. When IT best practices become standardized, they can be performed in a predictable manner that encourages process efficiency. The cumulative effect of this type of system management is that downtimes and interruptions are minimized — resulting in time savings and, by extension, financial savings for the company.
• Continuous improvement: In addition to ITIL, ISO/IEC 20000, and DevOps are also suitable frameworks for ITSM. As a result, organizations with these frameworks can better encourage and maintain an agile mindset through the ongoing service improvements that ITSM supports.

Why Integrate IT Service Management Training?

An increasing number of businesses are discovering reasons to implement ITSM as a management methodology to maximize the return on investment in their IT services. For professional guidance with regard to ITSM, many of those businesses turn to BTI for our expertly crafted training and certification services.

If we can help your business with ITSM implementation, contact us or call 410-997-1237 today.