Using ITIL's framework of Best Practices to achieve business and service objectives.
Can an organization achieve high customer satisfaction and operational effectiveness without adopting ITIL Best Practices? The answer is evident by how well-received IT services are from the customer's perspective and whether current IT services meet their existing and emerging business requirements.
For the IT Executive, the successful delivery of services is the measurement by which Enterprise Services gauges its accomplishments.
ITIL practices represent the "basic elements" or practices that are found in every IT shop around the world - both public and private sectors. A look at day-to-day operations reveals that organizations may already employ ITIL practices to some degree and with some level of success. The problem remains does IT services live up to its promise to enable end-users to easily execute their business functions and improve the delivery of services?
The problem may be that the various services provided by the IT department are not connected or integrated in a manner that promotes harmony and synergy between and among business processes or technical support teams. Therefore, the level of success attained by an IT organization may be less than optimal predicated on the number and severity of problems routinely encountered or the difficulty in managing even the most routine day-to-day operational tasks. This may lead to a lack of confidence in the IT department by customers who are critical of what IT does to them, and not for them.
The broader question may be does the business organization integrate the right combination of ITIL disciplines to achieve its IT Service Management capabilities? To determine the level of success, a Gap Analysis may be necessary to identify weaknesses in service capabilities or fulfillment of business / customer needs, and then apply the correct combination of ITSM solutions that result in quantifiable increases in effective service delivery and customer satisfaction.
It is incorrect to suggest that ITIL is a prescriptive solution (that is, without it things won't work) as opposed to a Best Practices approach (assumes you have already mastered the basics and intend to achieve a higher level of effectiveness). Employing "Best Practices" demonstrates an organization's success in executing daily business transactions in a consistent and repeatable manner where customers seek out IT support rather than avoid it.
Raising ITSM to an enterprise level and employing Best Practice solutions assumes the organization has examined the collected practices of its member organizations (such as associate agencies, multiple IT departments, or geographically dispersed operation centers) and found that current operations or processes do not adequately address emerging business needs. Organizations must decide which of the current practices within each member organization is most valuable overall and worth the effort of being emulated or replicated throughout the enterprise. Consistency in execution forms the basis of Best Practices for a particular organization. What remains is to integrate selected ITIL disciplines into a homogenous set of processes and procedures that easily accommodates day-to-day operations for the entire enterprise.
ALM can help businesses establish an ITIL practice within their organization; ALM has the requisite experience to integrate and implement ITSM solutions for government and commercial entities at the enterprise level. In one recent engagement, ALM's approach resulted in the successful consolidation of multiple sub-agency networks from coast to coast into a single Enterprise Service Management operations center. ALM has successfully integrated over two hundred sites under the Enterprise Services Office with an additional four hundred sites coming online in subsequent phases now underway.
ALM will provide you with the same highly successful ITSM solutions currently experienced by dozens of government offices across the country. Please contact ALM to learn how our approach to solving Enterprise Service Management challenges can be turned into customer-pleasing solutions.
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