IT Service Management ITSM

Structure of an ITSM system in the conditions of business

The principle of creation of management of information service for the purpose of providing high-quality services and providing effective solution of business challenges of the company. ITSM is quite young management system for IT departments. The main goal of ITSM consists in formation of IT department by the full participant of the business acting as the supplier of services for business divisions, and the relations between them should be characterized as the relations "the supplier of services – the consumer of services". IT departments give support and develop information infrastructure of the company according to the requested service and the set quality. Business division makes the demands to the necessary type of services and their quality.

ITSM functions

Functions of an ITSM system

• Capacity management is capacity management. Due to the shortage of power of infrastructure there are complaints to reduction of speed of work, or impossibility to continue work. On the other hand, use of excess power are for nothing the spent money. With respect thereto, the purpose of this process - to reach logical compromise between expenses and requirements.
• Configuration management is configuration management. The purpose of this process is creation and maintenance in a necessary status of a logical model of infrastructure.
• IT service continuity management is management of continuity. The process purpose - to guarantee recovery of infrastructure which is necessary for further development of business operations, in case of emergency: blackouts, fire, etc.
• Problem management is problem management. The purpose of this process – reduction of number of incidents. It can achieve by determination and elimination of their reasons.
• Change management is change management. Any change is rather dangerous to infrastructure, though it is made of good motives therefore the purpose of process is assumption only proved change and also approval of carrying out changes.
• Release management is management of releases. The essence of process consists in preserving of capacity to act of the production environment in the course of carrying out changes.
• Service level management is layer management of service. Rather often the consumer of the IT service and the supplier have different ideas about volume what transactions and as quickly should be carried out. The process purpose – to define the necessary structure and level of service, to control its achievements, and in case of need - to activate actions for elimination of low-quality service.
• Incident management is incident management. The process purpose – as fast as possible and qualitatively to eliminate incidents, i.e. any events requiring response: failures, requests for consultations, etc.
• Financial management for IT services is management of finance. The purpose of this process is guaranteeing reliable financial base for all other processes.
• Availability management is availability control. Availability – one of the most often used indicators of level of service. This process is intended to solve all problems connected with availability.

Implementation

Development of the formalized processes of IT department is the main requirement in implementation process of ITSM. The concept of ITSM is reflected in such methodologies and approaches as:

• The library of the best practices in the field of management of IT is ITIL (The Information Technology Infrastructure Library);
• Technical guidance for support and management of solutions and services of the production systems constructed on products and technologies of Microsoft - MOF (Microsoft Operations Framework);
• Software maintenance maturity model - S3M (The Software Maintenance Maturity Model);
• The standard in the field of control of information technologies is CobiT (Control Objectives for Information and Related Technology);
• Library an application service - ASL (Application Services Library) and many others.

With improvement of economic climate, in 2010 the number of ITSM projects in the Russian market grew. Level of a maturity of projects increases. Receipt of requests for implementation of more full and integral range of processes is mentioned: requirements imposed by customers to these processes clearly demonstrate deeper understanding that it is necessary for the company.

Important trend in Russia - interest in management of IT assets (ITAM), analysts of the market note. As IT assets are the main part of all IT budget, the organizations aim to find the bases for the approval of IT projects in this area. As ITAM is closely connected and is crossed with ITIL and ITSM, the increasing number of the companies apply ITAM as a starting point to implementation of organizational changes and improvements.

One more trend is that the organizations do not limit Service Management to a framework of IT department. In the companies there is an understanding that the principles of Service Management are applicable not only to IT, but to any other department providing services. The service of operation and personnel department are the most common example, but activity of marketing departments, legal and financial also becomes covered by the principles of Service Management. Any activity connected with request processing, arriving from customers, should represent the structured process, and the principles of Service Management for this purpose can be applied. Expansion of use of the principles of ITSM and approach to business promote receiving support of the ITSM project from business.

Understanding by business

One of the main tasks of ITSM – to turn IT into the service division which is widely participating in business processes of the company. What is required to company management for understanding of usefulness of ITSM?

To the head three pacing factors are important: increase in turnover, cost reduction and risk reduction. Understanding it, it is important to provide to company management need of participation of IT for these three components important for business:

• It is required to show visually how expenses on the IT budget can be cut down. Most clearly it is possible to show return of investments (ROI) on the example of asset management. One more plus is more effective use of IT personnel: lay off the number of employees or to accurately explain that ensuring development and growth with perhaps smaller forces.

• The IT can show how ITSM allows to cut down expenses for the business by means of standards of control and change management.

• It is very important to show to business as risks can be minimized and considerable potential losses are prevented. There are examples when the companies lost millions of dollars and their action sharply went down in price only on an absence reason of correctly built processes. In similar cases the budget was selected for ITSM immediately. But, certainly, it is better to use more active approach: previously to define business risks, to estimate potential losses and to use these data before emergence of critical situations.

There are also other options.

Advantages

Are among positive effects of ITSM:

• IT services completely correspond to present and future customer needs and business;
• The quality of the provided services systematically improves;
• Gain of control and ensuring transparency of work of department of IT;
• Reduction of long-term expenses on providing the IT service;
• Increase in pro-activity of work of department of IT;
• Meets the statutory and other regulating requirements.

Positive sides of ITSM for users is:

• Service quality improvement;
• Reduction of time of idle times which are connected with IT;
• Possibility of the address to the centralized support service on any questions;
• Control over accomplishment of the requests;
• Ensuring accomplishment of requests according to the set service layer.

Self-service and knowledge bases

In a noyabor of 2017 of Ivanti and Service Desk Institute (SDI) published a research from two parts about a self-service role in IT and his value in the organizations in which the analysis of the problems interfering development of services of self-service is carried out.

The analysis of answers from 25,000 specialists of technical support in Great Britain showed that in the conditions of limited time need to improve work of users leads to growth of number of addressing knowledge bases and services of self-service. In a background of slower service of the end user because of the preferred interaction method by "personal contact", respondents noted several important advantages of service of self-service: "Best user experience", "Smaller volume of calls", "Support 24/7" and, "Best perception of a support service".

Main outputs of a research:

• 74% of technical support specialists use service of self-service (growth by 10% since 2013) and 58% suggest users to use the knowledge base
• The main motivator for implementation of service of self-service and use of the knowledge base is "Improvement of service of the end user" (90%)
• Service of users takes place slowly as 83% of users instead of self-service prefer to create a request in technical support, and 88% prefer to call at once, without addressing the knowledge base
• Respondents in the majority claimed that it was connected with preference of "personal contact" (72% concerning self-service and 88% - uses of the knowledge base), but also insufficient understanding of marketing of these services by technical support can be the cause (i.e. specialists meet difficulties in understanding of an essence and value of these tools)
• The biggest obstacle for implementation both self-service (50%), and the practician of use of knowledge bases (53%) in the organizations is time for the implementation which is closely connected with lack of interest from end users and business (43% - use of the knowledge base and 40% - self-service)

'Motives which induce the organization to improve services of self-service considerably differ. However in this report very important point is selected: the client (and the fact that he wants) should be in the center of any strategy", - Kevin J Smith, the senior vice president of Ivanti told. "For this reason the satisfaction of business needs and users is our priority when developing technology of management of services. It is necessary for modern provision of services that concerned parties in and out of IT infrastructure constantly interacted. Our solution with workflow automation and cloud or local options of deployment allows the IT specialist to set up quickly the solution of a world class which actively raises customer satisfaction.'

The common goal of a research was in covering a problem of self-service and use of knowledge bases, having analyzed motives of the organizations implementing these tools and also obstacles which they face and what benefits they receive as a result. The research also helped to understand ambitions of the organizations which just are going to implement these services and to analyze the factors interfering their implementation. Results were estimated and, whenever possible, were compared to results of the previous research conducted by SDI in 2013.

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