The Information Technology Service Management

The modern day organization places a high premium on the information it receives and disseminates. Accordingly, this strategic resource of the organization must be managed adequately. The IT Services is charged with the responsibility of ensuring quality of an organization’s information by managing its collection, production, analysis, and distribution. The fact that IT services play a crucial role in an organization is reason enough for an organization to invest enough resources towards the establishment of a strong It Systems. The essay that follows will describe the concept of IT service management and discuss how this is applied in business processed.

The Concept of IT service management

The main aim of service management is to make sure that IT services are appropriate to the business needs that they support. Not only is it crucial for IT services to support business processes but also spearhead the process of business transformation. Correct implementation and management of IT services determine the success of a business enterprise. Such a business will suffer less disruption and loss of valuable production hours, increase revenue, reduced costs, fulfil its business goals, and improve on how it relates to the public (Leslie, and Lacity 12).

The IT Service Management (ITSM) refers to a process-based practice that seeks to align IT services with the various needs of a business enterprise, ensuring that the end-user, i.e. the customer is benefitted. ITSM presents a paradigm shift from managing IT as a process that focused on stacks of components to focusing on the delivery of quality services to the end user using the best practice process framework. The best practices for IT service management is included on what is globally referred to as the Information Technology Infrastructure Library (ITIL) (Arison et al 9).

Service management denotes a set of organizational capabilities that are tailored to afford value to customers in form of quality services. Mature and efficient service providers have mastered the art of providing quality services to their customers in a consistent and cost-effective way. The core function of a service management system is to transform resources and capabilities into valuable services. The capabilities of an organization are determined by the challenges that they are likely to face and overcome. However, service management comprises more than just a set of capabilities; it also encompasses professional practice that is supported by a broad body of skills, experience, and knowledge. The growth and maturity of service management is championed by a global community of firms and individuals both in the private and public sectors (Leslie, and Lacity 14).

The business value and benefits of IT Service Management

The modern day business cannot take place independent of IT. Therefore, the IT management system must be manned and managed in the best way possible. The resources at the disposal of an IT management team is hardly enough, forcing the team to work on providing top notch services while at the same time minimizing the cost of providing these services. In order to ensure that both the goals of quality service and low cost are met, businesses often employ business system management. This system enables businesses to achieve more with less (White 4).

BSM solutions are tailored to analyse the quality of a system, give a real time report on the users’ experiences with the system, and then offer data that will be used to improve areas that fall short of the set business standards. The alignment of IT service with business processes is the main by-product of the BSM and this allows IT managers to formulate service decision within the context of the business. This in effect causes a reduction in cost as wastages and poor quality is regulated in all areas of the business (White 4).

The real time dashboards provided by the BSM system gives information on the real-time status of the business. The real time and historical information provided by the dashboards are important in the sense that they help operations and IT managers meet their goals of quality service delivery. Additionally, BSM helps align IT services with business processes, which then manages the services in such a way that it will be consistent with the set business priorities. The benefits of such an undertaking include the prioritization of problem resolution, service improvement programs helps in cutting down on costs that are related to process inefficiencies, service disruption are spotted and mitigated on time, and over-capitalization is avoided by ensuring that investments in service delivery are just adequate for the purposes of the business at hand (White 6).

ITIL framework concept and how it can ‘realize’ ITSM

Information Technology Infrastructure Library (ITIL) refers to a public framework, which outlines the best practices in ITSM. ITIL affords a framework for governance of IT and focuses on continual measurement and betterment of the IT service provided both from the customer and business perspective. The focus that ITIL has on both the business and its customers has seen it record good success on a worldwide scale and subsequently contributes to its prolific usage by all major organizations. Businesses that employ ITIL reap benefits that include increased customer and user satisfaction with IT services, increased business availability that results from improved service availability, include an improvement in resource utilization, decrease for rework, increase in a firm’s competitiveness, integration of central processes, and elimination of redundant work (Arison et al 5).

At the heart of the ITIL is the concept of ITSM. ITIL affords the necessary guidance on how best the IT infrastructure can be managed to enable the streamlining of IT services with business processes and expectations. ITIL was first published in the late 1980s and its early use was confined to the United Kingdom and the Netherlands. The second edition of ITIL was published in the period between 2000 and 2004. The second version (ITIL V2) is universally accepted and is used in many countries as the benchmark for effective service provision in IT. ITIL helps in accomplishing the goals set by ITSM (Arison et al 7). The best practices outlined by ITIL can be applied in their entirety to the management of information service management system and by doing ensure that the IT operations are streamlined to deliver according to the expectations of business organization.

Key ITIL components (lifecycle phases) and their purpose in the overall ITIL framework

The ITIL framework comprises five stages in its lifecycle as shown by the figure 1 below. This service lifecycle is presented using a hub-and-spoke design, with the hub having the service strategy and the transition, operation, and service design revolving in the spokes. All the stages of the lifecycle are surrounded and supported by continual service improvement. The different stages of the lifecycle are interrelated and they rely on each other for inputs and feedback and in so doing ensuring that a set of checks and balances is maintained throughout the system (Mohamed, et al 13)

The five publications of the ITIL service lifecycle are described hereunder:

ITIL service strategy- This is at the core of the lifecycle and it serves as the origin and central point of the ITIL lifecycle. The service strategy helps in clarifying and prioritising investments to be made by the service provider on services (“Information Technology Infrastructure Library” n.p).
ITIL service design- This provides best practice guidance on the design of IT processes, services and other aspects that relate to service management. This design addresses how planned service solution cooperates with the entire business (“Information Technology Infrastructure Library” n.p).
ITIL service transition- this concerns the delivery of services required by a business into operational use. In essence, it transforms ideas into implementable information that can be used by the organization (“Information Technology Infrastructure Library” n.p).
ITIL service operation- This is that part of the ITIL lifecycle where valuable services are delivered in actual sense. ITIL service operation endeavours to offer best practice for achieving the desired levels of services to end users (“Information Technology Infrastructure Library” n.p).
ITIL continual service improvement- This stage of the lifecycle seeks to align and realign the It services to the ever-changing business needs by unearthing and implementing changes to the IT services that are integral to business operations (“Information Technology Infrastructure Library” n.p).

Work Cited

“Information Technology Infrastructure Library.” Wikipedia. Wikimedia Foundation, n.d. Web. 23 Nov. 2013. <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Information_Technology_Infrastructure_Library#Service_strategy>.

Arison Cartlidge, Ashley Hanna, Colin Rudd, Ivor Macfarlane, John Windebank, and Stuart Rance. “The IT Infrastructure Library: An Introductory overview of ITIL V3“. The UK Chapter of the itSMF. 2007

Mohamed, Mirghani S., Vincent M. RibiÃ¨re, Kevin J. O’Sullivan, and Mona A. Mohamed. The Re-structuring Of the Information Technology Infrastructure Library (ITIL) Implementation Using Knowledge Management Framework. VINE 38.3 (2008): 315-333. Print.

White, Terry. What business really wants from IT: a collaborative guide for business directors and CIOs. Oxford: Butterworth-Heinemann, 2004. Print.

Willcocks, Leslie, and Mary C. Lacity. Global Sourcing of Business and It Services. Basingstoke [England: Palgrave Macmillan, 2006. Internet resource

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