Delivering IT efficiencies

“Competitive advantage is gained in any sector by being better, faster and cheaper than your competition. ”
-Paul Fairbrother

How can ITSM be leveraged to gain a competitive advantage and improve customer services?

Helen Morris. All businesses are required to deliver more for less, whilst maintaining or improving the customer experience. Often it is how, rather than what we deliver that sets us apart from our competitors. Effective managers recognise that this has to be considered throughout the product lifecycle. What to make? What is the size of the market? Can we deliver the right quantity, cost and quality? Can the stock get to the stores in time and meet customer demand? How can we streamline our delivery, reduce our costs and continue to innovate? ITSM addresses the same issues for IT. The ITIL Service Lifecycle ensures IT Strategy considers which services to offer, design confirms the IT service will work efficiently, effectively and reliably, Transition makes sure the IT infrastructure will cope with the demand.  Operation and Improvement deliver IT service consistently, finding efficiencies, driving down costs and exploiting technical innovations to meet customer needs.

Paul Fairbrother. I think competitive advantage is gained in any sector by being better, faster and cheaper than your competition, and it's better, faster and cheaper that ITSM allows you to be. Your services become better by creating them to match your customer's requirements, and they stay better through improved availability and service support that complies with agreed service level agreements. Faster stems from a greater throughput of work in the service support area, and also an optimised change management process. And finally, cheaper can be achieved in several ways, but ultimately by reducing the amount of incidents in total, reducing the amount of incidents that go beyond the first line of support and maximising the number of incidents resolved by each service desk member is a good way to start.

These are lean times for organisations so in what ways can ITSM be used to drive costs savings and improve efficiencies?

PF. Cost savings and efficiencies can be bought about by both reducing the amount of incoming work, and then performing the remaining work in a more cost effective fashion. Effective problem management inevitably leads to reduced repeat incidents which, when combined with the efficiencies bought by effective incident, change and knowledge management, can lead to much higher output per service desk analyst, requiring potentially fewer service desk staff moving forward. By becoming more metric centric, organisations can maximise the proportion of work done by Level 1 support staff, freeing the time of the more expensive level 2 and 3 analysts who can then concentrate developing a competitive advantage to the organisation in terms of innovation and system improvement, which is a good thing both in times of austerity and prosperity.

HM. A principle of all ITSM frameworks, is to deliver efficiencies throughout IT. The impact of poorly implemented changes makes this area an obvious target for cost savings. Controlled change management means less re-work and less interruption to the business, with the consequent cost benefits of a right first time approach. Processes have to work but not get in the way of efficient delivery. Good incident management will use experts when they are needed, driving down the cost of providing rapid first time fix support. Problem management provides an understanding of the 'pain factor' of repeating or high impact outages; focussing efforts on providing a durable fix will deliver cost savings. Efficient management of IT assets minimises expenditure on costly licences, optimises control of spares and ensures effective re-use, reducing total cost of ownership over the infrastructure lifecycle. Standardisation of desktop build reduces support costs. If the process does not deliver efficiencies, then there is a fault with the process.

What are the common mistakes organisations make or pitfalls they fail to avoid with ITSM efforts?

HM. Common pitfalls we observe are a belief that the solution lies in tools and technology or slavishly following a framework or process without relating it to the actual requirements in the organisation. The primary mistake is the belief that implementing ITSM processes is an end itself, instead of the start of the next stage. A good question to ask is not just 'where do we want to be as a result of this consultancy and project' but also to consider 'where do we want to be in two years'. This is not an argument against using consultants. Clients benefit from support, encouragement, knowledge transfer and development of skills. Consultants are valuable, but there is a danger that once they leave, the improvement stops.

Real cultural change is delivered by ensuring staff work with and learn from the experts rather than just watching them. It is important to remember that changing a culture takes time. If the hearts and minds of the staff are not fundamentally changed, then the initiative will have been largely a waste of time, money and effort, lost in the rush to achieve the 'tick in the box', and immediate benefits. An initiative that neglects to empower staff to 'own' and develop the improvements is a failure.

PF. I think a common pitfall is to address the areas of highest impact in an organisation, but without completing the ITSM rollout or adopting a service philosophy. ITIL can offer quick wins in terms of delivering much safer changes, reducing the amount of repeat incidents and having fast, repeatable processes for closing incoming incidents, but IT Service Management is much more than that. Without a service culture promoted from senior directors, and adopted whole heartedly by IT workers, frameworks such as ITIL offer little more than bureaucratic process and rules to follow. The benefits of ITSM are to be found in the adoption of the service culture, the improved communication channels between all parties, and a sense of shared purpose. ITSM, with its associated frameworks, allows that shared purpose to take shape through a number of tried and tested common processes and functions. With no senior endorsement and encouragement to the masses, there can be no service culture, and ultimately a failed ITSM project. Just a few documented processes will remain.

Please tell us about how your products and services have benefited your clients. Do you have any recent examples?

PF. As an ITIL consultant I have implemented ITIL into sites that had no prior knowledge or experience of IT Service Management or ITIL. In this work I have been able to target areas of high and immediate value and demonstrate return on investment. My consultancy has led to the set up of service desk functions that have been located in different areas of the world. In all cases I work with the incumbent staff to discover what they do and why, and then help them to organise what they do into simple effective processes. By leaving behind a continual service improvement programme, and service culture, I am confident that changes I helped to implement will continue to mature and improve over time. Having hired ITIL qualified personnel for permanent roles internationally over the years I have found this area to be quite frustrating, time consuming and difficult, so I developed Method Masters to provide a one stop shop for organisations requiring ITIL resource of any type, in any part of the world. So We currently have ITIL resource based in the Americas, Europe, The Middle East and Asia.

HM. As consultants it is our aim to assist our clients in developing their skills, so that they can take their own 'first steps'. The focus is always on ensuring the client has the tools and capabilities to continue once you have delivered, achieving, maintaining and expanding on their long-term goals. One of the key benefits for both local and central government clients was in adopting their own best practice ethos under our improvement initiative. This resulted in recognition that they were part of the larger whole, working as a team, delivering to the public. A global service organisation with a UK head office developed their staff so well during our programme of improvement that they became recognised as a global centre of excellence, during 2010.

Biography

Helen Morris, co-founder of Helix SMS Ltd, specialises in ITSM and Best Practice implementation in global organisations. Helen is a skilled and highly qualified consultant working in private and public sectors. With over 25 years of IT experience, she has valuable perception and insight into the issues facing businesses today.

Paul Fairbrother is the Managing Director and principal consultant at Method Masters, an International ITIL consultancy and recruitment company. With over 15 years in IT, Fairbrother is experienced and qualified to the highest levels in ITIL.