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Alongside AI & Automation and effective use of Cloud, Service Management Agility is key to support transformation programmes. In order to add some more colour and provide some more value to the readers of this blog series, here are further thoughts on those areas.

Use transition as an opportunity to transform. For example if you migrate your ITSM toolset into the cloud, transform and optimise on the journey.

Key outcomes from improving service management processes and tooling should align directly to key business objectives: improving customer experience, improving employee experience, improving agility and time to market, optimising costs and managing risk are key drivers for all organisations.  

When considering the fundamentals of an ITSM tooling transition consider the following matrix and make decisions that impact on business objectives accordingly.  

Know what you have. Asset management and configuration management are the fundamental building blocks.

Consider the key questions every CIO is asking. Who are my customers and what are they consuming? How much should I charge for these services, and how much do they cost? How do I manage service delivery, compliance, and service levels at the same time? And how do I speed things up to be more responsive to customer demands, and to bring competitive advantages to my organisation? 

It is impossible to answer these questions in a digital context without knowledge of your IT assets, their configuration and inter-dependencies. Just as difficult is to understand how these assets combine to deliver against the specific business outcomes that your organisation needs.   

Most IT teams approach this from the bottom up. If I discover everything then I will have all the data needed! However, boiling the ocean rarely works, there is always something else to discover, so consider the following to help understand the key questions you need to answer. 

Use omni-channel. The very essence of a digital ecosystem is the access to the same data and services through multiple channels.

Currently business consumers of IT prefer traditional channels of communication (a recent Gartner survey suggested the top four channels for IT were: phone, ask a colleague, internet, and email – in that order). Note that two of the top four channels are actually not to make contact with IT – which could be seen as a good or a bad thing depending on your point of view.

The reason that the business consumer does not favour more modern channels is because these channels have not been designed with the business consumer in mind. Consider the CIO conundrum – my IT budget must show an ROI but how do I quantify this ROI in the context of my business users? That is very difficult to do therefore, the business case must be built on the benefits to IT.

So how can we turn the following into a reality that works for the consumer?

Adoption is everything, and adoption is impacted by an attractive UE, placed across the right channels (of which telephone may be one), with the right services available supported by targeted knowledge, fulfilled in a way that does not require further user interaction (capturing all relevant requests and data in one interaction only). Think Amazon – one click to buy with next day delivery!

Leverage your ecosystem. Connected services are critical, digital gives us the chance to bridge silos.

Traditional IT organisations have operated in silos disconnected by technology and process. Where there has been connectivity between functional silos, people have provided the glue. The provision of services to IT consumers has consequently suffered with problem management hampered by an inability to cross boundaries, change management slow and unwieldy, and conflicting vendor contracts ensuring complexity around every corner.

In order to overcome these boundaries, you need to build connections with ITIL compliant work-flow mappings, including Incident, Service Request, Problem and Change Management for easy uni or bi-directional process integration. In addition to that workflows need to be built to align DevOps to ITSM avoiding swivel chair, creation of technical debt in the form of scripts and unilateral integrations, and misaligned processes. All of which results in high cost, time and business impact.

Building a centralised integration platform will orchestrate the diverse elements of your IT estate via consolidated, policy-driven management that enables the services your business and users need.

In summary

Digital transformation has become even more pressing for organisations looking to bounce back from the impact of Covid 19. If there was ever an example of why the agility and customer experience being a digitally transformed organisation is required, the scale and rapidity of change over the last year has brought this to life. And within that transformation, it’s time for Service Management to take centre stage.

Read more:  

Boring Boring ITSM Part III – Covid 19

Boring Boring ITSM Part II – Time for a Rebrand?

Boring Boring ITSM Part I –  And what do you do?

For more information on AI-powered optimisation for Service Management click here