If you’re old enough to remember the launch of MS-DOS (the first graphical user interface for computers) in the 1980s, you have a complete perspective of how complex computers and IT systems have become. Personal use aside, computers have become absolutely essential for modern businesses. In fact, simply calling the field ‘computers’ does information technology a massive disservice. In rising markets like the UAE, the IT services sector has grown to nearly $4Billion.
Nowadays, companies need to integrate dozens of technologies into their system just to start operations, and dozens more to improve performance. To make matters worse, IT evolves so rapidly that companies are in a constant flux of upgrades and integration. Out of this immensely complicated, yet necessary, swamp of technology rises IT Service Management.
ITSM operates all your systems and provides end-to-end delivery. From installing basic equipment to creating complex firewalls for network security, they assist your IT teams to design, develop, launch, maintain, and update all relevant IT systems. This article aims to give you a comprehensive understanding of the different types of ITSMs, their primary functions, and how to choose the best ITSM for your business.
ITSM vs. DevOps: The Difference
If you see some similarities between ITSM and DevOps, you aren’t wrong. They’re both essential for high-quality software delivery, but DevOps is a more directed field. It focuses on bridging the gap between software development teams and operations for faster, more efficient, and higher quality software delivery. A DevOps team will focus on automating tasks, implementing smoother communication strategies, and continuous integration/continous delivery (CI/CD).
Both DevOps and ITSM have a user-centric focus that’s designed to improve collaboration between teams and align IT strategy with company goals. However, ITSM is a broader framework that goes beyond the deployment and delivery to include the entire software lifecycle. It overlooks the management of all your IT assets, change management, incident response, capacity management, and more.
While DevOps and ITSM are important in their own right, IT service management improves employee productivity and makes your enterprise more efficient. Customers and users expect a wide variety of technological updates over time, and ITSM ensures these processes run smoothly and generate real value for the business.
What are IT Service Management processes?
We’ve already discussed the immense complexity of modern IT departments and their requirements. If we want to gain a comprehensive understanding of what ITSM is, what it does, and how we can use it to achieve business objectives, we must understand the different branches in the field.
Change Management
It’s common for organizations to update their systems, change networks, upgrade hardware, or undertake any variety of changes necessary to keep their business competitive. However, changing a system results in downtime and lost opportunity. Change management carefully evaluates all variables before creating a plan and executing it with minimal disruption to business processes.
While it may seem intuitive, it’s a pretty complicated process that needs to take a holistic view of the organization and prioritize changes for maximum efficiency. Some basic sections of a change management plan are:
- Change Identification
- Change Assessment
- Change Authorization
- Change Planning
- Change Implementation
- Change Verification
- Change Closure
When done correctly, you can greatly reduce the risks associated with disruptions and errors. Not only does it streamline your operations, it ensures customer needs are met and your organization is compliant with industry standards and regulations.
Release Management
Release management makes sure your short-term project goals are aligned with long-term strategic objectives. Like the name suggests, this part of IT service management is responsible for rigorously testing all changes in the company’s IT infrastructure before it’s launched. They coordinate with all the relevant stakeholders (development teams, operations, and business users) to ensure nobody steps on any toes and the software can be rolled out with minimal downtime.
Configuration and Continuous Improvement Management
Configuration management aims to establish a clear understanding between your IT infrastructure and the services you offer. It enables you to centralize all of your data on hardware assets, software and applications, personnel, and business documents. In the ocean of information and software tech companies are drowning in, configuration management is the lighthouse that keeps your IT sector aligned with business needs.
The model IT firm will record as many performance indicators and statistics as they can. To stay ahead of the curve and to compete in the global market, you must constantly evolve. You’ve probably seen where this is going, but Continuous Improvement Management monitors your performance to identify areas that need a little boost. They plan and implement upgrades across your IT infrastructure while ensuring you don’t stray from your established strategy.
Knowledge Management
Like we just mentioned, collecting the right data is essential for your strategy. Organization-wide updates take time and resources, so professionals need access to as much information as possible to inform their plan of action. This information can include technical specifications, previously implemented solutions and their results, common problems, best practices, and regulations. The aim is to make the right information accessible at the right time to whoever needs it.
Incident Management
Your IT infrastructure can face any number of issues. From malware and security breaches to updates and network issues, Incident Management is your emergency hotline. Their core objective is to return your organization to normal operations with as little downtime as possible. The standard operational procedure includes:
- Identifying and documenting incidents through user reports, maintenance checks, complaints, or system failures.
- Classifying the incident based on priority, type, and ideal course of action
- Investigating the underlying cause for the issue and making changes to the system to prevent similar issues in the future
- Testing the solution in a closed environment if needed and then implementing it.
Problem Management
Despite appearances, there’s a very important distinction between problem management and incident management. As mentioned above, incident management is a reactionary sector that deals with problems as they come up. Problem management, on the other hand, deals with recurring problems within the IT infrastructure.
Problem managers proactively analyze the system and its performance to recognize errors and defects in the infrastructure. Making a structural change to tackle recurring issues rather than implementing quick fixes when it happens saves you a lot of downtime and maximizes efficiency.
Service Level Management
Service level agreements are essential for any business transaction, especially for software and IT products. Your firm will mostly likely have SLAs with your customers and your vendors, meaning you’ll need someone to manage both sides. A water-proof SLA keeps you compliant with regulations and holds both parties accountable to agreed-upon services to streamline operations and communication.
Service level managers track all of your SLA’s with both clients and vendors to ensure standards are met. They’re also the people who create these formal contracts in the first place, negotiating with all relevant stakeholders and tracking progress through regular reports.
Workflow Mangement
AI has made some massive leaps in the past 4 years, but it hasn’t taken over the IT sector just yet. You still need a talented workforce that’s motivated, effectively organized, and knowledgeable. Workflow/talent managers make sure you hire the talent you need in each position to deliver tailored solutions to specific problems. Additionally, that talent needs up-to-date software tools to do their job. That’s why the MENA region has been experiencing 4% annual growth in IT spending for several years.
The benefits of IT Service Management
If you’re looking into the strategic management of IT services for the first timef, you may be a little overwhelmed with all the different sections. However, we urge you to stick with it because the results are definitely worth the pain. We guarantee your competitors are looking into it, and it can be the edge you need in a hyper-competent global market. In fact, the Middle East, one of the fastest growing tech markets in the world, experienced an 11% increase in IT services spending last year. Some of the most prominent benefits of IT services management include:
Resource Optimization
Every entrepreneur knows the pressure of stretching your resources and making a dollar go as far as possible. It’s a noble and necessary pursuit, but not one you should dedicate too much to - you need to focus on your product and customer base.
ITSM has an independent, birds-eye view of your entire organization’s IT systems. It puts them in the ideal position to identify bottlenecks, waste, and inefficiencies. They can make informed strategic decisions to minimize downtime and allocate resources where they’re needed the most.
Automation
In the next decade, companies with the best automation strategies will be the most profitable and the most efficient. As companies grow, the weight of logistical tasks can cripple your margins and create bottlenecks in service. You can literally grow yourself out of business! Once you get to a certain size, ITSM takes over automation to improve your workflow. Bots are just faster at analyzing and sorting information without the issue of human error. This doesn’t make your employees obsolete; it simply frees them up to focus on more complex tasks like strategy and customer engagement.
Cost and Downtime Reduction
There are two major ways ITSM helps you reduce your costs. Firstly, a major pillar of the entire field is improving efficiency by identifying bottlenecks and potential issues before they halt operations. It’s exponentially more expensive troubleshooting when something goes wrong and then brainstorming solutions at the moment. The longer it takes for you to solve the problem, the more money you’re losing.
IT service management preempts continuity issues and prevents problems from escalating to protect the integrity of your IT infrastructure. IT ensures relevant individuals are in the right place, with relevant information, to solve problems as soon as possible. Downtime isn’t just bad for your books; it’s bad for your image.
The second way ITSM improves your margins is by using dedicated staff to make sure you’re always operating at maximum capacity. If your website is slow, your products malfunction, your internal networks are down, or any of the dozen problems an IT company can face every day, you lose reliability and credibility. Potential clients also feel more comfortable with your commitment to regulatory compliance and your security protocols if your ITSM is robust.
Reporting
One of the best side effects of implementing updates in your IT infrastructure is the ability to collect more data. Adjusting your operations slightly with the data-driven directives can add up to exponential improvements in performance. Modern consumers have much higher expectations. For instance, if you operate in luxury markets like Dubai, you need an extremely well-oiled technological machine to ensure customer satisfaction.
Not only does IT service management help you gather data, it automates analysis and report creation. Manually, both of these tasks take a completely unreasonable amount of time, and it’s nearly impossible to achieve 100% accuracy. Automation makes them virtually free and instantaneous, helping you make data-driven decisions that promote accuracy and cost-effectiveness.
IT Service Management Frameworks
Considering how broad and complex ITSM can be, it’s easy to understand the need for different variations suited for specific businesses. The ideal ITSM framework provides a set of guidelines that help standardize processes and provide services of consistently high quality. While all ITSM frameworks aim to optimize your resource allocation, improve efficiency, and keep you aligned with business goals, some variations are a better fit for certain organizations.
ITIL
Information Technology Infrastructure Library is one of the most widely used ITSM frameworks. It’s a structured approach to creating independent modules to simplify maintenance and implementation of the entire service lifecycle. Alongside the typical characteristics and benefits of IT service management, some of the unique features of ITIL include:
- An emphasis on creating a plan that covers the entire service lifecycle, from inception to deployment. This helps predict and remove roadblocks at any point in the project with minimal delays.
- ITIL is focused on improving the experience for the end user and your employees. This increases user satisfaction and makes sure IT services align with business goals.
- ITIL takes a holistic view of the project and has a comprehensive plan for all areas, including incident management, problem management, change management, service level management, and more.
- The framework is flexible and adaptable enough for you to optimize it for your organizational goals.
- You can expect the support of a global community of ITIL practitioners committed to the development and evolution of the framework.
CMMI
The Capability Maturity Model Integration model is focused on the development and deployment of software products and services. While it may not be specifically designed for ITSM, its principles can be applied in several areas of ITSM to improve performance. Unlike most other IT service management frameworks that focus on creating a strict standard operational procedure, CMMI is more flexible. It’s focused on the end goal and provides the flexibility you need to get to the finish line quicker.
The most unique feature of the CMMI framework is the implementation of process maturity levels. It defines 5 levels of maturity, from initial to optimized, that let you assess the progress made on a project and identify areas that need extra attention.
Additionally, it identifies critical areas for deployment and maintenance and success that can improve service delivery. Another benefit of the aforementioned flexibility is that CMMI can integrate features from other frameworks that suit your project. This lets the system evolve according to your changing needs and objectives, helping you continually refine your processes.
Six Sigma
Much like CMMI, the Six Sigma framework is not customized for ITSM, but it has features that can drastically improve service management processes. It’s primarily designed for quality control in SaaS products, so it’s easy to imagine the role it plays in ITSM. Unique features include:
Data-driven decision making: Even in comparison to traditional IT service management, Six Sigma is extremely dependent on data analytics. It uses past projects, best practices, user reviews, and complaints to identify and eliminate defects in the program. Six Sigma uses a variety of statistical analysis tools to gather this data, including control charts and hypothesis tests. While imperfections exist in all models, using data and statistics to inform your approach minimizes the need for edits and redos later on.
The DMAIC Methodology: A pre-determined structure streamlines the development process. The DMAIC (Define, Measure, Analyze, Improve, Control) provides a clear plan of action for problem resolution. This approach demands cross-functional teams to collaborate on solutions, improving processing times and knowledge sharing.
COBIT
Control Objectives for Information and Related Technologies, like the name suggests, is more focused on IT governance than quality control or program deployment. It’s a holistic, comprehensive approach that keeps an eye on how well different IT processes in your infrastructure go together and are collectively headed towards your overarching business objectives. Since COBIT takes a unique, broader approach, you can integrate it with other ITSM frameworks like Six Sigma, CMMI, and ITIl to cover a wide range of IT services.
In addition to it’s birds-eye view of your IT infrastructure, or perhaps because of it, COBIT is great for risk assessment. You can proactively solve problems before business continuity takes a hit. Similarly, the holistic view helps COBIT ensure all of your processes are compliant with industry regulations, saving you time and a massive headache later on in the development process. If you use COBIT in conjunction with a framework that focuses on the minute details of projects, you have the perfect ITSM duo.
eTom
The Enhanced Telecom Operations Map is an ITSM framework specifically designed for the telecommunications industry. It gets this special treatment because telecom networks are extremely complex. They have multiple access points, like routers, switches, and transmitters, and offer a diverse range of services (text, voice, images, video, and more). Additionally, the telecom industry is one of the most heavily regulated in the world and demands special attention, especially for international communication.
To simplify the immensely complex business model you need to succeed in the telecom industry, we’ve developed eTom. It’s organized into industry-specific domains that independently cater to sectors like customer management, customer service, service fulfillment, network operations, resource management, and more. To this end, eTom has multiple frameworks you can use for specific results, like the generic operations model and the service management model.
However, a potential downside of an IT service management framework so heavily customized for a specific industry is that you tend to miss out on some of the broader, more generic benefits of IT service management. That’s why eTom has been developed to be perfectly compatible with other ITSM frameworks like ITIL and can be integrated with telecommunications like the SID and NGOSS.
ISO/IEC 20000
Inspired by the old BS 15000 framework, the ISO 20000 is an internationally recognized standard for ITSM procedures. While most other frameworks are customized for a specific industry or purpose, the ISO is a broad set of regulatory standards that can be applied to any IT infrastructure. Since it’s globally recognized (essential for international projects), it creates a common language through which all ITSMs can be judged. With BPO services and ITSM companies on the rise in Dubai, UAE, and the MENA region, this international standard is essential for developing trust across borders.
The framework is perfectly compatible with most other ITSM frameworks, including ITIL and COBIT, and you can customize it to fit any specific needs or requirements. However, the biggest advantage of ISO 20000 is the credibility it gives your organization. It’s an extremely well-reputed IT service management in the global market, giving your organization credibility and a competitive edge by getting the ISO 20000 certification. It demonstrates your commitment to industry best practices and establishes you as a leader in your industry.
Key features of an ITSM
Before we move forward to what different types of organizations should look at before picking an ITSM, there are a few key features and performance metrics you must be aware of. Keeping track of these metrics isn’t particularly challenging with the plethora of monitoring tools available in most IT service management frameworks, and they help you optimize the system for your organization's needs.
Service Availability
Synonymous to reliability in the IT world, service availability refers to the total amount of time your end users can access an ITSM. Service availability is typically measured as a percentage of uptime over a given period.
For example, a service with a 99.9% availability would be expected to be unavailable for only 43.2 minutes per month. A low availability score means your systems are experiencing relatively more downtime, meaning your users can’t access your services and your business is losing both revenue and reputation.
Time to Resolution and First Call Resolution
The effectiveness of an ITSM isn’t solely judged by how many problems they have to face in a month and how it effects their service availability. Incidents are inevitable; you must also look at how much time it takes them to resolve an issue. Depending on the nature of the issue and how much time it takes/should take to solve, TTR is measured in hours or days.
However, TTR isn’t as simple to calculate as starting a stopwatch. A variety of factors influence incident response, like the complexity of the incident itself, the skill level of the available staff, how well they managed the incident escalation (how quickly they were able to push forward the incident to the relevant experts), and the resources available to the response team.
Ideally, all of your problems shouldn’t require an organized response from your IT team. You want a system that’s capable of resolving problems as fast as possible. If your troubleshooting department is on point and your support staff is proficient, you can resolve a high percentage of user incidents the first time they contact you. The higher your FCR percentage, the more reliable you feel for customers.
SLA Breach Rate
On the flipside, the SLA (service level agreement) breach rate is the percentage of issues you failed to resolve within the timeframe given to the customer. The higher the percentage, the more unreliable your IT services become. You must closely monitor the SLA breach rate because it’s your biggest indication for bottlenecks within your incident response framework and identifies recurring problems that need some extra attention.
NPS
When all’s said and done, the effectiveness of an ITSM can be boiled down to its Net Promoter Score. Like the name suggests, it’s a measure of how many of your users are recommending your services to people they know. It’s not really a measure of how well a specific section in your IT infrastructure is performing; it’s a measure of overall customer satisfaction.
It’s calculated through a simple survey of the question ‘How satisfied are you with our services on a scale of 1-10’, with the section scoring 9 and 10 being promoters and everyone below a rating of 6 being detractors. You can calculate the NPS by subtracting the percentage of detractors from promoters. The overarching goal of an ITSM is to have a high NPS score, indicating high customer satisfaction.
Choosing an ITSM
Now that you have a fairly comprehensive understanding of everything to look out for in an ITSM’s features and its functionality, you can make a much more informed decision. Your choice of framework depends on your specific needs. Each one has its own methods and techniques best-suited for specific use-cases.
However, the first decision you’re going to need to make is whether you want an ITSM in the first place. It’s a major investment and requires a complete overhaul of your current IT management practices, so make sure to keep the following things in mind:
Cost
Whether it’s through the increase in revenue from a better brand image and more credibility or through reduced operational costs with automation and higher efficiency, an ITSM needs to make sense in the budget for you. Look at the entire life-cycle cost: the initial cost of the software, implementation, hardware installation, maintenance, support, and upgrades.
Compatibility
If all IT service management systems were created equal, there would only be one on the market. The reality is that each one is developed with different programming techniques and optimized for specific software and industries. Additionally, you need to ensure your existing IT infrastructure and software are compatible with your choice of ITSM. If they aren’t compatible, the cost of overhauling your entire system may not be worth the investment. Ideally, your tool should also have a single, unified platform to improve teamwork and collaboration.
Simplicity
On average, IT service management frameworks demand a higher level of technological literacy in your workforce. However, the truth is that even tech-savvy employees can have trouble shifting to a completely new system. Pick an ITSM framework that’s easy to install and straightforward to use. It needs to have effective self-service portals and an easy-to-access knowledge management system. The point is to make it easier for your employees to do their job and to do it better. An ability to track progress and get instructions instantly gives you a more empowered workforce.
Industry-specific ITSM roles
Telecommunications and Media
Technology and telecom are the most rapidly evolving markets in the world. Not only do they need to adapt to tech advancements, they also need to position themselves to upscale and downscale support operations for maximum efficiency. If your employees aren’t empowered with the right support systems and tools, you can’t operate at maximum capacity. Here’s how you can use ITSMs in the telecom, tech, and media:
Upgrades: Eventually, you’ll need to transition from outdated systems and replace legacy processes. The modern business needs an end-to-end digital workflow for business continuity.
Self-service: An ITSM reduces the burden on your employees by making it easy for customers to use self-service portals. If they can solve simple issues, which are often the ones that require the most manpower, then everyone’s happy.
Visbility and access: If employees need to work on multiple different platforms at the same time, they’ll make more mistakes and get less done. A centralized IT system gives them a comprehensive view of operations that makes their job much smoother.
Financial Service Institutions (FSI)
When money’s involved, the stakes are automatically higher. FSI’s have very strict and specific requirements because of the regulations they’re under and the nature of their business.
Regulatory compliance: Depending on the country you’re in, in addition to several international regulations, ITSMs can help you comply with GDPR, HIPAA, and PCI DSS regulations.
Risk management: Like we said, the stakes are higher, so the appetite for risk is much lower. ITSMs have robot monitoring systems that help identify vulnerabilities in your system and manage risk. You can expect improvements in your data breach management, system failures, and a reduction in downtime.
Security and disaster recovery: ITSMs have built-in security and access controls along with a standard operational procedure that instantly makes your operations more secure. In case something does go wrong, there’s always a robust disaster recovery plan and backup to protect you from additional damage.
Manufacturing
The supply chain and modern logistics have an extremely low margin of error. Vendors can’t wait around for delays in delivery or tolerate any issues with reliability. The end consumer has very high expectations, and meeting them requires an extremely well-thought-out, tech-savvy strategy. Your biggest enemy in manufacturing is a disjointed workforce because it makes it very hard to create enterprise-level solutions that maximize operational efficiency.
Manufacturers need to completely digitize their workflows with an ITSM to increase productivity and customer satisfaction. The aforementioned self-service tools and access to data in real-time all contribute to a much smoother manufacturing line.
With how quickly technology is advancing and the sheer percentage of business processes that now exist online, ITSMs are bound to become an ever larger necessity than they already are. All of the information above should help you develop a sound understanding of ITSM frameworks, their major features, benefits, and specific applications for some industries. Even if you aren’t making shift right now, odds are you’ll need all of this information at some point in the next decade.
