In tougher economic times many organizations
will start to assess the value of the pieces which allow them to operate. A
challenge for service management is to not only show the value that they
currently bring to the company but the continued value that they can provide in
regards to delivering services.
The term business value can be interpreted in
slightly different ways however for the most part it speaks to the ability for
an organization to realize its business outcomes. Typically this is done
through financial means but might also be in other less tangible ways such as
customer satisfaction.
It would sound sensible enough so why aren’t
more organizations doing this? The reason is that service management has to
understand how services are supported through their lifecycle and a detailed
level. Basically, who is doing what and when?
In my experience we ‘think’ we know how this is
done until we start to take a real close look. This is where many of these initiatives
can fall off the rails so to speak. We need to look at this type of work as a
continual service improvement activity. There should be iterative goals
associated with this type of work as well as an understanding that we will
likely find out that we know less than we thought about how the services are
supported.
With the ‘how we support service’ as a
foundation, the next step will be to address what the cost of delivering
services are.
In the lifecycle of a service there will be
many people who play a role though the various support pieces we have outlined
above. In some cases teams will manage particular functions, while others will
manage them all. The trick is to
understand to what level teams contribute to activities so that we can associate
a cost to that delivery of service. From there a strategy for cost reductions
can be outlined and then actioned.
Small improvements can add up. Think about it
in these terms:
If we looked at the current state and saw that
we had 1000 incidents last year which had a total resolution time of 6000
hours. If we could cut that by 10% we might be looking at a savings of 600
hours in its simplest terms. That’s 15 work weeks for one person to do
something else more productive.
Over the next few posts I will speak to a few
processes and where they can specifically address the value that can be added.
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Labels: business value, Continual Service Improvement, ITIL, ITSM, Service Management