The key to unlocking pin-point improvements in IT/ESM

Lee Healey
Feb 8, 2023
3 min read

We often write about how customers should start their Service Management improvement journeys by undertaking a benchmarking assessment, so we thought it was about time we wrote a little more about how it all works and why we believe it's so important.

When thinking about an IT or Enterprise Service Management assessment, one must first consider the benefits. In all cases, a Service Management assessment provides customers with a facility to determine these important start points:

Current State Maturity: which provides an overall current state baseline of Organisational Service Management and Service Value
Current maturity baseline of each Practice included within the assessment. If the assessment is based upon ITIL® the baseline(s) might include all 34 practices and each Guiding Principal.
An Improvement Roadmap for Organisational IT Service Management and Service Value

Our assessments have a huge emphasis on Service Value and are therefore suitable for any organisation, regardless of current maturity level, not just those seeking a maturity against ITIL®. Lets face it, best practice isnt necessarily 'right practice', but knowing where you are and steering your efforts towards creating Value is critical for any organisation.

Maturity scores will focus upon an overall Service Management capability, along with maturity scores for each assessed Practice area and Guiding Principal (if the assessment is based on the current version of ITIL®).

Having an overall capability score enables the potential for benchmarking against industry peers, whereas the maturity scores for each practice area and Guiding Principal allows customers to focus in on specific capabilities ear-marked for improvement (e.g. Problem Management, Capacity Management, etc.)

For some organisations, maturity understanding and aspirations can then also lead to obtaining Industry Standards, Certifications and Awards - typically maturing their Service Management organisational capability in order to boost their own market presence and status (e.g. in service quality, customer experience, service value, trust, etc.)

Critically though, having the ability to focus on specific practices with an awareness of what good looks like, provides the foundation for pin-point improvement towards the goals you set out, which you can periodically benchmark against as you progress towards those goals.

Having a before and after measurement helps demonstrate the improvement within a specific area, but the secret to the improvement is the tangible and intangible value that comes from the exercise, not the maturity score itself.

In fact in a recent meeting with a prospective big banking client, the CIO said, "why do I need a score when I already know it's shit". Good question Mr CIO..

In all honesty, we see the score as a 'bonus' of the output, and not the the thing to focus on. Most importantly, what you (and everyone involved) learn at a detailed level from an assessment and bringing those stakeholders on the journey, is without doubt the most important output.

Whilst it varies depending on the scope of the assessment, typically we recommend interviewing at least 10 -15 stakeholders of the service, and critically these shouldn't all be in 'IT'. The consumers of the service(s) are just as, if not more important to talk to!

This enables us to then work with you to build out a prioritised roadmap of improvements and a realistic set of targets to work towards, based on the organisations own maturity desires. It's important to remember, that not everyone wants to, or needs to score at the highest levels of 'best practice'. The most important thing to master, is 'right practice'.

With budgets and resources tighter than ever for many organisations, having this data-led methodology to determine specific improvement areas provides tremendous value in creating problem statements and setting goals, rather than blindly throwing scare resources at a problem, in the hope that the improvement efforts might hit an unknown target.

If you'd like to learn more about our assessments and how we can support you on your improvement journey, please contact us at hello@itsmpeople.co.uk

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What is ITSM?

Information Technology Service Management processes include a range of activities designed to deliver and support high-quality IT services for your business. These can include incident management, problem management, change management, and service-level management. Additionally, ITSM involves continuous enhancement processes to improve service delivery, increase efficiency and reduce costs. By adopting strong ITSM practices, your business can improve service quality, customer satisfaction and achieve greater alignment between IT and business objectives. This holistic approach ensures that IT services are effective and integrated with your overall business goals. As ITSM focuses on aligning IT services with your business’s needs, you can ensure that IT processes and services support and enhance business operations. This is achieved through a structured approach to managing IT services, guided by best practices and methodologies such as ITIL (Information Technology Infrastructure Library). These models provide guidance on best practices for delivering and supporting technology and other enterprise services and can help companies align their capabilities with their business goals and strategic objectives.
What is ITIL and how does it underpin ITSM?

We adhere to the ITIL Framework in delivering our ITSM consultancy services. ITIL is a globally recognised set of best practices for ITSM that helps businesses provide consistent, high-quality IT services. By implementing ITIL processes and principles, we ensure that your IT operations are standardised, efficient and aligned with industry standards. ITIL4 is the latest version of ITIL, designed to help enterprises navigate the new technological era known as the Fourth Industrial Revolution. This version introduces a more flexible, modern approach to ITSM, emphasising its integration with other areas of business management.
What are the core practices and processes in ITSM?

Effective ITSM revolves around a number of processes. Whilst there are 34 practice areas in ITIL4, there are often a core set of practices that many of our clients are particularly interested in optimising. As understanding and implementing these processes can significantly enhance the performance and quality of IT services within your organisation. Incident Management Restores all service operations back to normal as soon as possible, minimising to lessen the impact on your operations. This process might involve logging, categorising, prioritising, and resolving incidents, ensuring which can help mitigate disruption to users and the business. Configuration Management Keeps an updated record of IT infrastructure - hardware, software, and network components - in a centralised configuration management database (CMDB). This database provides accurate data on configuration items (CIs) and their relationships. Change Management Ensures any changes to your IT services are controlled and coordinated. This process evaluates the impact of changes, approving them through a structured workflow, and ensuring successful implementation with minimal risk. Service level Management Defines, negotiates, and monitors service level agreements (SLAs) between the service provider and the customer. This process ensures that agreed-upon service quality and performance levels are consistently met. Asset Management Tracks and manages your IT assets throughout their lifecycle to ensure efficient use and cost control. You maintain an accurate inventory of hardware, software, and other IT resources through this. Problem Management Identifies, analyses and resolves the root causes of incidents. Proactively addressing underlying issues can prevent recurring incidents. This, in turn, provides improved system stability and reduced downtime. Request Management Handles the lifecycle of user service requests, such as access to applications, software installations or information enquiries. It ensures requests are managed efficiently to provide a streamlined approach that fulfils user needs and enhances satisfaction. Knowledge Management Captures, organises and shares knowledge to improve efficiency and support decision-making. By leveraging a centralised knowledge base, your IT teams can quickly resolve incidents and problems, and end-users can find the right solutions to common issues.
Why is ITSM important to organisations and their IT (and Enterprise) teams?

Implementing the right ITSM strategy and optimising your tooling can provide a range of benefits for your company, including: Improved Efficiency and Cost Savings By streamlining processes and automating routine tasks, ITSM can help your enterprise work more efficiently and reduce the time and resources required to deliver and support IT services. Good ITSM is a silent enabler of success across a range of organisational goals. Improved Compliance and Risk Management ITSM can help you ensure that your IT systems and processes comply with industry regulations and standards. It also ensures that you are effectively managing risks associated with your IT operations. This can help you avoid costly disruptions and legal consequences. Increased Productivity Effective ITSM practices can help your business prevent problems and fix them quickly if they do occur. This can help you lower costs—outages cost money—and increase productivity and employee satisfaction. Better Customer Satisfaction You can improve customer satisfaction and build stronger relationships by delivering high-quality IT services that meet customers' needs. Improved Service Quality ITSM ensures that IT services are delivered consistently and meet agreed-upon service levels, leading to higher customer satisfaction and better overall service quality. Business Continuity ITSM processes like incident and problem management ensure that disruptions are minimised and services are quickly restored to ensure business continuity. Strategic Alignment ITSM aligns IT services with business objectives, ensuring that technology initiatives support and drive business growth. This alignment helps you make informed decisions and prioritise projects that add the most value. Enhanced Collaboration ITSM promotes a collaborative environment where IT teams can work together more effectively, sharing knowledge and best practices to improve your delivery of services. Proactive problem-solving Through problem management and a proactive approach, ITSM helps your IT teams identify and address the root causes of incidents to prevent future issues and reduce downtime. Continuous Improvement ITSM encourages continuous monitoring and improvement of IT processes, allowing your IT teams to refine and enhance their service delivery regularly. Better Resource Management With ITSM, IT teams can manage resources more effectively, ensuring that personnel, technology, and budget are allocated optimally to support business requirements.
Do you provide ITSM tooling support and what tools do you specialise in?

The ITSM People are completely agnostic with ITSM tools and not tied to any vendors. Given the close relationship between ITSM related processes and ITSM tools, we often get involved in tool selection projects, or making recommendations on how to improve tools and get the best value from them. We work with tools such as ServiceNow, BMC, Jira, ManageEngine, Fresh, Halo and Xurrent.