‘IT Service Management: Creating Value with Customers and Stakeholders’

We all know that nearly everything and everyone utilizes technology today, more than ever.  This includes most communications and customer interfaces, either through social media, websites, or even mobile apps with integrated point of sale (POS).  Add to that backroom operations such as accounting systems, enterprise supply chains and inventory management.  Wherever you look, you will find that IT is integral to operations.  If your IT fails, your business will fail.

There are many hosted and managed services offered today that can handle most of the technical configuration and administration, but how do you choose the right service provider?  How do you know the right set of technologies and the appropriate service level?  To answer these fundamental questions, we need to know more about IT Service Management.

We asked our resource person Jody Salas, IT professional, entrepreneur and trainor, to define this and enlighten us on some of the benefits.

IT service management (ITSM) is a concept that enables an organization to maximize business value from the use of information technology.

Managing your IT systems is crucial in ensuring fast delivery of high-quality service while at the same time keeping costs at manageable levels.  To ensure sustainable quality of IT services, ITSM establishes a set of practices/processes, constituting a service management system.  ITSM is based on a set of principles, a cultural mindset to ensure that the desired outcome for the business is achieved.

Here are some benefits of learning and applying ITSM:

1. Improve efficiency, through streamlining processes and removing idle IT assets by aligning IT components to support specific business processes. It is good that companies invest in IT. There is however a propensity to buy the latest IT products and services which typically results in what I call the “spaghetti incident” wherein you end up having a large and complex IT ecosystem that is difficult to support and maintain.  ITSM can help in describing why IT matters to your business and identifying which configuration items must be retained and maintained.

2. Happier workforce by reducing workload and avoiding unnecessary rework to allow people to focus on other people. IT is supposed to be an enabler, to help get things done faster and easier. Not the other way around, wherein people must find manual workarounds making their jobs more difficult and time consuming.  ITSM processes including incident, problem and change management can be deployed in order for your team to focus on what truly matters.

3. Better service and customer experience through minimizing delays and downtime caused by IT failures, thus ensuring quality of service and customer satisfaction. As we now live in the new normal amidst the COVID-19 pandemic, people and organizations rely heavily on IT.  The primary client interface involves using telephones, websites and social media, webapps and mobile applications.  An IT incident will disrupt the business, lose potential sales, and generate ‘net detractors’ — unsatisfied customers who will complain against your company.  Applying ITSM will help ensure the availability and reliability of your IT services and business processes in order to survive and thrive in these trying times.

Salas will conduct a virtual workshop on “IT Service Management: Creating Value with Customers and Stakeholders” on May 19-20, 2021.

For your online learning needs, Inquirer Academy could assist you in designing and facilitating a webinar or virtual workshop for your organization.

For more information about the workshops and schedule of online courses offered by Inquirer Academy, please email [email protected], or send SMS at these numbers 0945.2158935 / 0998.9641731.

The author is the Executive Director of the Inquirer Academy.