Is Your Service Provider ITIL Certified?

So, your new service desk is up and running. Done. The service provider is coming through with flying colors and you’ve checked one more item off your to-do list, right?

Continued success with IT Service Management (ITSM) rarely works this way.

When key decision makers on the client side are consistently engaged in conversation with their service delivery managers on the provider side, critical touch points can continue to be explored:

• Are we meeting our service level agreements? Why not?
• How are we measuring success?
• How do we make service better? More efficient?
• Is our communication plan working?

As more and more meaningful communication ensues through day-to-day, weekly and monthly reporting between client and provider, strategic planning on the executive level can also move to a new level:

• How are we trending over the last quarter? Do we need to make adjustments next quarter?
• What other business trends are we seeing?
• Is a compliance period approaching?
• Has a new tool just been implemented? Is one about to be? How will this affect our business?

ITIL® Certification -Why It's Important

For 25 years, the ITIL model for ITSM has been the most widely accepted and adopted choice for competitive business, from small and medium sized companies to large corporations. Once known as Information Technology Infrastructure Library, ITIL is a flexible, organizational framework for planning, executing and supporting IT services based on best practices that combine the latest thinking with common sense guidance.

ITIL offers a common language for clients and service providers to communicate a certain quality of service and level of operation that all stakeholders can understand, appreciate and support. It provides for measureable outcomes with which to conduct deep analysis that is reported in a consistent manner, based on industry standards. In addition, special needs can fit into the ITIL framework, increasing its effectiveness for each individual business –a custom level of detail without the cost.

With this kind of organizational infrastructure, businesses are better equipped to benefit from opportunities available in today’s global marketplace, to meet or exceed service expectations while working as efficiently as possible.

ITIL Overview

A key takeaway from the ITIL philosophy is that when IT services are aligned to the needs of the business, ITIL becomes an asset, driving change and ultimately growth.

The ITIL Service Lifecycle starts with identifying these business needs and designing a cocktail of services that best complements them. Once services are implemented and operating smoothly, teams move on to monitoring progress and improving service.

The ITIL Best Practices that govern the service lifecycle are derived from five core guides: ITIL Service Strategy, ITIL Service Design, ITIL Service Transition, ITIL Service Operation and ITIL Continual Service Improvement.

ITIL can be adapted for other systems such as COBIT, Six Sigma, TOGAF, ISO 27000 and ISO/IEC 20000 among others.

ITIL certified service providers ensure that their team members have the relevant knowledge, skills and techniques to implement ITIL effectively, while inspiring the full cooperation and investment of the entire project group in the process.

The Future of Client-Provider Communication

Lately, we are receiving less requests from our clients for face-to-face quarterly reviews, opting for virtual forms of communication instead. In addition, the expectation of presenting more and better data to do trending analysis is growing; in fact, it’s already upon us.

Over the next three to five years, the challenge will be in delivering reliable, relevant information that makes a difference in a client's decision making process. From a service provider perspective, we're going to have to continue to be able to look at data in different ways; to recognize trends, determining the underlying reasons for success or challenge, for better categorization and tracking, and really push down into that data. For instance, Bell Techlogix is working with new analytics reporting, which is giving us some interesting views, and clients are really getting excited about it. It’s where we're heading.