Since the 1980s, technologies like ITIL (Information Technology Infrastructure Library) and ITSM (IT service management) have been on the scene. Their goals were to improve IT’s service culture, yet adoption has been uneven. What’s working and what’s not — and how can CIOs take best advantage of these technologies to improve service?
ITIL and ITSM
ITIL is a framework of 34 practices developed to assist IT in aligning its activities and strategies with the business. There are seven ITIL guiding principles:
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Progress iteratively with feedback
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Collaborate and promote visibility
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Think and work holistically
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Keep it simple and practical
In contrast, ITSM focuses specifically on the service elements of ITIL (i.e., delivering technology solutions and support to users).
ITSM emphasizes:
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Aligning IT with the business, with the help of metrics tracking
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Engendering interdisciplinary-team collaboration
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Co-developing application between IT teams and users through methodologies like DevOps
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Knowledge sharing and continuous improvement
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Customer-centric service process and self-service
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Rapid processing of user requests and faster incident response and resolution
Very large enterprises and companies in highly regulated industries tend to be the ones that formally adopt ITIL, but the collective emphasis of ITIL and ITSM on service, coupled with user demands for better IT service, have made almost every company CIO cognizant that the IT service culture must improve.
How Technology Improves IT Service
CIOs understand that pep talks about service in staff meetings only go so far — and that there are some IT staff members (e.g. system programmers, DBAs, and others who are highly technical) who are just not user-oriented. Despite this, CIOs are using new technologies that transform IT processes into being more service-oriented.
Here are five key technologies that are improving IT service:
1. Help desk
Help desk solutions now come with process automation, such as the auto generation of help desk request tickets and automated updates on work in process that flow directly from the help desk to users. There are also built-in metrics that measure factors such as how long a help desk request has been open, what the mean time to response for help desk requests has been, etc. Help Desk software has omnichannel integration, so a user can communicate with Help Desk personnel by phone, through chat, or go through standard systems communications. Help desk personnel can screen-share and work in real time with users on problem resolution. Help desk solutions have come a long way since the days of users booking their requests, and then waiting to hear from IT.
2. DevOps
From application inception, through design, development, prototyping, change management, testing and launching, users and IT now collaborate on development teams, giving everyone transparent access to project work. This is a departure from the traditional waterfall development of applications, where users handed system requests to IT and then IT went away into design and development phases that went on for months without the users knowing how a new application was progressing.
3. Self-help portals
Easy to use, point and click online portals that list services and enable users and customers to serve themselves without having go to other people to get things done, have the ability to exponentially increase IT’s service capabilities and reach. The key is designing these portals for both functionality and ease of use. Portals must be also be rendered “thoughtful enough” to handle the exceptions to every process and to rapidly route requesters to persons who can help. Common IT tasks found in self-help portal service catalogues include, but are not limited to, requests for new software and hardware, requests for new passwords or password resets; requests for onboarding new employees that include giving them user IDs, passwords and access privileges; and knowledge base FAQs that assist users with IT self-help.
4. Para-user IT tools
No-code and low-code application development gives users tools of their own to develop applications, often with no or minimal support from IT. In this way, users can create applications without having to wait for IT services. IT still has a “service hand” in this process. It must be available for users when they are stumped by a low- or no-code problem, or when additional IT help is needed to integrate an app with underlying IT infrastructure.
5. Process integration and automation
A heavy machinery manufacturer was able to automate its requisition, approval and PO issuance process from days to minutes. It did it with the help of IT integration technologies like ETL (extract, transform, load), which bridged the integration gap between disparate systems in purchasing, accounting and other company departments. IT then automated many of the repetitive processes in requisitioning, ordering, and the approval process. This saved time for employees and improved their work environment. Unsurprisingly, IT’s service reputation also improved. E-commerce companies have seen similar gains from IT automation in online ordering, shipping and returns, because effectively streamlined and automated processes please customers and build loyalty.
Lagging Service Areas
While technology has advanced service initiatives for IT, there are still areas that continue to underperform. Here are four of them:
1. IT and business alignment
More CIOs now sit at the corporate strategic table, but there are still CIOs in mid- to small-sized companies who function “heads down,” worrying more about day-to-day operations than about the value technology is delivering to the company, or the caliber of service IT is providing.
2. Focus on value
The number and the velocity at which IT projects must be completed often obscures the reasons why they were undertaken in the first place — and the business value they were expected to produce. Too often, a project completes, and IT then moves on to the next project — without stopping to examine if a project really delivered the business value that was intended. Users can be that way too — but upper management and the board are not.
3. Thinking and working holistically
If you change a part ordering system in purchasing and overlook that the manufacturing engineers on the floor have a separate, standalone cross-reference database for parts that they use when preferred parts are out of stock, does this help or hinder? IT is great at performing regression tests that assure that all systems are cross-linked to accept a new change — but holistic operational integration isn’t as strong. Part of the reason is that there really aren’t great tools for identifying the often-hidden dependencies between company departments and functions that many people (including those who work in the actual departments!) miss. Is this really IT’s responsibility? It’s easy for CIOs to say no, but the new CIOs who set at corporate strategic planning tables and answer to the board must know the business as well as the technologies that energize it.
4. Keeping projects simple and actionable
It’s better to keep projects simple, actionable and highly calibrated to specific business needs than to expand functionality and features prematurely to the point where everyone begins to forget what the project was originally intended to do. Functionality and feature creep is an easy trap to fall into when IT is striving to provide premium service to users, but there are times when you should defer the extra bells and whistles for future project phases so the initial business value can be gained.
Summary
ITIL and ITSM were created in the first place because there was a perceived lack of service philosophy in IT which in turn caused disconnects between what IT was doing and what the business needed.
CIOs know this. It’s why many of them have made service a priority in their organizations. Technologies such as modern help desk solutions, automation and self-service really help because they drive a service mentality into IT through the processes they create. At the same time, CIOs must maintain focus on the ultimate business values from IT work and service that that the company is getting. Is IT meeting these goals?
