The term ITSM has recently been used quite actively – this is due to the fact that the service approach, which is its basis, has already replaced the classic resource-based approach in many industries. Let’s find out what is the difference between these approaches and what advantages ITSM brings to business.
The classic business approach to solving almost all tasks involves emphasizing resources: people, equipment, time, finances, etc. Let’s remember, for example, labor days in the USSR or man-hours, which are still used at some enterprises to calculate project costs. These are the very resources that are distributed in the course of business processes. For example, reinstalling the operating system on a computer will take 1 man-hour. And if it is necessary to install office packages, antivirus, specialized software, it will take 4 man-hours. If in the first case the company has to send one employee to the client for an hour, in the second case – either one for 4 hours or two for two hours.
However, recently the classical resource-based approach is giving way to the service-based approach, because it is more promising and beneficial to both service providers and their clients. This is exactly what ITSM is – Information Technology Service Management. Behind this abbreviation lies a methodology or approach to IT service management.
What is ITSM in simple words
ITSM (IT Service Management) is an approach to implementing, managing and improving IT services in an organization.
In this approach, any activity in the IT domain is considered as a service, the purpose of which is to solve the customer’s problems. Customers can be both external B2C or B2B customers and partners, and internal – employees of various departments of the company. Services may include technical support of users, providing access to corporate systems and applications, maintenance of working equipment and so on. The parameters of such services are prescribed in SLA – a service level agreement regulating the relationship between the service provider and the service customer.
The main goal of ITSM is to ensure maximum compliance of IT-services work with business needs and satisfaction of end users. For this purpose, clear and transparent processes of service provision are built, SLAs are introduced, quality is controlled and incidents are promptly eliminated.
ITSM and ITIL are the same thing?
Although the terms ITSM and ITIL often go hand in hand, they are not synonyms at all. ITIL is a library of best practices on which ITSM processes are based, which is reflected in the name – IT Infrastructure Library. It appeared back in the 80s of the last century – it is based on the documents created and collected by the central agency for computers and telecommunications of Great Britain, which were required to optimize the work of government agencies of this country. The peculiarity of ITIL is its practice-oriented approach: all descriptions are given through the life cycle of a service.
The current version of ITIL is already the fourth, it was published in 2019. Its key feature is the focus on value for customers, rather than on the services themselves or even the processes. Learn more about ITIL and the four aspects of IT service management in ITIL, and the role they play in creating value for a company, in our blog.
IT Service Management processes
To realize the ITSM concept in practice, a set of processes described in ITIL is used. These processes cover the entire IT service lifecycle from strategy to continuous improvement.
The main ITSM processes include:
- Incident Management
Rapidly restoring service after an incident to minimize downtime. The process includes recording, classifying, prioritizing and escalating incidents, investigating and resolving them, and closing and analyzing them to prevent recurrence. - Problem Management
Addressing the root cause of incidents and preventing future incidents. The process consists of diagnosing the causes of problems, identifying corrective actions, and proactively looking for potential problems. - Change Management
Minimizing risks and preventing disruptions resulting from changes to the system. The process is to manage the lifecycle of all changes to infrastructure, applications and services. - Asset Management
The process of inventorying, accounting for, controlling and monitoring all infrastructure components required to deliver services. - Knowledge Management
The process of creating, distributing, and applying knowledge related to IT services.
Why implement an ITSM system in a business?
Moving to a service model or implementing an ITSM system primarily allows you to optimize and improve the relationship between customers and IT service providers.
IT department ceases to be auxiliary, and is included in the implementation of business strategy as an interested participant in the standardization of processes.
Benefits of ITSM methodology:
- Enhancement of satisfaction of customers of IT services by providing a systematic approach to building communications;
- Improving the quality of IT service management;
- Task prioritization;
- Growing service efficiency;
- Enhancement of incident response speed;
- Improved collaboration between specialists;
- Growing efficiency of the company as a whole.
Who needs ITSM?
The answer to this question is simple – everyone. And this is not an exaggeration. ITIL 4 is no longer limited to IT. That is, the service approach can be applied to any type of activity, because the benefits of ITSM (transparency, manageability, reduction in the number of incidents, increased efficiency, etc.) are relevant to any business, regardless of its size.
The basic principles of the ITSM methodology organize the service management process into five stages, which describe the life cycle of any service:
- Formation of service strategy;
- Designing services;
- Transformation of services;
- Operating services;
- Continuous improvement.
Therefore, it is possible to apply the basic principles of ITSM to any services – this is how the ESM concept was born.
“Any company that utilizes information technology faces certain risks – both due to deficiencies in the systems themselves and possible failures in their operation. This leads to business process disruptions and direct financial losses. ITSM enables systematic management of these risks by implementing a structured approach at all stages of the IT services lifecycle.
The approach is based on bringing value to an organization’s core business in a service format, and separating service management practices into different processes, each with its own goals and objectives.
This decomposition allows for transparency, manageability of processes and improved quality of service delivery. First of all, this applies to IT services, but ITSM principles can be useful in organizing other service departments of the company. Therefore, Service Management practices are relevant for organizations of any industry and scale”,
– Andrey Vishnyakov, Business Product Director, SimpleOne, ITIL® SL, MP, Expert
ITSM and ESM – what’s the difference?
ESM (Enterprise Service Management) is a concept of enterprise service management, which is a kind of development of ITSM. ESM allows to apply a service approach to any business unit of a company, i.e. it assumes that every business unit of an organization is a service provider for customers – both internal and external. So ESM and ITSM complement each other perfectly. Many companies first implement an ITSM system and then extend it to ESM.
This is exactly what the IT company ITGLOBAL.COM did. Almost 3 years ago, the organization implemented ITSM-system SimpleOne to automate the provision of IT services. Over several years, ITGLOBAL.COM scaled the system to an enterprise ESM system, automating the management of the services of the ACH, accounting and HR, and legal departments.
Mistakes when implementing ITSM
Implementation of ITSM-system in an organization is a complex process that requires involvement of both IT-specialists and potential customers of services. Despite all the advantages of ITSM, many projects on its realization fail. Let’s consider typical mistakes that should be avoided.
Underestimating the scope of the project
Often companies don’t realize the full scope of changes required to move to ITSM. This leads to misaligned timelines and budgets, causing projects to be derailed.
Lack of support from top management
The success of ITSM approach implementation directly depends on the involvement of top management. If top managers are not committed to ITSM, the initiative is doomed to failure.
Focus only on IT, not on business results
ITSM implies a focus on business goals and customers. If the IT team focuses only on the technical component without taking into account the needs of customers, the effect will be null.
Ignoring organizational change
Implementing ITSM entails a major transformation of processes, roles and responsibilities of employees. Inattention to this aspect significantly slows down implementation.
Lack of staff training
Implementation of the ITSM approach in an organization requires prior training of employees. Without an appropriate staff training program, it is impossible to consolidate the new practices.
Example of using ITSM
Let’s consider the ITSM approach on a practical example. When a customer of the company has a technical failure, he contacts support in a convenient way. It can be a phone call, an e-mail, a web form on the website, etc. Due to the ITSM-system all communication channels are united into one system with a single interface.
When a request is received, the system automatically creates a request with a detailed description of the problem, the client’s contact information and the history of previous requests from his profile. Based on the set rules, the system assigns the request to the appropriate responsible specialist.
Then the whole set of ITSM processes is activated: incident registration, diagnosis, search for a solution, escalation if necessary, prevention of repeated incidents and saving the solution in the knowledge base.
The ITSM system tracks the entire lifecycle of the request and sends automatic notifications if there is a risk of violating the terms of service provision agreed in the SLA.
After the request is closed, the solution is published in the knowledge base available to other employees of the company. This is how the knowledge management process is implemented to avoid repetition of similar problems.
Thus, the implemented ITSM-system automates customer support processes, improves service quality and prevents repeated incidents.
ITSM Perspectives
Experts predict that the ITSM market will grow on average by 8-10% per year in the near future. At the same time, the withdrawal of large foreign vendors from the market has provided new opportunities for domestic developers, whose ITSM solutions have become more interesting on the wave of import substitution. The growth of demand and, as a consequence, the inflow of investments into the industry will allow Russian companies to improve and increase the competitiveness of ITSM solutions – including by increasing their presence in the markets of other countries, where digitalization is also actively developing and there is a need for IT service management.
