Benefits

Benefits must be clearly identified to help justify the effort involved in gathering, analysing and acting on improvement data. Be sure to:

• Consider both direct and indirect benefits.
• Identify the benefits for each group of stakeholder at every level in the organization.
• Define the benefits in clear and measurable way.

The generic benefits described in the remainder of this section, are those that will be realized by implementing CSI within an organization.

Business/customer benefits

• Overall improved quality of business operations by ensuring that IT service s underpin the business process es
• More reliable business support provided by Incident, Problem and Change Management processes
• Customers will know what to expect from IT and what is required of them to ensure this can be delivered
• Increased staff productivity because of increased reliability and availability of IT services
• IT Service Continuity procedure s are increasingly focused on supporting business continuity and meeting the business needs through continued availability
• Better working relationship s between customers and the IT service provider
• Enhanced customer satisfaction as service provider s understand and deliver what is expected of them
• Improved quality of service and service availability, leading to improved business productivity and revenue
• Better planning for purchases, development and implementation
• Better management information regarding business process es and IT services
• Greater flexibility for the business through improved understanding of IT support
• Improved alignment between the business and IT
• Increased flexibility and adaptability will exist within the services
• Faster and improved quality of response to business needs
• Faster and better quality project s, deployment s and changes (delivered on time, to cost and quality).

Financial benefits

• Cost-effective provision of IT services
• Cost-justified IT Infrastructure and services
• When implemented, CSI will have long-term financial benefits, for example:
• Reduced costs for implementing changes
• Reduced business impact due to IT changes
• Services will not be over-engineered but rather they will be designed to meet the required service level s.
• Improved service reliability, stability and thus availability.
• Expenditures on IT service continuity are commensurate with the criticality of the business process they underpin
• Improved resource allocation and utilization.

Innovation benefits

• Clearer understanding of business requirement s ensures that IT service s successfully underpin business process es
• Better information about current services (and possibly about areas where changes would bring increased benefits)
• Greater flexibility for the business through improved understanding of IT support
• Increased flexibility and adaptability within the IT services
• Improved ability to recognize changing trends and more quickly adapt to new requirements and market developments
• Business confidence in their IT service provider allows them to have higher aspirations.

IT organization internal benefits

• Improved metric s and management reporting
• Alignment of cost structure with business needs
• Better information about current service s and about where changes would bring the most benefit
• Improved communications, teamwork and interactivity (both IT and customer)
• Increased employee effectiveness – the impact on the employees can be seen through improvements in productivity, collaboration, communication (how we communicate and the meaning of what we say or do) and innovation
• Increased process effectiveness – ITIL framework investments will enable new business model s or channels, real-time process management, integration flexibility, process simplification or scalability, and masking process complexity from user s
• Defined role s and responsibilities
• Clearer view of current IT capability and future potential of IT services
• Process maturity benefits that are repeatable, consistent and self-improving
• CSI procedures provide more focus and confidence in the ability to provide incremental and major improvements to both services and service management processes
• Structured approach to gathering data, turning the data into information, generating knowledge of exactly what is happening within the organization and gaining wisdom on where to apply resources to improve services and make a greater impact to the business
• Improved resource utilization
• Business has greater clarity into current IT capability
• Knowledge on what tools and resources are required to support CSI activities
• Better information on current services (and possibly on where changes would bring most benefits)
• More motivated staff – improved job satisfaction through better understanding of capability and better management of expectations
• More proactive development and improvement of technology and services
• Services and system s designed to meet achievable business and operational targets and time-scales
• Better management of supplier s with improved supplier performance
• Reduced risk of failure in meeting commitments
• Improved working relationship with business.

Cost

A Service Improvement Plan (SIP), just like any other major plan, will have cost s associated with executing its activities:

• Staff resources trained in the right skill sets to support ITSM processes
• Tools for monitoring, gathering, processing, analysing and presenting data
• Ongoing internal/external assessment s or benchmarking studies
• Service improvements either to services or service management process
• Management time to review, recommend and monitor CSI progress
• Communication and awareness campaigns to change behaviours and ultimately culture
• Training and development on CSI activities.

Continual improvement benefits measurement

Once an improvement initiative is completed, that’s not the end of the story. Benefits, ROI and VOI will be subject to change over time as processes become increasingly mature, or unravel due to neglect. Any continual process improvement programme should include periodic re-evaluation of benefits. KPIs may change as business driver s change, a new technology may revolutionize storage capacities, or a new web protocol creates entirely new business opportunities. In nearly every major improvement initiative the ROI and, perhaps, the VOI are intensely scrutinized and hotly debated in the steps leading up to project approval... and then promptly forgotten and stuck in a drawer never to be seen or heard from again. If IT is serious and honest about the benefits of improvements beforehand then it is essential that IT quantify those benefits and report on them after the fact.

Benefits measurement considerations in this context may include:

• Checking year-by-year benefits/ROI/VOI realized by specific improvements
• Estimating benefits likely from competing initiatives arising out of the IT SIP, to identify the best-value investment, priorities and schedule of resources
• Analysing the impact on current benefits being estimated or realized, by a proposed organizational change either in the business or within the IT organization
• Analysing the impact on current benefits being estimated or realized, by a change in business strategic direction or regulatory legislation.

It is generally accepted that ITIL is the missing piece of the puzzle that enables better quality of service delivery. It facilitates saving money and time, and adds value to the organization. ITIL also spans the business and technology gap to create synergy with proven results.

Organizations adopt the ITIL framework because they want to establish a consistent, comprehensive service management foundation and better manage the cost of service delivery. ITIL emphasizes the importance of providing IT service s to satisfy business needs in a cost effective manner. The most tangible benefit to organizations using ITIL is a marked improvement in resource utilization, eliminating redundant effort, decreasing error s and the amount of work that has to be redone, and increasing scalability with current resource levels. In addition, the ITIL framework helps improve the availability, reliability, stability and security of mission-critical IT services by providing demonstrable performance indicators to measure and justify the cost of service quality. The provision of KPIs is essential to supporting CSI. These KPIs become the data inputs to analyse and identify improvement opportunities.

Дата добавления: 2015-10-02