Benefits. Using benchmark results will help deliver major benefits in: Achieving economy in the form of lower prices and higher productivity on the part of the

Using benchmark results will help deliver major benefits in:

• Achieving economy in the form of lower prices and higher productivity on the part of the service provider
• Achieving efficiency by comparing the costs of providing IT service s and the contribution these service s make to the business with what is achieved in other organizations. This helps the organization to identify areas for improvement
• Achieving effectiveness in terms of actual business objective s realized compared with what was planned.

Benchmarking helps the organization to focus on strategic planning by identifying the relative effectiveness of IT support for the business. Economy is the easiest area to investigate although efficiency and effectiveness may deliver the most benefit to the business. To obtain the maximum benefit, it is necessary to look at all of these three areas, rather than focusing on one to the exclusion of the others.

5.3.5 Who is involved?

Within an organization there will be three parties involved in benchmarking:

• The customer – that is, the business manager responsible for acquiring IT services to meet business objectives. The customer’s interest in benchmarking would be: ‘How can I improve my performance in procuring services and managing service providers, and in supporting the business through IT services?’
• The user or consumer – that is, anyone who uses IT services to support his or her work. The user’s interest in benchmarking would be: ‘How can I improve my performance by exploiting IT?’
• The internal service provider – providing IT services to users under Service Level Agreements negotiated with and managed by the customer. The provider’s interest in benchmarking would be: ‘How can we improve our performance in the delivery of IT services which meet the requirement s of our customers and which are cost-effective and timely?’

There will also be participation from external parties:

• External service provider s – providing IT services to users under contract s and Service Level Agreement s negotiated with and managed by the customer
• Members of the publi c – are increasingly becoming direct users of IT services
• Benchmarking partners – that is, other organizations with whom comparisons are made in order to identify the best practice s to be adopted for improvements.

5.3.6 What to benchmark?

Differences in benchmark s between organizations are normal. All organizations and service-provider infrastructures are unique, and most are continually changing. There are also intangible but influential factors that cannot be measured, such as growth, goodwill, image and culture.

Direct comparison with similar organization s is most effective if there is a sufficiently large group of organizations with similar characteristics. It is important to understand the size and nature of the business area, including the geographical distribution and the extent to which the service is used for business or time-critical activities.

Comparison with other groups in the same organization normally allows a detailed examination of the features being compared, so that it can be established whether or not the comparison is of like with like.

Tip

When benchmarking one or more services or service management processes, the IT organization has to ascertain which of these the organization should focus on first, if all cannot be implemented simultaneously. Determine which services and supporting processes to compare. Benchmarking of a service management process is used to find out if a process is cost-effective, responsive to the customer’s needs and effective in comparison with other organizations. Some organizations use benchmarking to decide whether they should change their service provider.

It is essential in planning for service management to start with an assessment or review of the relevant service management processes. The results of this can provide a baseline for future comparison.

Дата добавления: 2015-10-02