Delivering excellent IT service management (ITSM) can be challenging in a world where customer demand often seems to exceed service capabilities. Many companies are adapting by embracing better methodologies to manage and support IT service deliveries to satisfy customer demands. Understanding the best ITSM delivery methods includes working closely with your ITSL. The Information Technology Service Library (ITSL) provides the “best practices” framework for your IT services and support. ITSL’s goal is to improve how IT delivers and supports business services.
Focusing on creating a durable but flexible ITSL is the best way to improve your businesses’ IT service management. In this article, we have outlined the best practices for designing, delivering, and optimizing your ITSM performance through ITSL processes, as well as identifying tools to help your business succeed.
Setting a Solid Foundation with Service Strategies
The first step in adopting best practices for your IT services is to create a strategy to deliver top-quality services to your end-users. A successful service strategy fits both your businesses’ needs and your customers’ service needs. IT strategies include ways to manage your service portfolio, customer demand, business relationships, and finances. Evaluating and communicating your business goals within your budget and resource constraints helps identify the services your company needs to offer.
When setting goals, make sure they are specific, measurable, actionable, relevant, and time-bound – following the SMART goal-setting model. For companies utilizing ServiceNow software, it is helpful to work with partners who can better navigate this process. Infocenter, a ServiceNow tech partner, will help create an ITSL strategy that is aligned with your business goals and based on the products available to you. This assistance will improve your ability to meet customer demands and manage your business goals.
Stay Ahead of the Curve with Adaptable Service Designs
Now that your strategy is complete and your goals set, be sure that your services fit the ever-changing needs of your customers. Since technology is always improving, your service must adapt or fall by the wayside. In other words, your services should continuously change and grow to meet customer needs. To accomplish this, adopt methods to anticipate changes in the technological landscape, understand competition, and maintain flexibility in offering a wide range of services.
The service design stage includes creating and managing your business service catalog, service-level agreements, and security management. Review your SLAs and change to fit customer needs better, consolidate services in your catalog that are not essential, and make sure your technology fits your business and not the other way around. ITSM software solutions can help you quickly identify problem areas and work to improve them: ServiceNow’s performance analytics help you identify and resolve issues to maximize your company’s business processes.
Creating Dynamic Metrics to Measure IT Service Execution
Execution is the next logical step in adopting strong IT service management practices. Your strategy and design must now convert to practical means to build and deploy IT services. These processes extend from service testing and validation to service configuration management. To measure how your services are operating, you need business metrics that can be customized to fit your specific needs. Without these metrics, you have no way of knowing what works and what needs to be improved.
Since ITSL practices are dynamic, you may find yourself re-designing your strategy to fit current IT trends or end-user expectations. This is considered to be part of change management, which is closely related to risk management and a way to identify and adapt services or processes to mitigate risk. ServiceNow features an intelligent artificial engine that helps your business identify industry benchmarks, align services with your company goals, and relay information about your place within the industry.
Automate for Better IT Operational Success
Delivering thoroughly tested services based on your business goals is not always easy. The operational aspect of service delivery includes managing events, incidents, problems, and access, as well as fulfilling requests. Once you have set your IT processes, designed your deliverables, and deployed solutions, start using automation tools to improve customer experience. Adopting an intuitive ITSM software solution helps you consolidate functionality, boost productivity, and reduce overall costs.
There are many automation tools available, like the ServiceNow software, which spans the entirety of ITSM needs to provide solutions to your routine and complex tasks. In maintaining adaptable IT services, your company can turn to automation to implement repeatable processes such as help desk ticket routing, which significantly improves the customer experience. This automation can also allow your staff can address problems in a timely manner without getting bogged down with manual processes.
Constantly Improve Your IT Service Offerings
We have mentioned previously that designing reliable metrics is an ITSM best practice to ensure your services are in line with business goals. Metrics are another way to help determine ways to improve your service offerings. Customer needs constantly change, so your services should do the same. To remain successful, you need to strive to meet IT service delivery excellence through deliberate and coordinated implementation strategies. Communication, planning, designing, executing, and delivering solutions is a coordinated effort. As a best practice, your company should endeavor to constantly look for ways to improve service offerings.
ITSM and ITSL Best Practices at a Glance
Keeping up with IT service management can be challenging, which is why your business should work to align service goals using IT service libraries. This dynamic framework, which includes the entire lifecycle of IT services, can help your business strategize, design, and deliver services that meet a continual customer demand and achieve business goals at the same time.
IT services should be proactive, flexible, and constantly improving. Continuously re-evaluating, testing, and deploying IT services helps maintain excellent service without becoming obsolete or struggling to keep up with customer expectations. By adopting new methods of identifying industry changes and automating routine processes, your business can find itself delivering better IT services that move with the changing technology landscape.