The benefits of ITSM processes extend far beyond IT operations. They are essential for managing risk, driving innovation, enabling digital transformation, and improving customer satisfaction.
When discussing ITSM processes, it is essential to emphasize the word "process."
Every IT organization handles incidents, implements changes, and fulfills service requests. The question is whether the organization is reactive or has well-defined, measured, and managed processes in place.
Everything your IT organization does can be viewed in the context of a process. How do you intake requirements from the business? How do you design and build services based on those requirements? How do you operate and improve those services?
Many organizations adopt an ad hoc approach, relying heavily on the skills and efforts of specific individuals and teams, sometimes referred to as a "hero culture." While this may be effective in the short term, it can lead to inefficiency and burnout.
In contrast, highly effective organizations employ a process-driven approach, ensuring that their processes are well-defined, automated, communicated, managed, and continuously improved.
As CEOs look to implement innovative digital operating models, the business case of having robust ITSM processes has never been stronger.
Jump ahead for the benefits or read on to learn how the benefits are achieved.
What are ITSM Processes?
IT Service Management (ITSM) is a framework for managing the complete lifecycle of IT services, from design, to build, deployment, operation, improvement, and retirement.
Many IT services directly support customer-facing business operations, such as e-commerce websites, banking applications, and online reservation systems. You may even use some services, such as Uber, Amazon, Airbnb, Netflix, as well as popular financial services such as SoFi and Venmo.
Other IT Services support internal business operations including enterprise resource planning (ERP), customer relationship management (CRM), or email and collaboration services.
Then, there are the more technical IT services, such as cybersecurity, software development and management, and network management.
All of these IT services, whether internal or external, rely on ITSM processes.
ITSM Processes and the Service Lifecycle
All your company's IT services follow a service lifecycle. Supporting the service lifecycle are a number of distinct, yet highly interrelated ITSM processes.
Here is a high-level mapping of processes to different stages of the IT service lifecycle.
Service Strategy
These ITSM processes help you set the strategy and strategic direction for your IT organization and IT Services. Key processes include risk management, service portfolio management, demand management, architecture management, business relationship management, and financial management.
Service Design
These ITSM processes are instrumental in gathering and understanding the business requirements and objectives of the services. They include business analysis, service design, availability management, capacity and performance management, and service level management.
Service Transition
These ITSM processes encompass everything you need to manage the build, testing, and release of services into production and their sunsetting. This category includes processes such as software development and management, project management, configuration management, service validation and testing, release management, and change management.
Service Operation
Once the service has been released into production, these processes help manage its day-to-day operation. Included in service operation are ITSM processes such as incident management, service request management, knowledge management, problem management, request management, infrastructure and platform management, and monitoring and event management.
Service Improvement
These ITSM processes ensure that the services are monitored and continually improved. Here, we utilize ITSM processes such as monitoring and reporting, service level management, and continual improvement.
Processes can span multiple phases of the service lifecycle.
While this mapping does not cover all processes, it provides a good overview for illustration purposes. The other point is that some processes play a role in multiple lifecycle phases.
For example, a process like information security management spans multiple phases, from making security part of your strategy to identifying security requirements, testing developed software for security vulnerabilities, and monitoring security threats during operations.
ITSM Processes, Practices and Business Process Management
As mentioned, every IT organization must perform the necessary work to manage its IT services. The key question is: how effective are they at doing so?
The good news is that information technology is an established organizational discipline going back to the introduction of mainframe computing in the early 1950s. This long history has paved the way for developing various frameworks that share best practices in Information Technology Service Management (ITSM).
One of the earliest frameworks was IBM's Integrated Systems Management Architecture. Over the years, many other frameworks have emerged, including ITIL, ITPM (IT Process Model), MOF (Microsoft Operations Framework), COBIT, ISO/IEC 20000, and IT4IT.
There is considerable overlap among these frameworks, and each offers valuable insights that can enhance IT service management practices. For instance, organizations may adopt ITIL for its comprehensive service lifecycle approach while leveraging elements from COBIT to strengthen their governance and risk management strategies.
Collectively, we refer to these frameworks as IT Service Management processes. Organizations can create a more robust and effective ITSM strategy that aligns with their unique needs by understanding and integrating insights from various frameworks.
Business Process Management
The ITSM frameworks do a great job of providing guidance on what to do, however, you also need the discipline to effectively manage and govern those processes.
That is where Business Process Management (BPM) comes into play.
Business process management (BPM) is a systematic approach to identifying, defining, automating, and improving your business processes. It's one of the best ways to increase business efficiency, effectiveness, and agility.
Additionally, it emphasizes the active management and governance of the processes to ensure they are efficient, effective and continually evolving to meet changing business needs.
The elements of BPM critical to your ITSM processes include:
- Process Identification: What processes are you using in your organization?
- Process Mapping: Have you documented your processes and analyzed them for opportunities to eliminate waste?
- Process Automation: How can you use technology to automate repetitive tasks and streamline the ITSM processes?
- Process Execution: Do you effectively coordinate resources, follow defined processes, and monitor progress?
- Process Governance: Are your processes aligned with organizational goals and controls?
- Continual Process Improvement: do you optimize your processes based on feedback, data analysis, and changing business needs?
Combining ITSM best practices with business process management creates a proactive, efficient IT environment that meets current demands and anticipates future challenges, improving service delivery and customer satisfaction.
The Benefits of Implementing ITSM Processes
So now that we reviewed the relationship between ITSM processes, the IT service lifecycle and business process management, let's look at some of the specific benefits of implementing ITSM Processes, including:
- Mitigating Risk
- Driving Innovation
- Supporting Digital Transformation
- Improving Customer Satisfaction
Risk Management
As organizations expand their use of digital technologies to deliver services, they face increasing threats. These threats can have serious financial, regulatory, and reputational implications for the company.
Virtually all ITSM processes help mitigate risks at every phase of the service lifecycle, but the two most critical processes are the ITSM Risk Management and ITSM Information Security Management processes.
The ITSM Risk Management process provides a structured approach to identifying, assessing, prioritizing, and mitigating risks. It ensures that potential issues are proactively managed before they can impact business operations. This approach helps avoid costly disruptions, supports regulatory compliance, and maintains customer trust.
Similarly, ITSM Information Security Management establishes the policies, practices, and controls to safeguard sensitive data while ensuring its integrity, confidentiality, and availability. By effectively managing these aspects, organizations can protect their reputations and confidently operate in an increasingly digital world. Read our post on 5 Ways IT Service Management Enhances IT Security.
Read more about The Synergy Between Information Security and Risk Management.
Driving Innovation
It is very difficult for your IT organization to innovate if it is constantly fighting fires, under-resourced, and burnt out.
ITSM helps transform the IT organization from reactive to proactive by improving every phase of its service delivery lifecycle.
Service management aids in designing more resilient and secure services, helps identify problems before they occur, and establishes the necessary processes to detect and recover from issues when they arise.
By implementing ITSM, you alleviate pressure on your team and free up your best and brightest to focus on innovation and growth.
Enabling Digital Transformation
Digital transformation is the integration of technology to modernize existing operations or create entirely new operating models. It fundamentally changes how organizations deliver value and engage with customers.
ITSM underpins every aspect of digital transformation, from identifying the architecture and gathering the requirements to designing, building, and releasing the solution. Once released, ITSM provides essential operational processes to ensure the service remains reliable, secure, and continually improved.
By aligning ITSM with digital transformation efforts, organizations can achieve greater agility, enhance customer satisfaction, and drive sustainable business growth.
Improving Customer Satisfaction
ITSM enhances customer experience in numerous ways. Processes like service design and business analysis ensure that customer needs and expectations are met when building services.
Processes such as software development and management, information security management, service validation and testing, and release management enhance the service quality.
The service desk, incident management, knowledge management, configuration management, and problem management processes effectively handle customer issues as they arise.
Meanwhile, service level management, measurement and reporting, and service improvement ensure that services meet customer requirements.
By implementing these ITSM processes, organizations can significantly enhance their customer experience, increasing satisfaction and loyalty.
Implementing ITSM Processes
Implementing ITSM can be challenging. To succeed, you need to build the right team, define and implement the processes, and support those processes with robust ITSM tools.
Here is a high-level approach:
- We recommend starting by building a business case for ITSM. This is essential for obtaining senior management support and establishing a realistic implementation plan.
- Next, implement a Service Management Office to provide focus and to improve the service quality, effectiveness, and efficiency of delivering IT service management (ITSM) services.
- Conduct an assessment of your existing ITSM processes to help you focus on where to improve.
- Work on designing, documenting and implementing your processes by following best practices in process design and documentation.
- Implement ITSM tools by following our practical advice for a successful project.
- And finally, establish business process governance to ensure your processes remain agile and continue to provide value.
CEOs are under pressure to grow the business through innovation, digital transformation and improved customer experience. ITSM is the ideal framework to help achieve those goals.
