environment, change is a constant. Having a program

that just runs as planned doesn t take into account the

evolving needs of the business and the customer, and

how business changes impact IT.

This ongoing commitment to improvement is an im-

portant competitive advantage for any organi zation. An

international telecommunications company had multiple

service desk operations and had not consolidated inci-

dent, problem, or resolution management. The company

knew that consolidation was important. To address these

issues, the company adopted a Business Service Man-

agement (BSM) strategy. BSM, which is dis cussed in ITIL

V3, is a comprehensive approach and unified platform for

running IT according to business priorities.

As a result of adopting this approach, the company

consolidated service desks from one for each of

25 countries, to a single service desk for the entire

company and adopted a companywide change pro-

cess. Such ITIL-driven improvements led to a 30 percent

reduction in mean time to repair (MTTR) and a 60 percent

reduction in unplanned outage time that had an impact

on users. The company realized savings of 11 million in

change management costs alone.

4. INCreaSed OperaTIONaL eFFICIeNCY

You can improve operational efficiency by following

ITIL guidance related to examining your processes and

objectives and identifying targeted areas for improve-

ment. For example, the IT department of a major utility

company initiated a program to build an enterprisewide

IT strategy based on ITIL. By centralizing its service

desk, the utility company reduced its support costs from

89 per hour to 57 per hour and reduced the time to

deploy desktop and laptop changes by 75 percent. The

utility company also is focusing on increasing self ser-

vice, improving call routing, and refining other processes.

These operational efficiency changes not only help the

business perform better but also help the customer

profit from the improvements.

To achieve this operational efficiency, ITIL recom mends

that you set clear goals, define a process improvement

road map, and not expect to fix everything at once. At

least annually, you should develop a business case for

future activities on the basis of the results from prior and

current activities. Determine the ROI and value on invest-

ment (VOI) so far, as well as the anticipated ROI and VOI

of future improvements. You ll need to prioritize projects

according to what will create the most business value.

5. GreaTer aGILITY

Agility also is important for today s corporations. The

business must be able to respond quickly to changing

conditions to remain competitive. The ITIL process of

release management, for example, makes it possible to

successfully manage the release of software and hard-

ware into the environ ment. A mature release process,

combined with automation, can reduce the implementa-

tion time of a software release from weeks to minutes,

while also reducing error rates.

Following ITIL guidance on service portfolio manage-

ment which helps you to prioritize projects on the

basis of their importance to the business also can

help you improve your agility. You must provide the right

mix of services and adapt the mix when business condi-

tions change. Service resource planning solutions, as

part of an overall BSM strategy, consolidate and connect

otherwise fragmented data to provide the information

and insight that enable you to make better, faster, and

more fully informed decisions about your capabilities

and resources.

6. INCreaSed prOaCTIvITY

Why wait for something to break when you can antici-

pate problems and prevent them from happening? The

degree to which problem management and availability

management processes are proactive can reveal much

about the maturity of the IT organization.

The goal of ITIL problem management is to prevent the

occurrence or minimize the impact of errors, incidents,

and problems in the IT infrastructure. Typical problem

management activities include identifying, investigating,

and eliminating or mini mizing the problem by addressing

the root cause or developing a reasonable workaround.

When an organization first implements a process such

as problem management, it should focus on the reac-

tive aspect of the process. This is because 20 percent

of problems are generally responsible for 80 percent

of system degradation. Eliminating that top 20 percent

of problems will significantly improve stability, reduce

downtime, and improve documented knowledge, thereby

enabling incident management to resolve future incidents

more quickly.

bmc iNDUSTRY INSIGHTS