What is ITIL? Understanding ITIL’s Role in Improving Service Delivery
When it comes to improving IT Service Management (ITSM) maturity, many organizations turn to ITIL – a framework that guides users through a process-based approach
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As a guiding framework, Information Technology Infrastructure Library (ITIL) functions to help IT keep pace with the organization’s needs and goals. With companies accelerating their digital transformation projects, the adoption of ITIL best practices can help organizations stay focused on IT goals and consistently provide exceptional service to customers and employees.
ITIL best practices cover a vast range of fields when it comes to assisting IT Service Management. Here’s a quick overview of where ITIL is applicable:
As organizations gear up for accelerated adoption of advanced technology initiatives, many organizations are looking to find ways to improve IT maturity and streamline internal processes to manage the influx of demand. Managing resources in this environment while ensuring clear and valid communications among stakeholders is a unique challenge.
As a set of practices that provides practical and strategic guidance for service management, the main goal of ITIL is to improve the business service. The business service will be enhanced when its support system—the specialized capabilities of the process, people, suppliers, and technology—is optimized. Providing a self-service solution for ITSM is a consistent hurdle for many organizations. A lack of self-service is consistent with lower ITSM maturity. ITIL can help improve this.
Here are some key steps to laying a strong base for ITSM using ITIL best practices:
Many institutions are implementing ITIL to ensure they have a common vocabulary and methodology surrounding request fulfillment and incident response.
Increased demands for online and blended learning experiences put pressure on higher-ed IT organizations, but IT budgets are staying static or even decreasing.
TeamDynamix ITSM makes a positive impact when paired with ITIL in higher education. Yancy Philips, IT Team Director for Indiana State University, explained how their old basic ticketing system that was used to manage the delivery of IT service “served its purpose for many years, but as we started to adopt more ITIL best practices and worked to improve our service delivery, we knew we needed something more.”
That something more was TeamDynamix.
“People are thrilled with our service now,” Philips says.
Likewise, in an ever-connected world, state and local governments need to provide new services and keep up with changing needs while often balancing tight budgets.
Implementing ITSM best practices enables organizations to standardize and optimize the way they respond to the ever-increasing demand while keeping operational costs low and customer satisfaction high.
Dusty Borchardt, Business Systems Manager for Oklahoma City, said that they adopted the ITIL framework more than 15 years ago. He explains that they’d had effective processes in place for a while, but they “haven’t had a decent toolset to manage them” until they utilized TeamDynamix’s ITSM platform.
“TeamDynamix has brought simplicity to our operations,” Borchardt says. “This is the first IT Service Management platform we’ve implemented that everyone loves to use.”
Putting in place ITIL’s change management process helps mitigate unforeseen issues and downtime that arise from inadequate planning (or lack thereof) and controls. By documenting changes, organizations can stop the rise of significant—and often avoidable—issues.
Proper change management is a core component of the ITIL framework. For organizations looking to improve their maturity around IT Service Management, this is a great place to start. From the rollout of new technology to changes in processes or procedures – change management is everywhere. Without proper change management principles in place, an organization may struggle to deliver results and drain valuable IT resources in the process.
Change management is important because it helps to ensure that changes are made in a controlled and consistent manner, minimizing the potential for disruption to critical business systems and processes. Without proper Change Management, changes can be made without adequate testing, planning or communication, which can result in downtime, lost productivity and even data loss or security breaches.
Effective change management involves several key steps, including identifying the need for change, evaluating the potential impact of the change, developing a plan for implementing the change, testing the change in a controlled environment, communicating the change to all affected stakeholders, and documenting the change for future reference.
For organizations undergoing rapid growth with limited IT resources, change management should be a priority. At Northeast Ohio Medical University (NEOMED) they were struggling with unforeseen issues after each technology-related change. Using TeamDynamix for their ITSM, they were able to build out a comprehensive and well-thought-out change management strategy to address their issues.
“We set up a special form within the system called a change form, and whenever a production change is pending, we have the technical lead fill out that form,” Geri Hein, project manager within the university’s IT division, said. For larger changes, the change form is routed to a change control team that consists of Hein, a business analyst, the managers of the university’s IT infrastructure and database groups, and the IT director.
This process has increased communication within the IT team and helped with troubleshooting problems.
Now, whenever a change is coming, the key people who need to be aware are automatically notified in advance, so they can weigh in if they foresee any risks or dependencies in order to ensure a smooth transition. Changes are linked automatically to the ticket calendar feature within TeamDynamix, so IT staff can easily see which changes were made on which days.
“If there’s a problem, we can go to the calendar and determine whether it was related to a particular change or not,” Hein said. “There have been a few instances where our infrastructure team made changes that we didn’t think would cause problems with our ERP system, but they did. [Because of the change management process] we were able to track it back to the right source and easily resolve the issue.”
Adopting ITIL best practices can lead to massive success and benefits for your organization across the board. The ITIL Glossary gives a good look at the implementation, management, and quality of IT services that meet a company’s needs. By choosing a robust set of ITIL best practices, you can foster strength between the core functions of your organization and the IT services and develop a more even-keel approach to the service environment throughout a state of constant change.
Want to hear more about ITIL best practices? Watch top CIOs explain the difference between simply adopting ITIL and truly embracing it, including the roles education, technology and institutional support play in the overall vision.
Editor’s note: This post was originally published in June 2020 and has been updated with new information.
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