Business Service Management - Are we there yet?
Is IT really getting closer to business?
Many organizations, particularly in the last couple of years, have been chasing the el dorado of Business Service Management. This term that appeared first on a few analyst reports a few years back seemed to have an unstoppable momentum. Soon it was the darling jargon of several IT Consultants, system integrators and soon enough even some client managers warmed up to the idea. It seemed logically enough the Next Big Thing. Last year we even saw product vendors like BMC base their product rebranding of their new-version ITSM platform on the BSM theme.
But how succesful are these implementations? Do the investments into these programs really prove worthwhile when looked at from a value-derived perspective rather than the technology upgrade one (which they usually tend to be)? Is there something like a "quick-win" that organizations could look around the BSM area or do most of these implementations turn out to be long-drawn multi-million investments? I was reading a forrester analyst survey amongst recent BSM impleemntations completed recently that gave "zero" marks on timely delivery for these implementations (i.e. Nobody responded that their implementation was delivered with the needed speed) Is this an impression or is it for real?
A recent survey by forrester amongst CIOs shows that 52% of the CIOs list Business IT alignment as in their top 3 key concern areas. This is also reflected in the increased demand for BSM tools within the marketplace that help in increasing transparency of IT operations to the business. Also a recent analyst report points out that organizations can reduce more than 25% of their IT operations costs by implementing Business Service Management.
Our experience in these Business Service Management implementations reveals a recurring theme and pattern in these implementations. For example, organizations that start in this journey, usually pick up Servicedesk optimization / rengineering as one of the first steps. Most organizations have also upgraded their Incident management and Service level management toolsets (sometimes even without supporting SLAs, which makes such implementations interesting to analyze for effectiveness). Several of our CBA (Cost-Benefit Analysis) engagements for BSM investments often tend to end with a predictable outcome. These investments are undertaken not necessarily because there is a long-term cost benefit of doing so, but more because IT's customer organizations are screaming for better levels of services.
Which boils down to an interesting question? Is Business Service Management about getting closer to business (IT as a partner) or is it all about "servicing" customers better (IT as a service provider?) The current set of investments/initiatives that are happening in this area doesnt necessarily reflect emphasis on the partnership part but give rise to the impression of "firefighting".
Is it time to move on from that reactive mode? Will this year see a different trend where the focus is more on IT collaboratively working with its business partners rather than IT working as a service provider delivering IT services as per SLAs?
The theme of this blog is to look at some of the key principles that drive the success of BSM implementations. I will also try to articulate in these narratives a distillation of our learnings from some of these implementations.
Infosys works with quite a few companies world-wide on helping their IT Service Management programs , in particular with the scope and direction and later with helping them translate the vision into an implementation reality. If you have a query on Business Service Management or have an opinion on the same, please feel free to contact us / post a query here and we will be happy to respond to the same.
