ITIL and its impact on your business

Economics of IT industry has capped supply whereas the demand is infinite, unlike other markets where ideally demand is equal to supply. Demand in IT is only restricted to what one can imagine and apply. Still most of the organizations have a limited budget allocated to its IT needs.

Most organizations today rely upon IT to enable them to achieve their company vision, business strategy and goals. Investing into IT, for a manager of an organization, as a part of its service strategy is normally governed by the typical Return on Investment (RoI) and Return on Value (RoV). The quality of an organization’s IT is reflected in its reputation and brand, and has direct impact upon sales and revenue. For an IT investment to provide benefit, the resulting IT service must be well planned, well designed, well managed and well delivered. That is what the practice of IT service management is about.

ITIL (Information Technology Infrastructure Library) is a set of practices for ITSM (IT service management) that focuses on aligning IT services with the needs of business. It is non-proprietary best practice that can be adapted for use in all business and organizational environments. ITIL provides an extensive body of knowledge, capabilities and skills. It is accessible through publications, training, qualifications and support tools.

There are various advantages of adopting ITIL for an organization:

• Reports coming out of ITIL help compare effectiveness of organizational processes with best in the industry and thus reaffirm the value of ITSM practices
• IT services help align business priorities and objectives, to help business achieves more in terms of its strategic objectives
• It ensures the business better plans its finances
• Increased business productivity, efficiency and effectiveness, because IT services are more reliable and work better for the business users
• Financial savings from improved resource management and reduced rework
• More effective change management, enabling the business to keep pace with change and drive business change to its advantage
• Improved user and customer satisfaction with IT
• Improved end-customer perception and brand image.

ITIL helps an organization to align its business strategy and reassure that the processes are at par with industry standards. It helps the higher management to connect the IT Service Management to the budget cycle and ultimately set priorities for the business area.

About Author:

Harsh Saraogi is consultant and part of Systems Plus Pvt. Ltd. He is a part of consulting team that delivers Sourcing and Vendor Management Office projects. He can be contacted at: harshvardhan.s@spluspl.com