Why your organization should implement ITIL?
ITIL is seen as a solution to many problems associated with IT organizations.
It is used as a guide to help groups improve the value of their services by focusing on co-creating business value and solving business problems, rather than just improving IT capabilities.
Organizations use ITIL as a framework for focusing all their activities, components, and resources to implement capabilities that deliver specific business value. So ITIL can benefit any organization that provides an IT service management product or service.
In this article, we provide seven key tips for organizations looking to effectively introduce the ITIL framework.
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7 reasons to implement ITIL in your organization
Adopting ITIL 4 can bring many benefits to both organizations and their users.
In the new version, the framework gives strategic importance to ITSM by placing it in the larger context of customer experience and shared value creation. The key benefits of ITIL4 are:
- Cultural transformation
- Find a starting point
- Know the framework and define the roles
- Know where you want to go
- Know what to improve
- Integration of practices
- Continuous improvement
1. Cultural transformation
The first clarification to make concerns the terminology: ITIL cannot be “implemented” in the canonical sense of the term as it requires a cultural transformation to the approach to work. IT Service Management professionals need to help organizations in which they operate to shift their focus on customers, results, and business value so that they can make a deep connection between these factors.
For this reason, we cannot simply speak of “implementing” ITIL, because this term implies the fact that there is a process with a beginning and an end. The ITIL framework is based on an approach to an iterative and incremental improvement and therefore requires a complete cultural transformation.
2. Find a starting point
When introducing a new methodology, it is always necessary to take into account the organization’s past and current situation. Understanding what can and cannot be done and what has already been done in the past. It is important to see past results and to determine the objectives that are to be achieved.
The main components of the Service Value System that must be implemented according to a holistic approach are the following:
- Corporate Governance
- The flows of value
- The Practices
- Continuous Improvement
- The 7 Guiding Principles
3. Know the framework and define the roles
The knowledge and mastery of the concepts underlying the ITIL 4 framework is a factor that is as obvious as it is fundamental. Knowing the framework brings the knowledge of the need to clearly and unequivocally define the role each involved professional must play.
The correlation between role definition and knowledge of the framework is a key factor to start with when adopting ITIL within an organization.
4. Know where you want to go
ITIL helps to define the specific value flows of the organization and supports to concretely implement them through the 34 practices made available by the ITIL 4 framework. For this reason, it is necessary to thoroughly analyze roles, processes, information, and technologies, together with the ITIL 4 stakeholders.
Stakeholders are included in order to define the future path to take towards the evolution of the organizational model. Clarifying the ins and outs of the organization makes it possible to identify possible weaknesses and opportunities in advance, by comparing the processes in place with best practices.
5. Know what to improve
After analyzing the current situation, it is time to focus on the objectives; which value flows to introduce, and how to divide them into steps, actions, and tasks in such a way that they are easier to manage?
Answering these questions will also allow us to answer a fundamental question:
What is the motivation that drives the organization to introduce ITIL best practices?
Once the answer to this simple but fundamental question has been found, the organization will be able to focus on the ITIL project. While also focusing on desired results (outcome) and those actually achieved (output).
6. Integration of practices
Once the value flows have been defined with the relative steps required by the Demand for Value, it is necessary to identify the practices and associated resources that contribute to the success of each step.
In the past, weaknesses often came to light precisely in the passage from the end of one process to the beginning of the next one. For this reason, using the Value Flows allows you to interface processes towards a shared and functional vision to also optimize procedural work and transition between processes.
7. Continuous improvement
Having finally introduced ITIL into your organization does not at all mean that the process is over, quite the opposite!
- Which processes have fully achieved the objectives?
- Which could be improved?
- Have the predetermined outcomes been obtained?
The solution is to use Continual Improvement as a recurring organizational activity performed at all levels to ensure that an organization’s performance continuously meets stakeholder expectations.