The need to manage Business Services

The importance of Services is becoming increasingly dominant in many different types of organisation.

The reasons for this are many. The drivers can include increasing revenue from Services even within product-centric organisations, the increasing awareness and contractual expectations of customers, the desire to create simpler and more manageable corporate structures and a growing realisation that the ability to manage Services on a proficient basis contributes significantly to the market value of a company.

Clearly defined and well-aligned Services drive and add Value

Effective Services need to be simple for customers to understand, be of competitive quality and offer clearly understood value to customers. They must be well-aligned with the products they are designed to support, reliable, sustainable and available as contracted and when required. Frequently they must also comply with a variety of standards, legislation and regulation and be environmentally friendly. That is a broad and deep set of requirements. So where do we start?

How can you best manage Services?

In the late 1980s, the UK government introduced a set of best practice guidelines for managing Services in the Information Technology (IT) environment. These have evolved significantly since then and the latest version of their guidelines ITIL® Version 3 (or ITIL v3) are highly relevant to both IT and general commercial Services. The ISO 20000 standard for Service Management was subsequently derived from these ITIL guidelines.

Managing Services to add and drive value for your organisation requires two important “components”:

- A Service Management System
- A consistent structure (Architecture) for building and maintaining Services

The Service Management System

Many organisations worldwide are adopting the ITIL best practice guidelines and some, also the ISO20000 standard to guide their Service Management effort. The ITILv3 best practice guidelines address over 20 sets of processes that add significant value to managing a Service over its lifetime. When these processes have been implemented they effectively constitute a Service Management System.

A Service Management System represents the way your organisation has agreed to manage its Services

This “System” is not a computer or IT system although it may contain one or more computer systems (automated processes). It is a generic business system consisting of many inter-related processes, both manual and automated and the assets and resources required deliver the desired results.

It is not a computer system, although it may use several computer systems

Not all the ITILv3 processes need to be implemented at once to create a usable Service Management System, but there are a number of foundation-level processes that need to be implemented to a minimum level. Once an initial Service Management System has been established it can be improved over time and as required.

Your Service Management System can start small and grow over time

More importantly, the Service Management System will be used to manage your organisation’s Services on a consistent and proficient basis over their lifetime, especially through the ITILv3 stages of Service Strategy, Service Design, Service Transition, Service Operation and finally Continual Service Improvement.

Service Architecture

A fundamental component of managing Services and more specifically Service Design, is the selection and maintenance of a suitable Service Architecture. This architecture is closely aligned to the Service Management System and will grow in sophistication as the Service Management System grows in sophistication too.

Your Service Architecture can also start “small” and grow in sophistication

The architecture of Services is important because it has a profound impact not only on the infrastructure required to manage and support each Service but also because the interdependencies between Services affect the entire structure of an organisation.

The structure of your Services can have a profound impact on your organisation

Our Focus – Enabling you to manage your Services well

Our focus is to ensure our customers become proficient in managing their business Services by helping them to identify, establish and manage:

Implicit in this is the selection of an appropriate set of software tools.

Please note that although the concepts of managing services have been developed largely within the IT environment, they are wholly applicable to all business services. For example, consider some of the services provided in a hotel environment that can be managed by a Service Management System:

The Service Management System and Service Architecture principles apply to all types of Business Services

To achieve this we are proud of our close association with IT Process Maps GbR (through our partnership with them, KLC Alliance) and also our partnership with IBM which enables us to provide the following products running on IBM’s world-class Enterprise Architecture management system, Rational® System Architect®:

Furthermore, our Service Management Architecture has the prestigious Ready for Rational accreditation from IBM.

We can help you to “start small” and grow to use a sophisticated level of Service Management

We offer a number of facilitation and consulting services for both the Microsoft Visio® version of IT Process Maps’ ITILv3 processes and ISO20000 Bridge and our enhanced versions on System Architect. As a result, as our customers grow in sophistication, we can offer them an easy and natural upgrade path from the Visio environment to a more powerful, industrial-strength environment using System Architect, especially for the development of large, enterprise-wide Services should this be required.