Service management has helped businesses build and manage IT services for many years. Yet the principles it introduces have an untapped potential to transform business performance beyond the IT department and make you a hero.
What is Service Management?
Stripped back to basics, service management is about creating effective, efficient and consistent services which are delivered to the business. Originating in the IT space as a way to systemise complex technologies and the services surrounding them, service management has been vital for harnessing IT within business. The service management community has collectively solved many issues around deploying IT services, which means many businesses have avoided ‘reinventing the wheel’ when introducing their own services. In short, service management has helped businesses take advantage of complex technology and saved countless hours in doing so.
However, the story of service management shouldn’t end there. Why not use it for further gain? After all, while service management has its origins in IT, there’s no reason why it should be limited to that space.
Think about it. Service management is about systemising business processes, so what’s stopping it being applied outside of IT? The average business is heavily reliant on a number of process-intensive functions. These include:
• Recruitment
• Onboarding new starters
• HR
• Facilities management
• Procurement of business goods and services
• Legal procedures
• Delivering external customer service
If all of these business processes were given the service management treatment, the result would be eye-opening. The idea of introducing service management to non-IT business functions is called Enterprise Service Management and it is a natural evolution.
Why Champion Enterprise Service Management?
To answer the above question, let’s take a closer look at the areas in which service management helps with.
Consistency
One of the principles of service management is to establish the best method for running a process and then systemising it. This ensures consistency of service every time. Although the business functions we’ve already mentioned probably have ‘pockets’ of automatisation and systemisation, Enterprise Service Management stitches these together into a cohesive whole. The end result is a reliable service and experience delivered to customers and staff every time.
Collaboration
Service management has succeeded because it encourages collaboration between stakeholders. Rather than individuals building and overseeing processes, Enterprise Service Management encourages business professionals to pool their collective experience. This not only helps ensure that services are optimised, but it means the business can react quicker to changes in the business that may require changes to services.
Save money
Inefficiencies cost business billions every year. If you iron out the imperfections, the savings can be staggering. Enterprise Service Management systematically examines and removes these flaws to ensure that no money is wasted.
Remove waste
All too often, businesses maintain costly services without knowing the relative value of doing so. Enterprise Service Management condones creating a service catalogue – literally a list of available services. The process of building a catalogue often highlights redundant services that can be immediately closed without causing any negative impact. Then once the catalogue is published, the business can monitor which services are used, and again, depending on usage, improve popular services, and reduce or remove ones that offer little value.
Feedback
Continuous Service Improvement (CSI) is a cornerstone of Enterprise Service Management. This means proactively monitoring processes and services and checking they are still delivering. Business is fluid and ever changing, CSI ensures that business processes keep pace.
Why should service desks champion Enterprise Service Management?
IT and the service desk are not islands. Like any other business department or function, they are ultimately judged on their contribution to the business. If a team or individual can drive Enterprise Service Management into one or more department, and derive some of the benefits we’ve looked at in this blog, the kudos will be huge. Service management has done a great job improving IT delivery, but thinking about Enterprise Service Management and its latent potential, its story could just be getting started.
If you want to talk about introducing Enterprise Service Management into other areas of your business, please get in touch. We’ve got extensive experience working with our customers to do just that, using existing and new service management tools. We’re happy to offer some advice!