In companies, IT organizations are undergoing a transformation from being pure providers of information technology to becoming service providers — or service providers — for the entire business. The focus is increasingly on customer and process orientation. All IT processes are consistently aligned with customer requirements. As a result, there is growing interest in best practices and reference models for designing service-oriented IT management processes. ITIL (IT Infrastructure Library) has since established itself as a “quasi-standard” and reference framework for quality IT Service Management (ITSM).
ITIL…
- is a guideline and describes WHAT should be addressed: the content, processes, and goals of an IT reorganization.
- does not prescribe HOW the results should look: the concrete implementation and design of processes and services is at the discretion of each individual IT organization.
- represents all relevant IT processes in its “reference model”: the concept and structure of ITSM is made possible in an experience-based, goal-oriented, time- and cost-optimized manner.
- is a flexible framework that can be adapted to any IT service organization: regardless of industry, size, legal form, etc.
ITIL-Compliant IT Service Support
IT service support, which provides assistance to end customers and users, forms a central element of service-oriented IT management processes. IT organizations in companies often have a poor image due to a lack of customer orientation, low transparency, and inadequate quality of IT services — caused by insufficient design of IT service support.
ITSM frequently involves very complex structures. ITIL-compliant help desk software supports their performance and quality, as well as efficient control and documentation.
ITIL Requirements for Help Desk Software:
- Broad functional scope to support ITIL processes — range of process modules that support the ITIL model
- Ease of use / usability
- Comprehensive and specific adaptability and configurability of the software to company processes
- Appropriate to relatively low operational effort for deploying updates, feature improvements, and basic configuration
- Project support from the software manufacturer or partners
- Web service technology
- Service-oriented architecture
- Ability to map workflows
- SLAs
- Automatic escalation
- Performance monitoring
Benefits of ITIL-Compliant Service Desk Software:
- Increased customer and service orientation of the IT service provider, and thereby improved customer and user satisfaction
- Growing efficiency in IT service delivery as a result of process optimization
- Greater transparency from the customer’s perspective regarding service support processes
- Increased interoperability and integration capability of inter-company and intra-company business processes
- Reduction of existing information asymmetries
- Long-term reduction of ITSM costs
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CEO Alltena GmbH
Christoph Friedrich is a computer scientist and certified Project Management Professional. He has extensive experience in the introduction and integration of project management tools as well as the analysis and definition of processes in project and service management.
