Business Case for ITIL®
This comprehensive whitepaper outlines specific 'pain points' in IT, links them to ITIL-based solutions and explores how to calculate the value of implementing those solutions through incident management, change management, CMDB and service management. Metrics are explored for driving productivity up and workload down for IT and reclaiming resources for strategic project development.
A number of data points are taken from current research and enterprise IT process improvement case studies that consistently document a 20-40% reduction in the effort required for ongoing IT operations, powered by the implementation of ITIL process improvements. The same research clearly links ITIL with strategic gains in customer service quality, accuracy and efficiency while reducing IT risk and easing compliance management burdens. The development of an ITIL strategy is discussed and an incremental approach, which starts with small steps but shows measurable gains quickly, is presented.
The white paper discusses the following:
- How the market is quantifying ITIL improvements through case studies and research
- What the key business drivers are for ITIL
- The development of an ITIL strategy
- Applying ITIL improvements to Incident, Problem, Change, Release, Configuration, Service Level and Financial Management
Download The Business Case for ITIL whitepaper. Parts one and two have been combined and expanded and the 2006 Q3 Survey Results are included as well.
The Business Case for ITIL 2
This continuation of the original Business Value of ITIL includes new survey results on how Fortune 1000 companies across industries are using old and new metrics to calculate the return on investment (ROI) of ITIL based projects, such as Incident, Problem, Change, Configuration, Release, Service Level and Financial Management.
This newly released guide includes survey results on developing the business value of ITIL gathered at the September itSMF National Conference. One hundred (100) IT executives from 90 companies participated in the survey, which revealed that although the organizations are clearly focused on their ITIL priorities (service quality and delivery) and their top ITIL initiatives (CMDB, Incident and Problem Management, Service Catalog and Change and Release Management), most are still stumbling over the challenge of quantifying and articulating the value of these initiatives to the business.
Recommendations from the survey include analysis and re-engineering of key workflows with concurrent calculations on value contribution, including efficiency and labor savings, as well as risk reduction. Final conclusions include the finding that although enterprises are more focused than ever on exactly which initiatives are being targeted, much work still needs to be done on workflow analysis and metrics with ROI calculation to prove the value of ITIL initiatives to the business.
This sequel to the original 'Developing the Business Case for ITIL' makes the point that even though less than half of today's businesses are developing business value and ROI to justify IT spending, that trend is changing quickly. Going forward, IT departments must develop business value justification and ROI to fund new projects. This is evidenced by increasing pressure on IT executives to not only justify investments via traditional internal metrics (such as numbers of servers per system administrator) but also to expand into metrics that quantify IT's value to the business, such as 'annual contribution' to the business, 'benefit per developer' and other types of metrics, such as increasing IT staff time on innovation versus operations.
Templates are offered for capturing specific metrics for Incident and Problem Management; Change, Release and Configuration Management and Service Level and Financial Management. In general, efficiency, effectiveness and customer satisfaction, applied to these practice areas, lead the way for the development of 'core' metrics, particularly for IT infrastructure projects. Although each of these areas will have their own specific metrics, prior to business case development these metrics must be merged to reflect results based on 'end-to-end' service delivery. These 'end-to-end' metrics should reflect values that reach across the lines of business, highlighting overall contribution to the business. This approach integrates traditional, internal IT performance metrics (servers per system administrator) with broader business value metrics (such as annual total benefit per project).
This practical guide concludes that the entire development of business value process should be linked to a broader ITIL strategy that involves creating consensus around the acceptance of ITIL projects and selling the business value using metrics.