CIS 3008
ITSM- North Dakota
Executive summary
Present
paper explores details for the information technology department of North
Dakota pertaining to information technology service management. Importance of
IT service management would be explored for North Dakota, ITIL V3 service
strategy would be reviewed, decision would be made regarding adoption of
outsourcing of IT services and decision pertaining to adoption of ISO/IEC 20000
certification would be made for North Dakota. It has been explored that ITSM is
one of the key functionality for the organization which allows organization to
achieve higher customer satisfaction, reduce delivery time and provide service
support as per customer requirement. ITIL V3 strategy has three important parts
(business relationship management, financial management and customer need
understanding) which needs to be managed by North Dakota so as to enhance
business proposition. Option of outsourcing would be critical for North Dakota
in order to focus on their core activity and reduce cost. Adoption of ISO/IEC
20000 certification would be beneficial to evolve as continuously improving
organization and to align business strategy as per organizational IT strategy.
Table of Contents
Part-1
Importance of IT service
management at North Dakota
Information
technology service management (ITSM) has gained vital importance in present age
for managing business services effectively. The role of ITSM in present age
businesses is to simplify business processes so as to align them in accordance
with the IT infrastructure in the organization so as to develop a uniform and
standardized code of practice organization wide. For North Dakota the major
role of ITSM would be to simplify business processes in order to act as the
growth driver thereby contributing in the development strategic fit and for
business strategy and organizational policies (Bon, 2007). ITSM tools used by
North Dakota would be vital in collecting the relevant information which would
create a base for the development of sound decision making in the organization.
Some of the major factors showing importance of IT service management for North
Dakota can be given as under:
§ Service support in accordance to
business need: ITSM would allow North Dakota to deliver
service support for their customers in accordance to the particular business
needs. Several organizations which are not having expertise in information
technology field such as Bank of North Dakota, office of management and budget,
Criminal justice information sharing, job service and department of human
services would be able to concentrate on their core business activity. This
would help customers to provide one touch access for all their IT related and
Non-IT related issues and queries. For example at present Bank of North Dakota
is utilizing these services in order to request for equipment, replacement for
any particular machine and any other software or hardware related issues. ITSM
would offer the customized set of services for their client based on
requirements.
§ Automation of workflow:
Entire organizational workflow would be smoothly managed and automated
processed would be used. There would be automatic request tracking, resolution
providing and closing the call after resolution of the problem. Hence human
intervention in most of the processes would be minimal in the present context
(England, 2008).
§ Higher customer satisfaction:
Delivering services in accordance with organizational requirement and giving
organizations opportunity to focus on their core activity would enhance the
customer satisfaction level and North Dakota would be able to maintain customer
satisfaction up to 99.8%. Further after each issue logged in with the IT
service management team a feedback system would be maintained this will
evaluate the customer satisfaction index pertaining to service imparted by IT
desk. This will help in order to identify possible issues in the service
department and accordingly changes can be made in the service delivery model to
enhance customer satisfaction further.
§ Reduction in service delivery
time: ITSM tools would help North Dakota to reduce
their service delivery time considerably as lesser time would be consumed in
service delivery and this would also enhance the customer value. This would add
to higher efficiency in the organizational context as higher number of tasks
would be accomplished within given time frame.
§ Service quality: Usage
of ITSM would help North Dakota to give higher emphasis on the service quality
aspect. The services provided to the customers would be of best quality and
elastic in nature suiting the changing organizational environment. Improvement
in service quality aspect would develop brand name for the organization and
give customer high value (Knapp, 2010).
§ Competitive advantage: Usage
of ITSM tool in the organization would be helpful in order to develop the
competitive advantage through lower cost and better quality. An automated
system would align organizational tasks and foster higher level of efficiency
in the system. North Dakota would be able to compete with its competitors by
maintaining the ITSM tool in the organizational context.
§ Improvement in decision making: IT
Service management processes implemented in g North Dakota would be helpful in
managing all processes efficiently hence better time management and information
collection would happen. This would help the organization to make effective
decisions so as to align the business processes for better decision making
processes to be followed in North Dakota.
Hence
North Dakota has high degree of importance for the ITSM tool managed by the
organization in order to develop organizational efficiency, enhance customer
satisfaction, managed automated work flow, reduce service delivery time and
implement cost efficiencies in the organization.
Service strategy
ITIL V3 Service strategy phase
Service
strategy can be considered as the major axis for the service lifecycle in ITIL
V3 around which entire phases will move and this phase would include the policy
making and objective setting. This phase guides how information technology
service management needs to be managed in order to provide competitive
advantage to the businesses. Based on the service strategy of the organization
an organizational competitive advantage would be developed based on the target
market of the company (Kolthof, 2007). Management team in the organization
would analyze key risks and benefits so as to develop efficient decision making
system. There are three major service strategy processes included in the ITIL
V3 which are given as under in relation to North Dakota:
- Service portfolio management: The role of service portfolio
management is to ensure that an appropriate mix of services can be
developed which would match the customer requirement. North Dakota has a
proper service management processes in place so as to meet customer
requirement. Continuous customer feedbacks are made in order to align the
service according to customer requirements. Management of all service
provision is being done in order to improve organizational processes at
North Dakota (Sharon and Ivor, 2012). Further
there is issue that at North Dakota value of IT to achieve organizational
goals has been undermined. Customer need assessment survey conducted by
ITD reveals that more than 90% of the customers believe that services
delivered by ITD are able to meet consumer requirements. Further approx.
99% of the incidents and requests are completed with high customer
satisfaction. In order to develop customer centric approach ITD makes use
of the creation of positive customer experience, building strong relations
and providing technology directions etc (Buchsein and Dettmer, 2008).
- Financial management: The main objective of financial management
for IT services is to ensure that sufficient funding can be availed so
that IT services can be managed in proper manner and cost related to IT
can be managed efficiently. A financial framework has been maintained at
North Dakota so as to manage the cost on IT services and to recover these
costs from customers. Further strategic analysis in North Dakota involves
studying the impact of change in the organizational IT strategy on overall
business objectives. Adequate amount of funding is made available for the
IT relates services and any other expenditure which are required to be
covered in the organizational context. North Dakota has high degree of
focus on budgeting, accounting and charging for the financial management
of IT services wherein exceptions of income are being managed, unit costs
are being established and pricing is established in such a way to charge
customers for covering organizational cost on the IT services. As a part
of the financial management strategy ITD makes use of the cost effective
investments, manage revenue, align prices with customer needs and manage state
wide spending on technology (Rovers and Haren, 2012).
- Business relationship management: The main aim of the business
relationship management processes in ITIL V3 service strategy phase is to
ensure that strong relationship is being maintained between the service
providers and customers through meeting customer expectations and
fulfilling consumer needs. The major objective of business relationship
management would be to meet customer needs, maintain effective
communication, maintain efficient complaint management system and to
ensure high customer satisfaction. Survey conducted in order to assess
consumer relationship with ITD it was found out that 90% of the consumers believe
that ITD is trusted business partner and more than 90% of the customers
would prefer to choose ITD as their IT service provider.
Improvements in IT service
strategy processes
Possible
improvements in the service strategy processes for ITD would include
development of the strategic processes so as to develop objectives and goals
according to the organizational environment. It is important that ITD should
realign the business processes in accordance with the organizational goals and
objectives.
Part-3
3.0 Service Design
Service
strategy section of the present report details various roles and
responsibilities which would be assigned to different stakeholders and benefits
& limitations in case of outsourcing of service desk by North Dakota can be
given as under:
3.1 Roles and responsibilities
of for IT support
Below
are some of the major roles and responsibilities assigned to the key
stakeholders of the organization:
1.
Incident analyst: Incident
analyst would have the prime role to analyze impact of various incidents and
giving priority based on the level of impact on the organizational services.
Incident analyst has the responsibility to adopt proper measure in order to
take services back to its original state.
2.
Process liaison: Process liaison
is one of the top positions in IT field and has the responsibility to
communication and modifies organizational processes to align with the IT
strategy so as to develop coherence between the two (Hlvey and Melby, 2005).
3.
Change owner:
Role of change owner would be to fill the change owner form in order to
assemble the change package. Change owner would initiate the change request by
filling the form and this would be assigned to change management team. Change
management team would implement the changes as per the change owner
request.
4.
Operational analyst: Operational
analyst in North Dakota would be responsible for handling day to day
operational activities and to maintain the operational library. Operational
analyst would be responsible for managing the overall budget and recruiting
staff for the operational activities.
5.
Service analyst: Role of service
analyst would be to conduct service audit in order to track which services are
not efficient. Once identification for the inefficient services would be done,
service analyst would recommend possible changes in order to improve the services.
6.
System administrator: Role of
system administrator would be to own the system infrastructure and network
infrastructure so that availability of these devices does not affect the task
handled by IT team in the organization. System administrator would track the
system performance and maintain the devices which are required in the
organization for better organizational performance (Eric, 2007).
7.
Capacity manager: Services
handled by service desk would be as per the capacity of the system and role of
capacity manager would be to ensure that there is no over burden for capacity
on system as this may reduce the overall capacity of the system. Along with
reducing service quality this would also elongate the service delivery time.
3.2
Advantage of outsourcing
Some of the key advantages of an
outsourced service desk can be given as under:
1.
Higher emphasis on core
activities: By going for the option of outsourcing North Dakota can have higher
focus on their core activities. Time, efforts and budgeting requirement and
their planning would not be done by North Dakota and this entire part would be
taken care by outsourcing partner.
2.
Sharing of risk: Risk inherent
in the management of service desk would be shared by North Dakota along with
the outsourcing partner making service desk a lower risk composition for the
state (McBride, 2000).
3.
Lower cost: Managing outsourcing
team for the IT service desk would allow North Dakota to manage low cost IT
service system. Significant amount of cost would be saved in terms of human
resource, training & development and system deployment.
4.
Staffing: Managing staff for the
IT service desk would be another issue for North Dakota as high number of
people would be required for the management of service desk. Further North
Dakota can leverage on the outsourced staff as they would be highly competent
in their field which can’t be achieved by training and development for North
Dakota staff (Atwell, 2012).
5.
Lower investment in technology:
By deploying outsourcing service North Dakota can save in the overall
investment made by state for the technology, systems and other capital
investments. These surplus funds can be deployed for some other purpose leading
to additional benefits for the state.
3.3
Disadvantage of outsourcing
Some of the key disadvantages
which can be faced by North Dakota by outsourcing option can be given as under:
1.
Delayed delivery of service
quality: Outsourcing for the service desk would involve business partners and
they would lay down their specific processes and these processes may have the
chance to delay service quality which is generally observed in case of outsourced
business partners.
2.
Third party reliance: State of
North Dakota would be having high degree of reliance on the third party due to
which there would be much lower degree of organizational control and any
changes in processes laid down by outsourcing partner may affect the overall
processes for North Dakota as well.
3.
Information risk: Critical
information contained in the systems for North Dakota may be at risk due to
outsourcing partner as there can be information leakage during the system
maintenance or any exchange of information outside the organization.
4.
Difficulties in process
alignment: With outsourced partner managing the entire IT operations of the
organization it would be really difficult for North Dakota to align the
organizational processes with the IT infrastructure of the state as there would
be lesser degree of organizational control.
4.0 ISO/IEC 20000 Certification
As
per the situation faced in present task decision needs to be done whether or
not to obtain the ISO/IEC 20000 certification for ITD of North Dakota. This
decision for the ISO/IEC 20000 certification would involve reviewing the
benefits and drawbacks of this certification which are given as under:
Benefits of ISO/IEC 20000
certification
Some
of the major considered for the ISO/IEC 20000 certification include the below
mentioned:
- Following service focused business strategies: With adoption of
ISO/IEC 20000 certification it would be easy for the ITD to align its
services according to the organizational objectives and goals. Information
technology business strategy would be focused towards the services and
processes and would be an efficient mean to provide the synergy between
organizational strategy and information technology strategy of the
organization.
- Instant reaction as per changing environment: There can be
possible changes in the business requirement with change in economic,
political or technological environment for the organization. Adoption of
ISO/IEC 20000 certification would help in order to grasp these changes at
a faster pace and align the services of the organization according to the
changing business scenario. Quick and efficient reaction towards the
service changes for ITD would be a major benefit for the adoption of
ISO/IEC 20000 certification (Dugmore, 2006).
- Organization with continuous improvements: Achieving ISO/IEC
20000 certification for ITD would help the organization to engage into
continuous changing environment wherein organization would strive for
service excellence. These continuous improvements in services of the
organization would help in order to maintain customer satisfaction and
develop sustainability in longer term. This would make ITD to become an
organization with high value delivery system.
- High reliability in service deliverability: Adoption of ISO/IEC
20000 certification would help in order to build reliability in service
deliverability to consumers. Consistency and reliability factors would be
incorporated in the services provided by the organization giving higher
value delivery system for the consumers of the organization. Hence ITD
would be benefited to become an organization with high reliability and
value delivery system by maintaining ISO/IEC 20000 certification.
Limitations of ISO/IEC 20000
certification
Some
of the major limitations for the ISO/IEC 20000 certification for ITD can be
given as mentioned below and these factors would be important so as to make
final decision regarding adoption of ISO/IEC 20000 for ITD:
- Complex compliance requirements: Compliance requirement for
ISO/IEC 20000 certification are too complex in nature which demands
extensive process and policies to be implemented by organization and it
would be really difficult for ITD to implement these processes in
organizational environment. There would be requirement of the high amount
of financial and human resources in order to comply with these compliance
requirements. Further due to these compliance requirements organization
sometime may have to change their existing policies and processes to align
themselves with these requirements.
- High costing for implementation of ISO/IEC 20000 certification:
There is significant level of cost involved for the implementation of
ISO/IEC 20000 certification in terms of process changes and alignment.
This cost may outweigh the benefits of implementation of the ISO/IEC 20000
certification. Hence implementation of ISO/IEC 20000 would affect the overall
profitability for the organization (Dugmore, 2006).
- Developing phase for ISO/IEC 20000 certification: ISO/IEC 20000
certification standards are not quite established and are into
developmental phase only. Further there are chances that drastic changes
can happen in the entire certification and processes for the organization.
ITD would be significantly affected by these changed hence the decision
for adoption of ISO/IEC 20000 certificate may not prove beneficial for the
organization.
Looking
into the benefits and limitations for the ISO/IEC 20000 certification for
implementation in ITD there are several important factors which needs to be
considered. The major advantages of ISO/IEC 20000 certification such as service
focused business strategies; higher reliability, continuous improvements and
quick reaction to the changing service environment outweigh the limitations
which would be faced due to the implementation of ISO/IEC 20000. Hence from the
strategic aspect of evolving ITD as one of the major service provider known for
its quality services and reliability it is recommended that organization should
go for ISO/IEC 20000 certification.
Part-5
5.0 Conclusion and
recommendations to Deputy CIO
Present
report has reviewed several important IT service management issues pertaining
to Information technology department of North Dakota. Importance of information
technology service management processes were understood with specific context
to ITD and some of the key important features evolved includes developing
competitive advantage, improvement in service quality, meeting customer
satisfaction and improving service delivery time for the organization. ITIL V3
service strategy phase for ITD include service portfolio management, financial
management and business relationship management. Service portfolio management
deals with understanding consumer requirement and providing business solution
according to consumer needs.
Financial
management require an organization to maintain its profitability high by
passing cost to consumers. Business relationship management include managing
relationship with the business stakeholders such as customers and suppliers. Further
outsourcing of IT service desk can be a useful tool for North Dakota as it will
allow the organization to focus on their core activities and minimize overall
cost of the organization which could have been spent in the IT service
infrastructure for North Dakota. Though there are some disadvantages of
outsourcing as well such as the higher reliance on third party, risk to
information and delay in service delivery but these limitations would be
outweigh by advantages which would be gained by the organization by going for
outsourcing of their service desk. ISO/IEC 20000 certification is a crucial
decision which needs to be taken by ITD as its major benefits include focus on
continuous improvements, higher reliability and finding instant solution for
the changes occurring in business environment. Limitations of ISO/IEC 20000
certification include complex compliances, higher cost implications and
developing phase of the ISO/IEC 20000 certification which creates uncertain
environment for the ITD to adopt this certification.
Looking
into the various aspects related with information technology department of
North Dakota it can be recommended that organization has high importance level
for the information technology service management and organization should deploy
ITSM as their main tool for improving service quality. North Dakota needs to
manage various aspects of the ITIL V3 strategy so as to understand consumer
requirement, develop high profitability and to maintain strong customer
relationship. Outsourcing of services would be a beneficial decision as
organization would be able to give its attention on the core activities and
cost pertaining to investment in infrastructure can be reduced. Decision for
adoption of ISO/IEC 20000 certification should be taken so as to focus
attention of organization towards continuous improvement and aligning
organizational objectives.
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