Kevin J. Smith is Senior Vice President of Strategic Initiatives at Ivanti. He is also the author of the book, The Practical Guide to World-Class IT Service Management. Before joining the Ivanti family, Kevin ran the Service Management Business Unit at Heat Software. He brings to Ivanti more than 25 years of technical, management, and executive leadership experience in technology and software businesses.

So he knows a bit about IT and service management in the enterprise. As evidence, herewith, some highlights from an Ivanti webinar featuring Kevin and Ivanti Senior Product Marketing Manager David Martinez – The 4 Keys for World Class ITSM + Magic Quadrant Review.

What Is World-Class ITSM?

Kevin has identified 12 elements of world-class ITSM.

The “Core 6:”

  • Incident
  • Service Catalog
  • Problem
  • Change
  • Configuration & Asset
  • Release

The Rest of the “World-Class 12:”

  • Service Requests
  • Knowledge, Availability Management
  • Financial Management
  • Service Level Management
  • Service Portfolios

How Best to Achieve World-Class ITSM?

This is where Kevin’s “4 Keys” come into play.

Key the First: It Begins with People.

Services are basically how customers, partners, and users interact with the enterprise and its IT. The people who design, create, deploy, and manage those services must do so in ways that maximize user adoption, productivity, and satisfaction, service availability, performance, and security, and business value. Fulfillment of these goals requires people with a mix of technical and “people” skills, individually and collectively. Hiring, training, and retaining those people is a constant, fundamental challenge to achievement of world-class ITSM.

Key the Second: Take a Phased Approach.

Begin your journey with a focus on one or more of the “Core 6” elements. Limit your initial efforts to two to three processes per phase, and conduct a thorough process review after each phase. Be patient. Go after a single initial success with clear, credibly documented business value. Lather, rinse, and repeat until key business needs aligned with the “Core 6” are met. Then, “land and expand” to go after success with the rest of the “World-Class 12.”

Key the Third: Automation is Your Friend.

As you and your team develop and deploy successful processes, look for opportunities to automate as many as possible. Automation can result in more consistent execution, fewer errors and exceptions, greater security, and lower operating costs. Automated processes can also be easier to replicate and scale.

Key the Fourth: Communication is Vital.

Every successful IT initiative succeeds in large part because its proponents persuade key constituencies to support it. This is nothing more or less than an exercise in effective communication. For every initiative you and your team pursue, you must identify key constituents, influencers, and even potential objectors. You must then figure out whether and how best to communicate with them, and what to communicate to which constituents when. And for every initiative you pursue to successful completion, you must communicate coming changes to affected constituents in ways that encourage their support, address their concerns, and minimize their problems. Fortunately, your Sales and Marketing colleagues very likely have useful insights to share, as may your vendor representatives and partners.

Take Your Next Steps Toward World-Class ITSM with Ivanti

To see more on the above, check out the complete set of slides from the webinar. For even more, including explanation and commentary from Kevin and David about the Gartner 2017 Magic Quadrant for ITSM, download, enjoy, and share the webinar recording.

Then, explore our solutions for delivering service management from the cloud, empowering your ITSM team, and improving delivery of IT and business services. Then, let’s talk, and see how Ivanti can help your enterprise modernize and master ITSM and get closer to realizing The Power of Unified IT™.