10 Top ITSM Success Tips from ITSM Tool Vendors
During 2014 I interviewed some lovely IT service management (ITSM) people for my blog, all of whom were gainfully employed by SysAid’s competitors at the time:
- Patrick Bolger of Hornbill
- John Clark of Microsoft
- Ashok Srivastava of Kovair
- Stephen Mann formerly of ServiceNow
- Arvind Parthiban formerly of ManageEngine
Each interviewee offered up their personal five top tips for success in ITSM. Each list stood on its own merits but I’ve now put all of their tip lists into the office blender to create a Top 10 ITSM success tips.
10 Top ITSM Success Tips
- Focus on the business. This means leading with business outcomes and reducing/eliminating low/no-value activities, infrastructure and services.
- Appreciate that the quickest route to value is from the customer-in, not from the infrastructure-out.
- Don’t confuse your aspirations with your priorities. Focus on the three things (your real priorities) that will make a difference (personally and professionally, and individually and organizationally)
- Hire the right people. Have a clear directive – to bring new benefit to the business – that you recruit against, rather than just plugging a gap in process or technical skills.
- Identify low-value interactions that irritate IT staff and customers, then target them for elimination.
- Think more about what you do and could do, but don’t get caught up in reinventing the proverbial wheel (again).
- Don’t try to implement ITIL (or MOF or ISO20k) – you can’t “implement ITIL” … but you can implement ITIL-based processes. There’s a big difference between the two that many unfortunately miss.
- Understand ITIL and use it based on the requirements of your business for operational efficiency, cost reduction and above all service improvement.
- Ensure that you select the right ITSM solution for your specific business requirements. What matters most is choosing the right tool based on the size, complexity, budget, company-specific issues, and most of all what people and the organization really need. Keep in mind that “pricey” doesn’t mean “quality.”
- Enjoy it or don’t do it.
So what do you think of the consolidated list? What do you agree with, what would you strike out, and what would you add?
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And of course lil’ ol’ me.
