Building the Business Case for Service Management

Does your organization require you to build a business case for IT service management (ITSM) or the wider use of service management in what is often called “enterprise service management”? If you do, then this blog will help. Because it offers up a number of great data points – from the SysAid 2021 State of Service Management Report – that will help to give your ITSM or service management business case some industry-level, quantitative substance to supplement your organization-level data.

Using basic operational service management data in your business case

The backbone of your ITSM of service management business case will be made up of the efficiencies that come from formalizing your operations by adopting service management best practices such as ITIL 4 – with these enabled by the use of a fit-for-purpose ITSM or service management tool. This applies to both organizations that are looking to start their journey with service management and those that are looking to advance their existing service management use and/or maturity.

For example, the addition of new service management capabilities such as IT asset management or the extension of service management practices and ITSM tool use to other business functions such as human resources (HR) and facilities.

In all of these scenarios, a calculation can be made as to the improvement that the introduction of service management best practices and the enabling ITSM tool will make to operations and outcomes (including where a new ITSM replaces one that’s failing to deliver against business needs).

For example, based on your organization’s current ITSM practices, you might estimate that your HR organization can use the available corporate service management capabilities to half the average time taken per manually handled ticket (thanks to automated workflows and knowledge management capabilities, say). When multiplied by the number of manually-handled tickets per annum and the average time taken (and cost) for each HR case it’s likely to be a significant cost reduction to include in the business case.

The introduction of self-service capabilities (or the replacement of the existing capabilities with something that employees will actually use) can produce significant financial improvements for your business case too. This can reduce the service provider cost of ticket handling to circa 5% of the manually handled cost. The immediacy of self-service – when done well – will also facilitate more of your tickets being resolved by the end-user, so don’t forget to reflect this in your business case numbers (including a corresponding reduction of the manually-handled ticket benefits too).

I’ve probably already said too much here – this is the “bread and butter” data for your service management business case. Along with any projections you want to add in, if actually needed, related to the business-level costs and gains from your service management improvements. For example, that there might be an end-user cost associated with self-service (but hopefully not if you do it right, where there can also be a time-related saving for end users).

Adding in some industry-level data

In addition to the number-crunching described above, the use of industry-level data points can add creditability to your service management business case, plus other avenues to identify cost-related savings.

To help, here’s what the SysAid 2021 State of Service Management Survey and Report found from a sample consisting of over 1000 IT professionals:

• The impact of service management on IT efficiency and productivity. Here, the survey results are a resounding endorsement of service management adoption/improvement – with 73% of respondents stating that service management has improved IT efficiency and productivity a lot, and 19% somewhat. The remaining 8% who responded “not at all” might, sadly, have struggled to adopt service management best practices and the enabling technology to best advantage. This still happens despite what the IT industry has learned about service management over the last three decades.
• The impact of service management on mean-time-to-resolve (MTTR). The survey found a similar level of success here too – that 69% of respondents had significant success, 20% some success, and only 11% no success. Again, for the latter of these, we can question whether adoption mistakes are the cause of the failure to realize the benefits.
• The impact of service management on enhancing end-user experience. Here, 61% of respondents stated that service management has helped their organizations to enhance the end-user experience a lot, 24% somewhat. 15% responded “not at all.” An important point to note here is that the experience-based improvement is likely linked with an associated improvement in end-user productivity – because research shows that being able to do the work they need to do, when they need to do it, is a big contributor to employee or end-user experience – saving them time and improving business operations and outcomes.
• The impact of service management on automating service desk admin workload. Out of the four business-value-based benefits examined by the survey, this one had the lowest results (although they still highlight the benefits of service management). Here, 45% of respondents stated that service management has helped their organizations to automate admin workload a lot, 30% somewhat. 25% responded “not at all.” This is, of course, dependent on the organizations in question, firstly, having access to fit-for-purpose automation capabilities and, secondly, deciding to use them to improve not only admin productivity but also business operations and outcomes.

All of these survey data points can be used within your service management business case – either as-is or extended to reflect your own organization and with the benefit-based impact quantified. Plus, while the above relate to the use of service management in IT, i.e. ITSM, the data points can also be extended to other business function use cases. Whether from an enterprise service management perspective or to enable digital transformation and the creation of digital workflows and digital workspaces.

If you’d like to find out more about what’s most important in the field of service management right now (and in the future), then please download the SysAid 2021 State of Service Management Report.