The Role And Benefits Of ISO/IEC 20000 Certification In IT Service Management

Service Management System and IT Service Management

Question:

Discuss about the Exploring Service Management Standard.

ISO/IEC 20000 certification is a standardized system for service management of the IT organizations. This certification brings out the best services from the IT companies. The IT service providers having the ISO/IEC certification is sure to demonstrate more reliable services with high service quality (Iden & Eikebrokk, 2013). Such certification will give more scope to the IT companies to expand their market as most of the clients’ desires to avail services from the ISO 20000 certified companies as such a certified company will provide the clients with the assurance of services (Cots & Casadesús, 2015). Apart from this, it has been found that in the process of acquiring the ISO certification the IT companies undergoes much innovation thus enhancing the business effectiveness. The service providers could regulate as well as monitor each of the steps of the business proceedings. Service management system if incorporated with IT can meet the IT business goals more efficiently (Osborne, Radnor & Nasi, 2013). In this report, a case study from the video lecture of Mr. Saikat Basu is considered for analyzing the role of ISO/IEC 2000 certification in handling an IT business. The case study involved an external IT service provider who opted for more centralized business approach for meeting the client’s requirements which was achieved by acquiring the ISO 20000 certification. Further, the report highlights the key benefits of such certifications and the challenges that a company might face in the process of acquiring the ISO/IEC 20000 certification. Considering the outcome of this case study the report also highlights how the acquiring an ISO/IEC 20000 certification can help the Excel IT to reach its business goals.

Service management system (SMS) can be regarded as the tool for organizing all the service-oriented managing activities in a well structured manner. The SMS incorporates all the necessary aspects of organizational management. The necessary aspects involve planning, identifying strategies, designing policies and objectives, documentation of the project and the processes (Laudon & Laudon, 2016). SMS can be considered as the main requirement for the designing and developing the services of an organization. The SMS provides with huge number of scopes in terms of service location, customers and technology. A number of processes are involved in the service management system.  Some of the development-oriented processes include Configuration management, change management and release management (Walker, Coletta & Sivaraman, 2014). In case of operating-oriented environment SMS involves processes such as service management, incident management, problem management and request fulfillment (Othman & Chan, 2013). SMS can be improved over time after its initial implementation. It enables the organization to manage the services in a consistent and efficient manner. The ITIL and the ISO/IEC lays framework for the implementation of the SMS. These standardization organizations also provides with the best practices and concepts of the SMS.

Benefits of IT Service Management for Excel IT

SMS is can be associated with IT departments also known as IT service management (ITSM). ITSM can be defined as the execution as well as the management of the IT services which meets the business goals of the concerned organizations. ITSM can be performed by encompassing the various processes of SMS (Mesquida & Mas, 2015). Implementation of ITSM can serve the organization with number of benefits.

The following are some of the advantages that incorporation of the ITSM can provide to the Excel IT:

• ITSM can increase the efficiency as well as productivity of the concerned IT organizations through designation of specific roles and responsibilities.
• Improve the services as well as the business values that the organization delivers. In the process, this also enhances the perception of the customers towards the IT sector (Disterer, 2013).
• ITSM will provide more support to the regulatory challenges that the company faces also it ensures increased control (Boehm & Thomas, 2013).
• Improves the understanding as well as clarity of the services provided by the concerned IT organization.
• ITSM lays a great scope for evaluating and measuring the operational performance this in turn improves the service quality.

Considering the business point of view, The ITSM can also add value to the Excel IT services. The following are some of the business-level benefits that the Excel IT can earn by the incorporation of the ITSM:

• Will enable the organization to improve the value as well as the cost efficiency of the IT services.
• Will help in increasing the productivity of the business by providing higher level of IT services.
• Improved expectation management.
• ITSM will also reduce the business risks up to certain extent.
• As ITSM ensures easy understanding of the business needs, thus resulting in improved IT services (Kindström, Kowalkowski & Sandberg, 2013).

Therefore, it can be said that the organizations which intends to enhance the quality of services by adding innovative business value could opt for ISTM.

The case study relates to an external IT service provider in terms of IT infrastructure as well application set up. This India based organization has multiple customers across the globe. The job of this Indian company is to handle the IT infra as well as ADM of their client companies ("Case study: Why you need ISO/IEC 20000 to ensure success?", 2018). Each of their clients is assigned with a designated team working remotely from India. The following points address the requirements of this IT service provider:

• Some of their clients insisted that the teams which were catering services to them should be ISO/IEC 20000 certified. Although most of the designated teams were ISO/IEC certified but each of teams carries out different practices.
• The main requirement of this external IT service provider was to incorporate a centralized SMS practice. Each of the designated teams should abide by these central practices. Although the teams were allowed to make certain modifications to these central practices based on their client’s requirements but there will be organizational central practice.
• Better alignment between the customers, delivery teams and the support teams.
• The next issue relates to the support team. The support teams are generally considered as cost centered rather than profit centered. Therefore, there lies a lack of involvement from their end. The culture of creating operational level agreements and binding those bonds were missing. Thus, this was one of the major issues that needed to be worked upon.
• Enhancement of customer confidence- Even after meeting all SLA’s they still felt that the quality of deliveries was not up to the mark. This was due to the poor business relationships.
• Creating a well-structured service management system and in the process getting the ISO/IEC certification.

The following are the two major engagement challenges related to the case study:

• Lack of commitment from the management- Considering the dynamic nature of such IT businesses their business priorities keep on changing. In such cases, it was very difficult to keep the top management’s concentration on the ongoing process. The other hurdle that was encountered was the structural change that the organization went halfway through the engagement ("Case study: Why you need ISO/IEC 20000 to ensure success?", 2018). The role of the chief delivery officer was appointed to a new person such changes have increased the risk of the ongoing engagement.
• Low understanding of the support team- The involvement of the support team was very little, thus creating a state of doubt and confusion.

The Iterative approach will be relevant considering the case of Excel IT. The ISO journey is a long process and the outcomes comes out over a period of time. It is often found that the employees of the organization or the top management tend to lose interest from the process. In such cases, it becomes difficult to carry out the further proceedings. Iterative approach, will ensure delivery of certain benefits of the ongoing process after every couple of months, which in turn ensures the concerned organization do not lose interest from the ongoing ISO journey and at the same time the subsequent iterative processes will be carried out.

The following are the some of the key benefits of the ISO/IEC 20000 certification:

• ISO certifications can improve the customer satisfaction reports. In the engagement described in the case study after ISO/IEC 20000 certification the response rate of the customers increased by 6% and the CSAT level improved by 9% approximately. Gaining customer satisfaction is one of the essential aspects to excel in business (Cots, Casadesús & Marimon, 2016).
• Reduction of the potential risks that the organization might have to go through. The risks might be related to operational, regulatory, legal or security of the organization (Cortina et al., 2016). ISO/IEC 20000 certification can reduce such potential risks by regularly monitoring or reviewing the ITSM performance.
• The process of ISO/IEC 20000 certification could also increase understanding level of the support teams. Thus, adding more value to the business.

Excel IT provides IT services to their number of clients across Australia. The main objective of the company is to fulfill all the requirements of each of its clients by providing quality services in terms of security as well as service delivery. The Excel IT mainly provides cloud services to their clients as well. In order to emerge as a market-leader Excel IT wished to demonstrate their clients with the highest possible standards of technological processes. An ISO/IEC 20000 certification would enable the company to demonstrate these services to their new clients in order to gain the trust of their customers (Willcocks, 2013). In the process, the certification will provide the clients with a vivid vision of how the Excel IT aims to deliver the services, the processes and the approaches involved. This would also help the company to operate in a well-organized manner. The ISO/IEC 20000 certification could brand the Excel It as one of the most efficient IT companies existing in the market. The certification would provide the Excel IT business with ample number of benefits- the automation of each of the business proceedings such as more number of management meetings which will be scheduled within the CRM, improved  internal communication, better alignment of the support team with the delivery service team (Jäntti et al., 2013). As per the recent reports, it is observed that only 8% of the IT companies in Australia have deployed ISO/IEC 20000 certification successfully (Renault, Cortina & Barafort, 2015). The number being small, acquiring an ISO/IEC 20000 certification will enable the Excel IT to widely expand its brand position the Australian market. In the process, this will also increase the business scope of the concerned company.

Challenges Related to ISO/IEC 20000 Certification

Conclusion

In conclusion it can be said that achieving an ISO/IEC 20000 certification is a long run process. An IT company which intends to acquire this certification has to undergo a long process of business development. Although the companies might encounter number of challenges in the process of such as employees might deviate from the priorities as the certification being a process involving long time period, the support stuffs might not add value to the business activities but the once the ISO 20000 certification is achieve it will provide the company with a wide scope for its business.

In case of the Excel IT, firstly it is required to identify the service scope. Excel IT being an IT service provider it is highly recommended that the company should aim to acquire this certification based of the requirements of all of its clients. The ISO 20000 certification process being a long journey the processes should be carried out in number of steps. An iterative approach is recommended in case of Excel IT. The stakeholders of the company must be made aware of the ISO certification thus giving them a chance to decide whether the standard will be good for the company. Apart from this, it is highly recommended that the top management must ensure that the employees do not lose their interest from the process of acquiring the ISO certification. Regular meetings and seminars should be conducted. The support team must be made aware of their responsibilities in this process of acquiring the certification.

References

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Case study: Why you need ISO/IEC 20000 to ensure success?. (2018). YouTube. Retrieved 26 March 2018, from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iyJLsV64s2k&feature=youtu.be

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