Importance Of ITSM At HSC: Service Strategy, Design, And Certification

Introduction to HSC and its business profile

Question:

Discuss the importance of ITSM at HSC and explains the functions of IT services in managing the process effectively at HSC.
 

Ho Chi Minh Securities Corporation (HSC) is professional securities brokerage and equity firm, located in Vietnam. It is a leading company with award-winning professionals. The company delivers complete financial service to institutional and private clients and provide investment advice supported with thorough research. It has maintained a long-term partnership with its clients and is able to connect business to investment effectively for them.

The report discusses the importance of ITSM at HSC and explains the functions of IT services in managing the process effectively at HSC. It also examines the service strategy of the company and advises the company on the benefits of IT services. Further, the service design process is identified at HSC and recommendation has been given regarding continuation of using the same service design or some changes are required. The company wants to take a certification, in this regard the benefits and drawbacks are discussed and lastly the summary of the report is given in the conclusion

The business profile of the company is such that it cannot run without IT support. Almost all the business critical services are controlled by the IT department. As HSC is one of the biggest trading companies in Vietnam and has plans to grow and expand in new regions and provide more new and innovative service, it demands an established ITSM. Moreover, the company has future plans to get into derivative market which require more vigorous and strong platform of trading to make the work run smoothly (Wulf 2015).

The major work division of the company is into two broad areas, business analysis and operations. In Business analysis, the company tries to convert the requirement of the business into technology solutions. On the other hand, in operations, the company has o ensure a production environment which runs smoothly and focuses on main areas like, continuity, capacity, availability and security. All such activities cannot run vibrantly and productively without ITSM (Shrestha et al.2013) 

Service strategy of a company determines what types of services should be offered to which customers. HSC service strategy revolves around the company’s prioritised services. They have adopted the service strategy understanding the incident and problems and then fulfilling the request through service desk and making the required changes. All this is possible through Service Asset and Configuration Management that deals with individual element, their characteristics and relationships. The implementation and competent presences of Service asset and Configuration Management has made the service lifecycle possible (Nabais et al. 2014).

The ITIL service strategy phase will guide the company to design, develop and implement the IT service management. It will help the company to train their new employees and to make them understand how the service strategies are developed to give a competitive advantage in the market. In the phase, the first step is to identify the market and then where to target and lastly how to make their presence better than the competitors (Steinberg 2013)

Significance of ITSM in managing business critical services at HSC

Mr. Diep, the IT Head, should be highly benefitted by ITIL service strategy as it will help the company to manage the demand effectively through proper estimation and forecasting. ITIL helps in establishing long lasting and healthy relationship between the customer and service provider through which the company can handle their business relationship management process effectively. Lastly, even the financial management aspect of service strategy can be handled with ease through ITIL service strategy process (Mora et al. 2015).

The service design refers to the conceptual design that explains several activities o service such as, planning, organizing, infrastructure, communication and material elements of service so that the quality and interaction between the customer and service provider improves. The service design of HSC started with incident, problem, request, fulfilment, service desk, change, and SACM and release management. The company has a strong internal IT environment where they had a strong understanding of business operations and priorities but want further progression to be more competitive. The company needs more robust service design such as of ITIL (Mesquida et al. 2012).

The ITIL service design process includes the designing of new services that is given in the diagram below:

 

Figure 1: Service Design

(Source: Disterer 2012)

Design Coordination: It coordinates the service design activities, resources and process and ensures consistency and effectiveness of service management information system, IT services, architectures, information and metrics, processes and technology.

Service Catalogue Management: It ensures the catalogue managed properly with current updates and vital information.

Service level management: It ensures that underpinning contracts and operational level agreements are appropriate.

Risk management: It identify threats to assets and control risk

Capacity management: It ensures the services are delivered in a cost effective and timely manner.

Availability management: it ensures that the processes, IT infrastructure, tools, roles etc are appropriate for meeting the required target.

IT service continuity management: It ensures the continuity of the service without disruption

Information security management: It ensures the integrity, confidentiality and availability of organization information, IT services and data.

Compliance management: It ensures that IT services and processes comply with company’s policies and legal requirements.

Architecture management: It defines the blueprint for developing the future technological landscape

Supplier management: It ensures that the contracts with suppliers are correctly made in compliance with the needs of the business.

Out of the above ITOL service design process, the most important for HSC are risk management process and capacity management process. It is because the company deals with security market where risk plays a major role in the return of investment (Cots 2014).

The certification of  ISO/IEC 20000 benefits the company in establishing integrated service management system, better alignment of business and IT services, better reputation in the industry and market, removal of natural barriers that organization faces due to lack of proper definition of key processes and enhances vertical communication.

The certification cannot be obtained easily and is very demanding and requires plenty of resources. It is not a common certificate and that makes it more appreciable. One of the drawbacks is obtaining the certificate as it demand proper establishment and high technological set up in the company.

HSC should take the certification as it will help them developing an integrated service management system. The company is looking for expanding their services to derivative market which need more robust technological support and certification will only enhance its quality and upgrade the goodwill and reputation of the company (Carroll 2015). 

Conclusion and recommendation

HSC need more strong IT set up to meet its future requirements and to fulfil its growth objectives. In this regard, the adoption of ITIL service design process is the most appropriate strategy as it will help the company to grow and develop further. The company has future plans towards development and that needs appropriate strategy to overcome the hurdles. Hence, the company should take the certification of ISO/IEC 20000 to upgrade its quality and to have more compact and established system. It will help the company to excel in present financial service provided by it and in future derivative markets. Further the risk management and capacity management of the strategy design process should be given more importance as it has a major influence on its business. If the company is able to manage the risk if securities and provide prompt service then soon it will climb the trajectory of growth. 

References

Carroll, S.B., 2015. An investigation of the association between information technology service management and employee engagement (Doctoral dissertation, CAPELLA UNIVERSITY).

Cots, S., Casadesús, M. and Marimon, F., 2014. Benefits of ISO 20000 IT service management certification. Information Systems and e-Business Management, pp.1-18.

Disterer, G., 2012. Why Firms Seek ISO 20000 Certification-a Study of ISO 20000 Adoption. In ECIS (p. 31).

Mesquida, A.L., Mas, A., Amengual, E. and Calvo-Manzano, J.A., 2012. IT Service Management Process Improvement based on ISO/IEC 15504: A systematic review. Information and Software Technology, 54(3), pp.239-247.

Mora, M., Gomez, J., O'Connor, R., Raisinghani, M. and Gelman, O., 2015. An extensive review of IT service design in seven international ITSM processes frameworks: Part II. International Journal of Information Technologies and Systems Approach, 8(1), pp.69-90.

Nabais, J., Pinto, A.M., Cruz, A. and Cardoso, J., 2014, June. Interface design for IT service management practice. In Information Systems and Technologies (CISTI), 2014 9th Iberian Conference on (pp. 1-7). IEEE.

Shrestha, A., Cater-Steel, A., Tan, W.G., Toleman, M. and Rout, T., 2013. A tool for IT service management process assessment for process improvement. In Product-Focused Software Process Improvement (pp. 330-333). Springer Berlin Heidelberg.

Steinberg, R.A., 2013. Measuring ITSM: Measuring, Reporting, and Modeling the IT Service Management Metrics that Matter Most to IT Senior Executives. Trafford Publishing.

Wulf, J., Winkler, T.J. and Brenner, W., 2015. Measuring IT Service Management Capability. Smart Enterprise Engineering.

Yazici, A., Mishra, A. and Kontogiorgis, P., 2015. IT Service Management (ITSM) Education and Research: Global View. INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF ENGINEERING EDUCATION, 31(4), pp.1071-1080.