BSM Views

Has ITIL become a commodity? The concept seems to have penetrated most IT departments, and has possibly reached critical mass in North America. There large numbers of practitioners exercising their craft and, at times, they seems to be tripping over each other for business. So supply seems high, this likely just means that adoption is going very well, and is most organizations are jumping on board. However, many of those organizations now want instant ITIL gratification, and are looking to adopt the success of others. Thinking about the Technology Adoption Cycle, it would seem that many companies talking ITIL these days are in the Late Majority Followers stage, trying to catch up with the rest of the pack.

In addition, there are now models on the market that enable this organizations adopt successful existing processes. As long at the organizations buy into the existing process, the model claim to take the ITIL implementation from multiple months of white boarding to mere weeks of practical configuration.

The observations are somewhat anecdotal, but if the ITIL practitioner supply is high, models are now in the market, and companies are looking for instant gratification, ITIL may now be a commodity.

Not long ago I came across a sexy little CI Viewer that I want to share. The company, Blue Line Graphics of Houston Texas, has one product in production, the CMDB Analyzer, and another in development. The CMDB Analyzer on first look, seems to be a well designed, adaptable front end for the Atrium CMDB. The integration was straight forward, and accomplished in minutes. The CMDB Analyzer comes with necessary features like launch in context feature and data export.

Blue Lines Graphics CMDB Analyser.

Blue Line Graphics’s other product, The CMDB Workshop, is still in development, but looks destined to increase capability with new functional like data model creation.

Psychologically, consumers derive value a item from the price they pay. Otherwise, who would buy $450 designer jeans? Recently, I listened to a Stanford talk where Christine Benninger, President of the Silicon Valley Humane Society, has dramatically and positively transformed the organization. One of the first major changes made was to increase the animal adoption fees from a paltry $45 to over $100 with cats and dogs being valued equally. This change increased the perceived value of the animals and had the desired effect of dramatically reducing the returns by 90% .

This got me thinking about IT and how perceived value matters in IT. As IT continues its evolution from the obscure back office to the strategic limelight, its customer service orientation becomes critical. There are two sides to customer service, the actual service delivered, and the perception of IT in customer’s mind (brand image). The service delivered can be improved via process and tools, but to directly effect perception, minds must be altered.

One straight forward method could be to use fake charge backs. Institute displayed prices for the services offered by IT, but do not actually charge the customer on the back end.  By making customers aware of the value of the service being offered, it helps instill the idea that tangible value is being received.  When Mary accesses self service for a password reset, she understands there is an associated value/cost of $25. “Wow! that is like 5 Starbucks Lattes”, she says.  Value is reinforced, and it might even help reduce the request activity of that special group of high maintenance users.

Beyond the customer perception, tracking charge backs , without the financial follow through, will have the benefit of adding a financial dimension to the service management reports, an important step in migrating IT from cost center to profit center.

Now, I do not know if this has been tried somewhere, or if it would have the desired effect, but is something to think about for IT organizations working to improve their brand.

Change is of often difficult, and for many, ITIL adoption has represented one of the largest IT department shifts in the past few years. In this short paper, Six Guiding Principles to Changing Behavior and Speeding the Adoption of BSM and ITIL, some good strategies are outlined.