IT Service management and ITIL have been closely linked for 25 years. Somewhere in the mid-1990s, ITIL, inspired by KPMG, came rolling into the IT landscape as a holy grail for the IT department. Subsequently, ITIL has become a household name, although the term has acquired a somewhat more 'practical' interpretation over the years. As of 2019, we are on version 4 of the framework, which now consists of 34 (!) management practices.
After 25 years of experience in building and optimising IT departments and service providers, IT Service Management is starting to take on a new meaning for us. In our opinion, the focus should be less on the design and implementation of processes and much more on end-user satisfaction. The term IT Service Management should therefore be renamed IT Self Service Automation as far as we are concerned. The business and users have long since given up waiting for all those bureaucratic processes and want to be able to devise, set up and implement 'services' themselves very quickly. The tooling that fits in with this must, of course, also enable Self Services with a smile and integrate very easily and intuitively with other software and services.
A bold line through IT Service Management
With the advent of ITIL 4, the idea behind Service Management has become four-dimensional. With 34 management practices, we are waiting for ITIL 5, in which we will undoubtedly find new practices based on new developments, which will then be cast in 'the matrix' of the IT landscape. It is bound to be another big party for the inventors, trainers, certificate holders and window sills. But let's be honest, are business and users so much the better for it? We are great advocates of breaking the status quo and measuring IT on business and IT satisfaction, just like all service providers in other industries. And that means the IT department must be able to quickly deliver quality services that contribute to business goals and increased user productivity.
Hello IT (Self) Service Automation
And that's why we would like to rename the profession IT Service Management to IT (Self) Service Automation. Automated service processes that enable people to quickly build services in a familiar environment in a user-friendly way. The course focuses entirely on functionality to enable IT to make a greater contribution to business and users. And it provides for setting up self-service with users, so that service processes can be set up and taken over automatically.
Time for better tooling
This means that we must move away from time-consuming, modular and expensive software for ITSM processes. And we must move towards intuitive self-service applications that integrate and automate very closely and easily. To tools that cover the process of integrating, connecting, automating and managing. And let's be honest, that quickly brings us to an environment we already work in every day: Microsoft365.
Then the user can make requests from within the familiar Teams environment. And the IT department can provide services from the familiar SharePoint environment. With power automate we can automate things and make amazing reports. Completely automatically, of course.
And the Microsoft ECO system allows us to integrate with other applications much more easily and cheaply than existing ITSM systems. The 'plugs' are simply already there.
Are you thinking about the future of ITSM?
Perhaps we think too easily. Maybe we have learned over the years to make things too difficult. Who knows? But that is precisely why we want to take the initiative to think about the future of IT Service Management with a number of prominent people. How is this profession changing, what is needed and what is the goal.
So if you hold an important role in the IT profession, we would be delighted if you would think along with us. Whether you are an ICT professor, chairman of an IT trade association, journalist or CIO or architect of a complex organisation. We would very much like to sit down with a number of 'difference makers' to think about the role of IT service provider. We want to take a leading role in this platform and produce publications. Will you join us? Let us know about it!
