IT service management and ITIL have been closely linked for 25 years. Sometime in the mid-1990s, ITIL, inspired by KPMG, entered the IT landscape as the holy grail for IT departments. ITIL has since become a household name, although the term has taken on a more 'practical' meaning over the years. Since 2019, we have been using version 4 of the framework, which now consists of 34 (!) management practices.
After 25 years of experience in building and optimizing IT departments and service providers, IT Service Management is taking on a new meaning for us. In our opinion, the focus should be less on setting up and running processes and much more on end-user satisfaction. We believe the term IT Service Management should be renamed IT Self-Service Automation. Businesses and users are no longer interested in all those bureaucratic processes and want to be able to quickly devise, set up, and launch 'services' themselves. The tooling that goes with this must, of course, also enable Self Services with a smile and integrate very easily and intuitively with other software and services.
A big strike against IT Service Management
With the arrival of ITIL 4, the concept behind Service Management has become four-dimensional. With 34 management practices, we are now waiting for ITIL 5, in which we will undoubtedly find new practices based on new developments that will then be incorporated into the matrix of the IT landscape. It will undoubtedly be another big celebration for the creators, trainers, certificate collectors, and window sill decorators. But let's be honest, will business and users really benefit that much? We are big advocates of breaking the status quo and measuring IT, just like all service providers in other industries, on the basis of business and IT satisfaction. And that means that the IT department must be able to quickly deliver high-quality services that contribute to business goals and higher user productivity.
Hello IT (Self) Service Automation
That is why we would like to rename the field of IT Service Management to IT (Self) Service Automation. Automated service processes that enable people to build services quickly and in a user-friendly manner in a familiar environment. The field focuses entirely on functionality to enable IT to make a greater contribution to business and users. It also provides for the establishment of self-service for users, so that service processes can be set up and purchased in an automated manner.
Time for better tooling
This means we need to move away from time-consuming, modularly built, and expensive software for ITSM processes. Instead, we need to move toward intuitive self-service applications that integrate and automate very closely and easily. Toward tools that encompass the process of integrating, connecting, automating, and directing. And let's be honest, that quickly brings us to an environment we already work in every day: Microsoft365.
This allows users to submit requests from the familiar Teams environment. And the IT department can provide services from the familiar SharePoint environment. With Power Automate, we can automate tasks and create amazing reports. Completely automatically, of course.
And thanks to the Microsoft ECO system, we can integrate with other applications much more easily and cheaply than with existing ITSM systems. The 'connectors' are already there.
Would you like to contribute your ideas about the future of ITSM?
Perhaps we think too easily. Perhaps over the years we have learned to make things too difficult. Who can say? 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 play an important role in the IT profession, we would love to hear your thoughts. Whether you are a professor of ICT, chair of an IT trade association, journalist, CIO, or architect at a complex organization. We would very much like to sit down with a number of "change makers" to think about the role of IT service providers. We want to take a leading role in this platform and produce publications. Would you like to join us? Let us know!
