capacity management can be proactive making a major contribution to the business

There are five ‘So-called Objectives’ of IT Service Management.

These are ‘so-called objectives’ because they identify an ideal. Reality is very different.

I’ll discuss the objectives in terms of the goals to be attained, the costs in different countries and their proportions of the GDP in each, the attitudes to investment in IT in different countries, and the country culture with respect to the balance between chasing new prospects and supporting existing users.

All ITSM objectives are important, but the key objective is often forgotten. The ultimate objective is to increase revenue and profit and this is its true contribution to the business sphere.

Everybody concerned with business has to address the twin problems of increasing productivity while reducing costs. This is the ultimate goal of ITSM and it is affected by five main factors:

• increase productivity

• reduce costs

• do new things

• win competitions

• provide IT services.

The ultimate goal is common to all countries, but the emphasis on the different factors involved varies.

The big question is how to increase Revenue and Profit and there are two main strategies:

 

• Do something new creating new products or services, or expanding into new markets.

• Differentiate yourself from competitors, in order to hold a dominant position and beat their attempts to control the market.

By being effective in these two areas the company will increase productivity and reduce costs.

The important point is that IT service provision can help and support these areas.Employers’ misgivings about IT investment are in these first two areas and to answer that, we must explain how the IT service contributes to the business itself.

It is important to divide IT services into direct and indirect, as related to business results. So we should divide IT into two groups:

• IT services that have a direct influence outside the company such as on customers, clients and partner companies.

• IT services that influence only internal users within the company.

Then prepare an explanation for management of the degree of contribution that each IT service makes in order to reach the right decisions.

This brings benefit in that we can prioritize the service level of each IT service based on the importance to the business, so that then we can control the service level according to the business priority.

In this way, meaningful reports can be produced and presented to help in business decision making.

It is in this way that capacity management can be proactive and make a major contribution to the business. Capacity management done reactively and passively is inherently done badly and also makes it seem an overhead to be minimised.

Next time I’ll be looking at what considerations should be involved in effective reporting and what kind of reports should be provided..so keep following. 

 

Adam Grummitt
Distinguished Engineer and Author ‘Capacity Management – A Practitioner Guide’

http://www.itgovernance.co.uk/products/3077

A selection of more white papers are available for free download http://www.metron-athene.com/_downloads/index.html