End-to-end delivery - the role of service management

The service delivery challenge is to change decision-making patterns, within an organisation’s broader IT framework, from what are often hierarchical to those that are much more ‘process driven’. It should be viewed as a solution to the issue, providing end-to-end management that extends beyond the ‘project’ phase and into the ongoing operational phase of the business cycle. Thus ‘service management’ is able to provide a blueprint for the implementation and subsequent support for the provision of IT services at both the ‘back end’ and increasingly ‘front of house’ as well.

This has a potential downside, though, and on occasion CEOs may conclude that service management provides the blueprint for operational IT within the organisation. In other words, it descends from its rightful place as a strategic partner to a tactical one where it, and its practitioners, are regarded as the solution to problems of a day-to-day nature, such as, “Hey, I can’t turn my screen on”.

At its best, the service management team will pivot quickly to both take advantage of new opportunities and also to head off new threats and, to use the current terminology, ‘disruptions’. These later issues may be due to the advent of emerging technologies that generate strong initial enthusiasm, along with a ‘change for change’s sake’ mentality where the best and worst of the new are jostling for attention in the same organisation.

This can also relate to losses in market share when we think of that as being not so much ‘accounts’ or business entities, but rather the people behind them to whom the service management fraternity owes a duty of care in the provision of timely solutions and sound strategic thinking. And it is entirely likely - perhaps more than likely - that these customers and key relationships will be internal.

In this scenario, service management is sometimes seen as being sandwiched between project management at one end and change management at the other, but its role and potential is significantly short-changed by this view. So while the service managers tend to be responsible for the service desk, this neither represents the entire scope of their work nor its most important component - simply its most visible role, hence that which lends itself to definition.

More important is the role of service management in the provision of each link of the chain, starting with the routine provision of problem solving at the provision-of-service end of the spectrum, right through to infrastructure and to what may be fundamentally non-IT business services. It is this last sector which is seeing dramatic growth in many organisations as they come to appreciate that intelligent people, trained in the provision of service management, are well placed to deliver solutions within the ‘portfolio’ regime. These same capable individuals are, of course, often at the forefront of change management as well.

Alan Hollensen is the CEO and Marketing Manager of itSMF Australia, a chapter of an international forum for service industry professionals. itSMFA operates in every state and territory and enjoys representation on the International Board. Alan has more than 20 years of NFP management experience across several membership organisations.