Kathy Gibson reports from SMEXA 2014 – The IT services landscape has changed over the last years, and service is now arguably more important than the simple delivery of services.

Stephen Mann of ServiceNow points out that IT shouldn’t be seen as a cost, but as an investment. Along with increased business scrutiny of IT, there are increased business and customer expectations.

This goes along with increased business and IT complexity, while both camps are under pressure to reduce costs while improving service – and demonstrating business value.

There can be no surprise about the technology challenges facing IT: cloud, big data analytics, shadow IT, consumerisation, skills shortage and costs reduction,

However, Mann says the important things are really business outcomes, supply and demand, service experience, consumerisation of service, business acumen and the value of IT.

There is a huge difference between the concepts of services and service, Mann says, and there is a growing recognition about the importance of the “service experience”.

“When we look at the service delivered by IT it probably isn’t as good as it should be,” Mann says. “But it’s not the only thing that is causing pressure.”

Enterprise IT really needs to re-invent itself, he says. “We see enterprise service management as a big opportunity. But we can only sell it to the enterprise if we have a robust service model.

“Do we know what our services are, and what they are in the context of the customer?”

This needs to be complemented by the service experience, followed by service delivery, service assurance and service analytics.

“These pillars are a robust service model that can craft the future role for IT as facilitators of service management.”

In terms of IT consumerisation, Mann says this goes well beyond BYOD – but is really about societal change.

“It’s not about the device. It’s about the consumerisation of service.”

This is obvious in our personal lives, he says, and what people are starting to demand in the workplace, from their IT organisations.

Mann says that consumerisation is a big driver for service catalogue and better service delivery across the enterprise – for the implementation of enterprise service management.

In fact, the service catalogue can extend beyond IT and include other services within the organisation. “There’s no reason why these five pillars of service cannot be applied to any area of enterprise service.”

This would involve have a standard approach to service delivery, from catalogue through to measurement and analytics, Mann says.

A recent survey by KPMG and ServiceNow finds that 93% of respondents say the role of IT is changing from being an administrator of infrastructure to being the facilitator of service management.

And 90% of them feel that service automation should replace e-mail, in order to deliver a better service from internal corporate service providers.

Human resources appears to be a prime candidate for extending the enterprise service delivery model, Mann says.

A major issue driving the service delivery conversation I the fact that many outsourcing contracts are ending, and companies often feel they haven’t always delivered the value initially expected.

Organisations are now having to grapple with the management of multiple suppliers and balance inconsistencies of behaviours – and, again the enterprise service delivery platform could help them to manage this situation, Mann says.