Quintica, local service management and technology integration specialists, along with its strategic customers recently hosted an ITSM consulting event, showcasing key projects currently underway as well as how the company is assisting customers on their journey to transform service management into a strategic asset for their business.
Held in May at the Crystal Towers in Cape Town, the event afforded the company to highlight its expertise in implementing business service management solutions, as well as demonstrate how Quintica is currently enabling and integrating technology while considering people, process and technology as a methodology, with its customers.
“Customer perception and outcomes are not always terms that are considered when discussing service management principles and best practises,” states Clinton Bruigom, senior service management consultant at Quintica.
“The link between how service providers enable performance potential for their internal customers and the causal effect that this has on external customer perception and demand for those same Service Provider services, is not always understood.”
So what does ITSM and best practices relating to ITIL Service Strategy tell us? As per the ITIL Service Strategy publication, service management is a strategic asset because it outlines core capabilities for service providers. Here service management acts as an operating system for service assets in effectively deploying them to provide services.
According to Quintica this creates context as to how the company is turning service management into a strategic asset for its customers. The first step is to look at the specialisation of capabilities such as soft assets including: management, organisation or process capabilities in order to increase service potential and improve service to internal customers.
“Once we have achieved this we are able to give internal customers the ability to increase their performance and service quality to external customers. This enhances customer perception and value, and allows our customers to achieve their outcomes.
“This has a positive effect on demand back for those services and more importantly from a Service Provider perspective, it also decreases idle capacity which may be lying unused in their infrastructure and business,” adds Clinton.
Working with its customers, Quintica is enabling service management as a strategic asset within their client’s business environment, through a variety of means.
One such project underway at a key customer is allowing that customer to meet external customer demand and behaviour relating to the challenge of how significantly increasing growth in data and social media activity on these smartphones are driving the need for “always on” services.
In terms of this dynamic, the importance of using service management practices and principles, along with complimentary frameworks such as ITIL and eTOM are even more necessary in being able to enhance internal customer performance potential and meet these external customer demands.
“In line with this transformation project, service management is being used to converge the management of operations in different areas of the customers’ business into a common business operating model, that includes common processes, services, structures and even the alignment of technical language.
“This transformation is being embedded through the shift to service centricity, where the focus is no longer on managing the disparate and immature processes, but on developing and managing the lifecycle of how services are defined, deployed and managed,” mentions Ilze Rossouw, project service management transformation lead.
Using a collaborative approach with the customer, Quintica is actively using change activities under the banner of organisational change to drive the transformation. Aimed at supporting the customer in creating a service management capability and system as a strategic asset, this approach is based on understanding and working with change principles on an individual level.
It is important to use a change model that works for the organisational culture, as people tend to resist “being” changed or have change pushed on them. However by paying particular attention to the people side of change, and using the process transformation and system implementation as vehicles for this, a more streamlined and effective business transformation can be realised.
In essence, this means considering people, process and technology as inseparable elements of change.
“While undertaking the project, the company focused on key areas such as change leadership, creating a change network, embedding key skills and an active two way communication model to drive ownership within the customer system.
“By including those who will ultimately ‘be’ service management in the organisation in all the transformation initiatives as early as possible, they become the agents of change in their own business,” adds Judy Goodwin, project organisational change and communication manager.
“Practical and relevant examples of how service management is enabling customers are becoming more and more apparent within businesses today. In the South African market this is extremely exciting as it shows that the capability and maturity of local companies is increasing to the point where conversations such as these are now no longer theoretical or uncommon but practical, relevant and needed,” ends Clinton
“Customer perception and outcomes are not always terms that are considered when discussing service management principles and best practises,” states Clinton Bruigom, senior service management consultant at Quintica.
“The link between how service providers enable performance potential for their internal customers and the causal effect that this has on external customer perception and demand for those same Service Provider services, is not always understood.”
So what does ITSM and best practices relating to ITIL Service Strategy tell us? As per the ITIL Service Strategy publication, service management is a strategic asset because it outlines core capabilities for service providers. Here service management acts as an operating system for service assets in effectively deploying them to provide services.
According to Quintica this creates context as to how the company is turning service management into a strategic asset for its customers. The first step is to look at the specialisation of capabilities such as soft assets including: management, organisation or process capabilities in order to increase service potential and improve service to internal customers.
“Once we have achieved this we are able to give internal customers the ability to increase their performance and service quality to external customers. This enhances customer perception and value, and allows our customers to achieve their outcomes.
“This has a positive effect on demand back for those services and more importantly from a Service Provider perspective, it also decreases idle capacity which may be lying unused in their infrastructure and business,” adds Clinton.
Working with its customers, Quintica is enabling service management as a strategic asset within their client’s business environment, through a variety of means.
One such project underway at a key customer is allowing that customer to meet external customer demand and behaviour relating to the challenge of how significantly increasing growth in data and social media activity on these smartphones are driving the need for “always on” services.
In terms of this dynamic, the importance of using service management practices and principles, along with complimentary frameworks such as ITIL and eTOM are even more necessary in being able to enhance internal customer performance potential and meet these external customer demands.
“In line with this transformation project, service management is being used to converge the management of operations in different areas of the customers’ business into a common business operating model, that includes common processes, services, structures and even the alignment of technical language.
“This transformation is being embedded through the shift to service centricity, where the focus is no longer on managing the disparate and immature processes, but on developing and managing the lifecycle of how services are defined, deployed and managed,” mentions Ilze Rossouw, project service management transformation lead.
Using a collaborative approach with the customer, Quintica is actively using change activities under the banner of organisational change to drive the transformation. Aimed at supporting the customer in creating a service management capability and system as a strategic asset, this approach is based on understanding and working with change principles on an individual level.
It is important to use a change model that works for the organisational culture, as people tend to resist “being” changed or have change pushed on them. However by paying particular attention to the people side of change, and using the process transformation and system implementation as vehicles for this, a more streamlined and effective business transformation can be realised.
In essence, this means considering people, process and technology as inseparable elements of change.
“While undertaking the project, the company focused on key areas such as change leadership, creating a change network, embedding key skills and an active two way communication model to drive ownership within the customer system.
“By including those who will ultimately ‘be’ service management in the organisation in all the transformation initiatives as early as possible, they become the agents of change in their own business,” adds Judy Goodwin, project organisational change and communication manager.
“Practical and relevant examples of how service management is enabling customers are becoming more and more apparent within businesses today. In the South African market this is extremely exciting as it shows that the capability and maturity of local companies is increasing to the point where conversations such as these are now no longer theoretical or uncommon but practical, relevant and needed,” ends Clinton