ICT solutions provider and service management specialists Quintica have noted increasing demand from customers to extend their ITSM projects and capabilities to include and cover business process management (BPM) and business service management (BSM) practices and methods.
Today Quintica works with its customers to assist in encompassing all aspects of people, process and technology around the effective delivery of projects and services, via its Q-Journey approach.
Working with customers across multiple industries, the company implements and defines service portfolio solutions that integrate the use of technology at the business level, effectively defining how IT services support and enable business services.
“The divide between IT and business is constantly changing. Technology and business no longer live in ecosystems of their own; IT is now such a necessity that it too is being managed as an important and quantified component of the business function. This means that IT is continually becoming more pervasive in organisations,” states Clinton Bruigom, service management consultant at Quintica.
“It is as a result of this that we are seeing ITSM, a means to manage the efficiency and effectiveness and overall quality of service provider services, being extended into the business and adapted into BPM or BSM solutions,” he adds.
Traditionally ITSM ensures that a service taxonomy is tiered into a structure that allows for SLA’s and support teams to be defined at an appropriate level. This helps ensure the effective management and fulfilment of all IT related requests.
Working with its customers on the above, it is here that Quintica then also defines relevant best practice management processes to manage the Service Catalogue, as well as develops key design and operational processes such as SLM, incident, problem, configuration and change management.
“We recently completed a project where we were asked to assist a customer in the communications industry in developing a business services catalogue and request portal. Following our proprietary Q-Journey and best practice approach, we used proven ITSM technologies and coupled this with Quintica’s services.
“We were able to consolidate all in-scope business services and requests across multiple operating companies and countries, into a single, centralised web-enabled portal, with clearly defined request models that allow for clear and concise service provision,” adds Bruigom.
Bruigom adds that the application of ITSM principles to a business problem worked seamlessly for this customer, with particular benefits being extrapolated around the ability to track and monitor business request usage across a wide range of business processes and services.
The new Management Information System (MIS) enables the customer to better report on patterns of business activity, and make business decisions based on the analysis of this data, highlighting both successes and failures.
“Furthermore through the use of automated service level management practices, there was a massive increase in customer satisfaction and a reduction in the operational overhead required to manage these requests.
By the very virtue and nature of a consolidated solution and tool being used the need for training has also been dramatically reduced.
“What we have proven, and are increasingly seeing, is that IT and business are no longer as far removed as they were in the past. What this will ultimately result in, is the convergence between the two where the definition and focus of technology becomes less important and where solutions get built around the business value they are able to provide,” ends Bruigom.