IT PROCESSES MOSTLY UNALIGNED WITH SERVICE LEVEL MANAGEMENT DOCUMENTATION, SAY 57 PER CENT OF ORGANISATIONS

Edinburgh, 1st April, 2010 –
Axios Systems, the world’s leading provider of IT Service Management (ITSM) solutions, including the assyst software, today reveals the results of a survey conducted during its second in a series of webcasts around Service Catalogue that shows 47 per cent of organisations surveyed considered their services to be poor.

During the second webcast, ‘Designing and Defining Your Services’, participants were asked a series of questions around their services and offerings. When asked about their organisation’s Service Level Management documentation and how it reflects the IT processes they provide, 57 per cent said they were ‘mostly unaligned’ or not aligned at all. Only 3 per cent believed their documentation fully aligned with their processes. This is concerning as it is vital that the documentation be fully aligned with the processes to create a solid foundation for a successful Service Catalogue implementation and to ensure the processes help IT support the business as efficiently and effectively as possible.

This issue can start to be addressed by carrying out a Service Catalogue workshop, whereby all relevant parties, both in IT and the business as a whole, have a collective discussion to decide on what services and service offerings should be included in the Service Catalogue.

Considering the systems and services in place at attendee organisations, 47 per cent described their organisations as having good systems, but poor services and only 29 per cent felt they had both good systems and good services. Most organisations therefore feel they have the systems in place but are potentially not using them as effectively as possible. In addition the services organisations are offering may not be sufficiently defined which is holding them back from optimising their service provision to the organisation.

Both this webcast and the previous one, ‘Building a Business Case for Service Catalogue’, emphasised the importance of getting customer buy-in to the project in order to ensure its success. Attendees were asked what they were doing to get their customers involved in their Service Catalogue implementations. Of those surveyed, 44 per cent were having regular review meetings and scoping workshops with service owners while other tasks highlighted included staff training and reporting.

While the Service Catalogue is seen as a means of keeping customers up-to-date with the services and offerings an organisation’s IT department provides, many organisations have also started, or intend to start using it, for non-IT departments. Of those surveyed, 29 per cent plan to use the Catalogue for facilities management and 26 per cent for administration services. Using the Service Catalogue as a tool for non-IT departments provides a great platform for showcasing the services they offer and automating processes, which not only reduces manual errors, but can also create significant cost efficiencies.

Ailsa Symeonides, Sales and Marketing Director at Axios Systems says, “It is clear from the survey results that many organisations still require a lot of support with their Service Catalogues and Service Level Management. Axios hopes that our webcasts and other resources, such as our workshops, can help organisations to improve and become more efficient.”

For more information on the Service Catalogue webcast series, please click here.