IT Service Management: Bridge the Gap Between ITIL & Business Value

If you are headed down the road to IT Service Management (ITSM), then you are probably working with the IT Infrastructure Library, or ITIL. Since its origin almost three decades ago, ITIL has evolved from a focus on service delivery and support to encompass the entire services lifecycle and has become the de facto standard for IT Service Management.

ITIL failing in promise to deliver business value

As ITIL’s scope has grown, so has its following. ITIL’s broad adoption is being driven in large part by its promise to “align IT with the needs of the business.”

On its website, ITIL purports to do this through six capabilities including supporting business outcomes, and enabling business change managing risk in line with business needs. However, even as many ITIL initiatives are benefiting IT organizations, they rarely deliver value the business really cares about.

This is because most organizations apply ITIL with a technology-centric, “inside-out” approach to service management, rather than a customer-centric or “outside-in” approach that focuses on business needs and outcomes.

To achieve this perspective, IT must first be able to relate to the business in terms it understands.

TBM bridges the gap between ITIL and business value

An effective way to make this connection is through the use of Technology Business Management (TBM). TBM provides the missing link required to integrate IT services with the needs of the business, maximize business value, and quantify that contribution to the business.

This is achieved through a decision-making framework that relies on cost visibility and cost transparency to empower meaningful conversations between IT and business stakeholders. It enables them to “speak the same language” in determining the cost and quality tradeoffs required to optimize run-the-business spending and change-the-business investments.

When combined with ITSM and ITIL, TBM provides a practical, applied approach for maximizing the business value received from every dollar invested in a services portfolio.