The Service Desk as prescribed by ITIL comes into existence only when something goes wrong in an organization. Things can go wrong in various ways such as software expires, a laptop becomes non-functional, or a server does not respond properly. When any one of the mentioned situations or any other occurs, it leads to a lot of chaos, confusion, and inefficiency within the organization.
ITIL implementation helps in this damage control with its Service Desk. According to Gartner’s report, ITIL implementation has been proven to be beneficial in terms of bringing improved client satisfaction, enhanced communications between IT folks and staff members, and reducing costs of services offered by an enterprise. A Forrester survey results showed that more than 80% of organizations that have integrated ITIL within their organizations have experienced enhanced organizational services, with improved productivity.
However, things may go wrong while trying to integrate ITIL within your organization. Here are a few common mistakes committed by enterprises while implementing ITIL.
Common Mistakes Made During ITIL Implementation
-
Lack of Vision:
Before integrating ITIL within your existing systems, it is critical that you understand how and where the best practices need to be implemented. It is not necessary that the entire organizational structure and practices need to change. You need to first decide what you want to achieve and depending on that, decide your implementation. Once you have a vision, ensure your workforce is also made aware of it, so that they know why the change has been introduced.
-
Involving High Level Management:
Depending on approval from the executive level for ITIL implementation may delay the process. This is especially true when the project requires considerable amount of time and resources. Executives having no knowledge about ITIL will have little idea about it and why you want to implement the ITIL principles. Once you decide to implement ITIL within your organization, it is important that you have an executive sponsor. This will reduce your dependencies on the leadership level.
-
Forming Business Case:
A formal business case is not required when you are about to introduce ITIL into your organization. It unnecessarily lengthens the process. Rather, ensure that stakeholders are aware of the following key things:
- ITIL implementation will incur a certain amount of costs. Calculate an approximation amount of investment, time and resources that will be needed and make the stakeholders aware of the same.
- You should also make the scope of the ITIL process clear to all stakeholders. They should have a clear idea regarding the areas the best practices aim to address.
-
Forming an Initial Baseline:
Many make the mistake of investing time on creating an initial baseline. It is not a hard and fast rule to form a baseline when starting the process of ITIL implementation. All you need to do is set specific targets which you want to achieve through ITIL implementation and have usable baseline methods in place, such as change readiness assessment and maturity assessment.
-
Forming New Team:
A key misconception about ITIL is that a new team needs to be in place in order to integrate ITIL within your organization’s processes. It can be done away with by identifying resources from within the organization that can take care of the implementation process. Furthermore, you don’t necessarily have to find people having ITIL knowledge. Rather, identify employees who are smart, willing to learn, adapt, and grow. While forming the team, keep a few roles in mind so that you can identify appropriate people to fit in those roles such as executive sponsor, steering committee members, stakeholders, project manager, process manager, process owner, process team members, and process advisor.
-
Forming Communications and Process Strategy:
A formal communication and process strategy is not required to start with the implementation process. A few kick off calls and mailers will serve the purpose of communicating about what the best practices are intending to achieve. If you want to grab the attention of senior management, hire a marketing communications specialist and create eye-catching mailers and posters. Similarly, deciding on a common process strategy is a waste of time. Every team will come up with their own processes and the integration can be done later.
-
Unmanaged Scope:
Make sure you cut your coat according to the cloth. Decide on the scope which ITIL will address in your organization after a thorough assessment of your capabilities. Do not be over-ambitious and try to change the entire management of your organization. Make sure the steering committee you appoint approves of any scope change after a careful investigation of the processes
-
Ignoring Staff’s Resistance:
ITIL implementation will bring about a lot of changes within your organization in terms of work culture. The staff may not be very happy with the drastic changes as it is an additional burden for them to adapt to the new culture. If you ignore the growing resistance within staff, you will never get the best out of them. To gain staff’s cooperation, take sessions making them understand why ITIL is important for the organization, what benefits it will entail, and how will staff themselves get benefited as a part of the whole thing. You should also make them aware of your plans of integrating ITIL with the existing processes and seek everyone’s cooperation for the same.
-
Integrating ITIL Everywhere:
You may want to integrate ITIL into each and every process within your organization. However, you may not need to do so. Perhaps, some processes are already running successfully, and may not need any kind of external interference. Hence, it is always advisable to conduct a thorough analysis of the existing processes, identify the key strengths, pain points and then implement ITIL to address the problem areas.
-
Using ITIL as a Prescription:
Following ITIL as is may result in making a lot of additional and unnecessary changes within your organization. This is time consuming and may become a burden instead of easing out things. Hence, experts suggest that ITIL can be tweaked and adjusted to suit the existing framework of the concerned organization.
Although the ITIL best practices have proven records of enhancing customer satisfaction, things may go wrong in case the implementation process is not carried out with efficiency. It is crucial to remember to, avoid the common mistakes mentioned in this article.
Related Posts:
1. 6 Essentials for a Successful ITIL® Implementation
2. How Cultural Dynamics Play an Important Role in ITIL Implementation
3. ITIL Implementation Roadmap: 6 Tips to Adopt ITIL Effectively
