Information Technology Infrastructure Library (ITIL) is a de facto industry standard for IT organizations across the globe. But then major changes through ITIL take time and effort and there is every chance that key stakeholders might not go on the long march if they do not see the evidence within a short span of time.
Especially in the ITSM initiatives along with the long-term benefits, you should also showcase short-term wins and celebrate them when they happen. Below mentioned are the top 10 quick wins that you need to share with your key stakeholders about implementing ITIL.
1. Single Point of Contact (SPOC):
This cannot be confused with a single service desk for that matter. You can even have multiple service desks for different languages, geographies, locations, business units, etc.
Ensuring there is a single point of contact ensures a customer has to know only one place for contacting to resolve their queries. This is a well-established best practice that will earn your customer’s loyalty in a big way.
2. Consolidation of Multiple Databases:
This is one place where ITIL can be of immense help, where consolidating multiple physical service desks to a single point of contact enables more consistency of processes. This ITIL best practice helps in the consolidation of data for reporting and relevant analysis of a problem. This helps in the quick resolution of problems and accurate decisions for changes.
3. Proactive Problem Management:
Many IT enterprises all over the world believe in the firefighting technique for problem management. Enterprises believe if anyone is good at fire-fighting then they are good at problem management.
Today, problem management is about getting out of the front line and starting to analyze the incident data. The quick win here is to proactively prevent incidents from occurring to manage problems in an efficient way.
4. Robust Incident Management Policies:
ITIL helps in establishing robust incident management policies for the service desk staff which in turn helps them to handle situations in a consistent manner. But today, enterprises are generalizing training the staff in handling customers alone. With this approach, you can get it right for the first time and may be on a couple of occasions in handling an incident, but later on, it is likely that they are re-inventing how to handle each and every situation. And this will annoy the customer as they are not getting their issues resolved for the first time and have to return for a second or third time to get it resolved completely.
5. Documenting Change Requests:
In an IT enterprise, establishing change management is a critical aspect to get ITIL implementation right. By documenting change requests through RFCs (Request for Change) you will start to see the benefits. If you Knowing when the change happened, what was changed and who was responsible, and whether the change was successful or not will help to analyze the trends and address any out-of-control changes.
6. Involvement of Application Development Staff:
Today, ITSM is all about operations starting from Service Design to Continual Service Improvement, and within ITIL we hardly involve application development staff other than change management. Get them engaged on a regular basis to raise their awareness of ITIL implementation. Experts believe people resist change when they are excluded during key decisions or when plans are being evolved.
7. ITIL Talks “Service” Instead of “System”:
People in the IT industry think that their primary job is to make the system run irrespective of how the service is offered. For instance, your systems are fine but the services are out and this is making your customers unhappy. In another instance, if your systems are out or under immense pressure but your services are up and running, then your customers are happy. Think which of the above scenarios creates better value for an organization. The quick win here is that the IT staff now knows what is important and starts focusing on the right things which help in improved service quality.
8. The “Bottom-Up” Approach:
Every implementation goes through a “Top-Down” approach, where you deem senior executive buy-in as a crucial factor for any organizational change. But in ITIL it works best when the change is embedded first at the grass root level where the critical mass moves towards the process and not farther away.
9. Involve Everyone by Open Reporting:
In today’s service-based environment, everything is about metrics where enterprises monitor and measure the performance of services offered. This is a critical job and generates a lot of data, but where does this data go?
In the past, an average IT staffer would not get any access to business-critical information about the services offered. Hence, it is really important to communicate positive results to everyone involved to move ahead in the right direction. The quick win here is the collective effort shown by everyone to move ahead than working in an ambiguous manner.
10. Identify Early Successes:
It all boils down to how good your boss is supporting the initiative. In this case, he can be a great asset or your worst enemy. For any CXOs, it is all about identifying early successes during the overall planning process. Quick wins can be created by planning in advance to showcase the benefits which are visible to everyone; achieved within a short span of time and that are meaningful and creates better value.
