Find the IT Service Management SolutionThat’s Right for Your BusinessA Buyer’s Guide for Executives

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Executive SummaryToday, IT is relied upon to support a broad spectrum of users and business services in an enterprise. As these organizations look to fulfill their charter, IT service management (ITSM) solution can either be an invaluable ally or a persistent liability. This guide examines the unprecedented demands IT organizations must contend with and details the specific capabilities organizations should demand to address their needs, giving IT decision makers the insight they need to decide on the right ITSM solution.

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Changing user expectations

Bring your own device (BYOD) trends and the consumerization of IT have irrevocably changed the IT landscape. Today’s IT consumers users are also participants in the broader digital world, relying upon sophisticated online services for financial transactions, social engagement, news and technical support. Users have grown accustomed to digital services accessed from any location, on any device, and at any time, including via mobile browsers or apps. Those expectations don’t just disappear once it’s time to get to work. IT teams thus need to deliver the same levels of convenience, collaboration and flexibility—or leave users frustrated and disappointed. They must deliver consumer friendly services that are well defined, easy to understand and automated.

Changing delivery modelsThe days of an enterprise IT environment that is solely internally sourced are long gone. Today, businesses rely on IT services furnished through an increasingly broad set of delivery models and providers. In effect, IT organizations have moved from being service providers to service brokers, managing an increasingly complex ecosystem of hosting and colocation services, outsourcing firms, cloud providers, managed service providers and so on. These changes necessitate a new level of transparency in the dynamics of financing IT. Cloud offerings such as Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) and Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS) in particular have changed the lens through which the value and success of IT services are measured.

Changing business demands

More than ever, physical and virtual IT infrastructures underpin the most critical business services delivered to users and consumers. Ultimately, business agility and performance are integrally bound to IT agility and performance. IT teams have moved beyond being responsible for managing the IT “plumbing,” to enabling innovation and supporting corporate strategies. These changing realities have raised the bar for IT, creating new demands for IT efficiency, productivity and responsiveness.

An IT organization’s success in adapting to these changes is integrally intertwined with their IT service management (ITSM) capabilities. With an effective ITSM framework, organizations can realize these core objectives:

• Increase efficiency of service operations• Improve service support and user experience• Enhance business transparency• Mitigate software audit risk• Leverage delivery models that improve service levels and reduce cost

To achieve these objectives, organizations need the right ITSM solution, one that is optimally aligned with the objectives of both the business and IT operations. This buyer’s guide offers an in-depth look at the ITSM solution capabilities enterprise IT teams need today, providing the insights executives need to find the right ITSM solution for their businesses. This guide looks in detail at today’s challenges, as well as the associated goals and solution requirements needed to contend with these challenges.

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IntroductionFor enterprise IT organizations, and the service providers they work with, the technical and business landscape has shifted substantially, becoming more complex at an accelerated pace. The following are a few of the fundamental shifts changing IT today:

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Criteria: #1 Increase Operational EfficiencyToday’s IT organizations are incurring service costs that are perceived as too high, while at the same time not appearing to deliver adequate returns on their investments. Expensive resources are spending too much time trying to resolve complex technical issues. Business consumers are frustrated because they have no control: they can’t expedite help desk response, and they can’t resolve issues themselves. Requesting services is difficult and not remotely intuitive.

IT analysts are frustrated as well. They can’t respond to users as quickly and effectively as they would like, and issue resolution is complex, labor intensive, error prone and time consuming. Ill-defined processes for completing work result in delays for the delivery of new services that are urgently needed by the business. Ultimately, these conditions hurt the organization substantially, resulting in the disruption of critical business services, lost user productivity, inferior customer service and diminished business performance.

Capabilities RequiredTo mitigate the challenges outlined, IT organizations need ITSM solutions that enable them to realize several key objectives:

Improve Staff EfficiencyBoosting staff productivity and efficiency is a vital mandate. The following are several keys to making this happen:

Deliver self-service capabilities To improve IT staff efficiency, it is vital to equip business consumers with the capabilities they need to not only get answers and request services or help, but to solve problems themselves. This can offload significant time and effort from support analysts, while providing greater user satisfaction.

Improve collaboration The more information support analysts can share, and the more efficiently they can do so, the more productive the entire team will be. Organizations need to foster collaboration among team members, through access to historical tickets, knowledge-base content and automation of such routine, time-consuming tasks as approvals, request routing and escalation.

Best practices To optimize team efficiency and ensure service obligations are met, IT organizations need to leverage best practices like ITIL® as they integrate and automate request, incident, problem and change management processes. These best practices should also form the basis of defining the routes that work should take and establish indicators of progress and automated escalations.

Leverage automation IT support teams need to leverage automation, particularly in such areas as ticket creation, service delivery and fulfillment and resolution of infrastructure events. Doing so, they will become more efficient and thus be better able to allocate their time and efforts to initiatives in alignment with business objectives. Further, issue prioritization should be automated based on well-defined criteria for addressing not only business impact but business consumer perceptions.

Harness integration of service and infrastructure management Organizations need to break down the silos that have often existed between service management and infrastructure management and do more than just open tickets every time an operational alert is received. Given that technology is so integral to everything the business delivers, IT organizations need to aggregate outage data and integrate this information with existing systems in order to rapidly determine the root cause of business service disruptions.

Improve Service LevelsFor IT to be seen as an enabler of technology and business innovation rather than a necessary but inefficient support department, it’s essential for IT teams to improve the actual and perceived service levels provided to both users and the business. To achieve these objectives, IT organizations need to:

Minimize and prevent service disruption In the event of outages and performance issues, IT analysts need fast and accurate root cause analysis (RCA) capabilities. Further, by leveraging automated, proactive prevention measures and enabling IT analysts to understand and mitigate the effects of infrastructure events, organizations will be better equipped to predict and address issues, before they have a wider business impact.

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Criteria #1: Increase Operational Efficiency

Gain a unified view of business services and IT infrastructure To effectively prioritize investments and efforts, it’s critical that IT organizations can quickly and definitively map IT infrastructure to associated business services. Further, staff needs to be able to understand how issues and requests map to business priorities.

Establish service level visibility Service managers need to have visibility into the levels of performance and availability users are experiencing, and to analyze these metrics in relation to relevant service level agreements (SLAs) and business impact. Further, this visibility needs to apply to all important business and IT services, no matter where they are hosted.

Improve Change Management Unless team members have the change management capabilities they need, they run the persistent risk of implementing alterations in the infrastructure that have unintended consequences and ultimately impact the business. Managers and team members need to guard against so-called rogue configuration changes and ensure that only acceptable changes are made. This requires that administrators have the visibility and controls needed to guard against conflicting changes to configuration items that support a given service, and that can ultimately create issues and outages. Further, teams need effective approval routing capabilities that inhibit erroneous changes, while streamlining the effort needed to execute the modifications required. Finally, this should also include the ability to help staff predict the potential impact of a given alteration, so they can explore different options and avoid making changes that result in downtime.

OutcomesBy leveraging the capabilities above, organizations can realize the following results:

Improve service responsiveness Through increased operational efficiency, service teams can respond to users and resolve issues more quickly. Consequently, organizations can reduce customer complaints and improve user satisfaction and productivity.

Cut costs Organizations can realize substantial cost reductions by leveraging proactive issue prevention, automation and standardization. Further, by reducing the cost of ongoing “keeping the lights on” activities, organizations can free up resources for higher value, more strategic efforts.

Reduce risk By leveraging capabilities for more proactive service management, organizations can significantly reduce the risk of performance issues and downtime—and the business risk associated with these events.

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Criteria #1: Increase Operational Efficiency

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Criteria #2: Improve Service Support and User Experience

ChallengesAs previously mentioned, today’s enterprise IT users are also consumers, and have very different expectations than they did a few years ago. Users are accustomed to, and demand immediate, convenient, 24x7 access to services, and they want to interact via the method they prefer, even if that means using a phone or personal tablet to check status or make an inquiry. However, too often, current processes and technologies fail to meet these expectations. Instead, users encounter rigid processes, limited options, lengthy phone queues and more.

Further, time consuming incident and request management workflows mean experienced, and expensive, staff members spend a lot of time on repetitive, rudimentary tasks. In addition, many IT organizations see very high turnover rates with their first-level support staff, making it harder than ever to get support up to speed and productive, creating further delays in servicing business consumers.

Capabilities RequiredTo contend with the challenges outlined above, IT teams need to be able to leverage capabilities that enable business consumers to help themselves, so they can address issues without opening a ticket. This includes providing them with self-service capabilities, access via mobile phones and tablets, robust knowledge bases and the ability to collaborate and communicate with other business users. Further, these capabilities need to be delivered through an online portal that provides a convenient, powerful interface, one that offers a consistent presentation and seamless access to all business and IT services. The interface should be modern, easy to use and simple to navigate.

OutcomesWhen equipped with the capabilities outlined above, organizations can realize a number of benefits:

• By improving the user experience, IT can begin to enjoy the accolades of increased customer satisfaction.

• When business consumers have the self-service capabilities they need to help themselves, they can address issues and get up and running more quickly, becoming more productive.

• IT support staff spend less time on repetitive tasks and low-level inquiries, so they can spend more time on higher-value, more strategic activities. IT can thus become more responsive and flexible to evolving business needs.

Criteria: #3 Improve Business Transparency

ChallengesWhile it may have been stated often, the fact remains: business and IT alignment are vital. However, without the right ITSM tool, gaining the transparency required to align IT with the business is difficult, if not impossible.

Here are a few of the ways this lack of capabilities can manifest itself:

IT spends too much time in fire-fighting mode, so routinely misses critical responsibilities and obligations associated with managing the performance of key business services. Consequently, IT gets penalized for breaching SLAs with the business, which can reduce the amount of departmental chargebacks received and hurt the overall perception of service quality.

• IT organizations have a difficult time demonstrating the value of services they provide, which can increase the likelihood of budget cuts.

• IT management has a difficult time effectively governing vendors; it is hard to evaluate their performance and ultimately hold them accountable for the service levels they are supposed to provide.

• IT managers have little or no visibility into the cost or value of services being consumed by different business groups and users.

Capabilities RequiredTo gain the business transparency needed to address these challenges, IT organizations need the following capabilities:

• Timely insights into performance against agreed-upon SLAs, so service managers can follow trends and determine how best to address potential issues before they result in SLA breaches

• Data collection and reporting that enable the measurement of service consumption in financial terms, enabling fact-based discussions about budgets and investments

• Dashboards and reports that demonstrate the quality of services being provided and received

• Insights that enable executives to proactively manage customer agreements and vendor contracts

• Contextual reporting and alerting that helps support staff focus, resources and efforts on those initiatives that will ultimately have the biggest impact on the customer relationship

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OutcomesOnce IT organizations gain the ITSM capabilities outlined above, they’re much better equipped to optimize their efforts for business requirements. As a result, organizations can:

Reduce downstream service outages By harnessing timely insights into service levels, service managers can more effectively spot troubling issues and address them before they have an impact on users.

More consistently meet internal commitments and reduce penalties By boosting operational efficiency and gaining proactive insights, service delivery teams are much better equipped to spot troubling trends, and address them, before an issue leads to an SLA breach.

Better manage demands and optimize strategic investments Armed with the business context surrounding IT initiatives, investments and tasks, service team leaders can better prioritize among conflicting or competing demands and ultimately focus more resources on the most strategic endeavors.

Avoid vendor disputes and ensure vendors deliver what is expected By leveraging objective information on vendor performance, service managers can much more effectively govern vendor relationships, make more intelligent decisions in terms of vendor retention and ultimately get better results from these resources.

Improve perceptions and customer satisfaction By elevating the service experience, support organizations can enjoy significant improvements in customer satisfaction. Ultimately, across the business, the perception of IT will change. The organization will go from being seen as a reactive group to a proactive partner.

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Criteria #3: Improve Business Transparency

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Over purchasing Administrative staff loses track of which software licenses are being used and which aren’t, and ultimately the business spends way more than is needed on software.

Audit penalties and “true-ups” Lacking the necessary visibility, software audits represent time consuming and costly efforts, pulling people and investments from more strategic endeavors. If an audit uncovers overuse of software licenses, an organization may be subject to costly penalties and have to make additional license purchases—expenses that aren’t planned for in the IT budget, which means cuts have to be made somewhere else.

Lack of control While a lack of visibility historically presented challenges, those challenges are exacerbated in today’s IT environments. Virtualization, BYOD and cloud computing can further reduce visibility into asset usage and allocations, which leads to further loss of control and increased business risk.

Criteria #4: Mitigate Software Audit Risk

ChallengesWhen it comes to software audits, it can be a tremendous benefit to have a comprehensive inventory of software titles in use and to have this information correlated with the vendor contracts governing license availability. Unfortunately, most organizations have multiple sources of data, overlapping contracts and no effective way to evaluate consumption and compliance. This lack of oversight can pose a range of risks:

Capabilities RequiredTo eliminate the penalties outlined, decision makers should look for ITSM solutions that address the following demands:

• Service managers need to effectively track, aggregate and pool software licenses, so unused licenses can be optimally redistributed.

• When making decisions concerning the procurement of new software, decision makers need to be able to leverage relevant and current information around existing software usage.

• Managers need timely, intuitive visibility into their organization’s compliance position and relationships among various license entitlements.

• Executives need automated compliance management and reporting, data collection and reconciliation capabilities.

• On an ongoing basis, leadership needs analytical capabilities that make it fast and efficient to discover potential compliance risks.

• Managers need to be able to model and track rights owned and monitor various contract events, such as automatic renewal dates.

• Leaders need the visibility required to track, report on and reconcile software usage in virtualized, cloud and BYOD environments.

OutcomesThrough improved visibility and control over software licenses, IT organizations can realize the following benefits:

• Control license costs and reduce overspending.

• Minimize operational efforts associated with audit research.

• Reduce the business and financial risk of noncompliance.

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Criteria #4: Mitigate Software Audit Risk

Impeding change Many legacy platforms require laborious coding and customization in order to address new capabilities or technologies. As a result, they can significantly inhibit an organization’s ability to leverage innovations and deliver new services and enhancements. Further, this custom code creates a host of issues when organizations look to upgrade to a new version of the ITSM platform.

Exacting high costs Over time, organizations make significant investments in tool customization and integration, but those expenses are just the beginning. These sunk costs leave executives loathe to move to a new product, while saddling organizations with old technologies that create high infrastructure and staffing expenses.

Frustrating users Laboring to support a tool with antiquated interfaces and technologies, service delivery teams simply can’t hope to match the levels of intuitiveness, ease and flexibility they and their users have grown accustomed to as consumers—and therefore can’t meet user expectations. Users grow increasingly frustrated by being forced to interact with IT through disparate, inconvenient channels.

Criteria: #5 Reduce Total Cost of Ownership for Service Operations

ChallengesITSM tools can play a significant role in the ultimate efficiency and cost associated with the entire service operation. The following are just a few of the examples of how legacy ITSM products may hurt organizations:

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Capabilities RequiredTo address these challenges, IT organizations need to migrate to an ITSM platform that helps them:

Eliminate custom code Today, organizations must be able to integrate ITSM platforms and adapt them to their specific requirements, without having to incur the cost, effort and complexity of custom coding.

Deliver intuitive self-service For today’s users, it’s vital that IT organizations provide self-service capabilities that emulate the intuitive interfaces and convenience of common consumer applications.

Deliver a unified interface for all services As opposed to making users work with different systems and interfaces for different tasks, organizations need to deliver a unified interface through which all requests and services can be accessed.

OutcomesWith the capabilities outlined above, IT organizations can realize a number of significant benefits:

Reduce operational costs By leveraging a platform that eliminates custom coding efforts, organizations can reduce costs associated with migration and upgrades—and substantially reduce the time, effort and distraction of supporting the service desk infrastructure.

Lower training costs By eliminating the need to document and support custom code, IT organizations can reduce staff training costs. Further, by delivering intuitive self-service capabilities through a unified interface, businesses can substantially reduce employee training costs and efforts.

Optimize utilization A common, consistent and intuitive interface provides an easier and more cost effective way for users to work with IT—and enables them to work the way they prefer. This can help foster improved adoption among users, which helps ensure organizations maximize the return on their solution investments.

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Criteria #5: Reduce Total Cost of Ownership for Service Operations

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ConclusionNow more than ever, business performance is reliant upon IT performance—and that’s why an organization’s ITSM capabilities are increasingly important. With the right ITSM solution, IT organizations can enable improved service levels and user productivity, streamlined operations, maximized resource utilization and optimized support for the realization of critical business objectives.

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Appendix: Purchasing Criteria Worksheet

EVALUATING CRITERIA WEIGHTING VENDOR 1 VENDOR 2 VENDOR 3

Self-service

User experience

Workflow and automation

Built-in content and best practices

Incident and problem management

Service catalog and request management

Service cost and financial management

Service level management

Change management

Asset lifecycle management

Software asset management

Ad-hoc and pre-packaged, advanced analytics and dashboards

Support automation

Integration capabilities

Collaboration and knowledge sharing

Mobile accessibility and performance

Deployment model (true SaaS, vendor hosted instance, or on premise)

Multi-tenancy support

Administrative overhead (including skill sets required)

24x7 availability

As they look for new ITSM solutions, decision makers can use the following worksheet to track the performance of vendors against the most critical evaluation criteria.

Copyright © 2015 CA. All rights reserved. All trademarks, trade names, service marks and logos referenced herein belong to their respective companies. ITIL is a registered trademark of AXELOS Ltd. This document is for your informational purposes only. CA assumes no responsibility for the accuracy or completeness of the information. To the extent permitted by applicable law, CA provides this document “as is” without warranty of any kind, including, without limitation, any implied warranties of merchantability, fitness for a particular purpose, or noninfringement. In no event will CA be liable for any loss or damage, direct or indirect, from the use of this document, including, without limitation, lost profits, business interruption, goodwill, or lost data, even if CA is expressly advised in advance of the possibility of such damages.

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About CA ITSM Solutions CA Technologies offers ITSM solutions that can help boost service quality and resource utilization across physical, virtual and cloud environments. Delivered via SaaS, on-premises or hosted and managed service models, these solutions enable IT teams to implement repeatable, measurable processes for defining, transitioning, delivering and supporting services and assets throughout their lifecycles. With these solutions, organizations can:

• Run service operations more efficiently and improve business productivity and customer satisfaction

• Improve the end-user experience with a highly scalable, reliable system that is aligned with the expectations of today’s users

• Reduce cost and optimize service delivery through automation, workflow and operational integration

• Reduce risk with improved visibility and robust capabilities for managing change, configuration, software compliance and SLAs

With these comprehensive management capabilities, IT teams can improve the quality of their services, prevent interruptions and lower costs—all of which helps to ensure that services stay aligned with business requirements.

For more information, please visit ca.com/ITSM