Service Evaluation Approaches and their Comparison with the use of ITIL

Matthew Fazo

BIS 461 Information Systems/Business Strategies

Abstract

There are several approaches for evaluating service level management in respect to Information Technology (IT). Each approach has their own processes but they are all put into place to achieve the same goal, to achieve a balance between the needs and expectations of their customers and the organizations IT systems and processes. In this paper you will see an overview of several different approaches and how each approach evaluates the necessary information.

There are a variety of ways to evaluate service processes, the newest process of evaluation by using the Information Technology Infrastructure Library method. This method focuses on aligning Information Technology services with the needs of the organization. The Information Technology Infrastructure Library method, also known as ITILv3 and ITIL 2011 edition, began as a process called ISO/IEC 20000 in 2005. ISO/IEC 20000 was the first international standard for IT service management, it was developed in 2005 to promote the adoption of an integrated process approach to effectively deliver services to meet the business and customer requirements. ISO/IEC 20000 was comprised of ten different categories:

Scope

Terms and definitions

Planning and implementing service management

Requirements for a management system

Planning and implementing new or changed services

Service delivery processes

Relationship processing

Control processes

Resolution processing

Release processes

The change that occurred when the ITIL edition was developed was that it was not organization specific. ITIL describes and analyzes procedures, tasks, and standards, allowing the organization to establish a baseline that it can then use to plan, implement, and measure business processes.

At the center of ITIL is, the ITIL Service Strategy and Service Design. Service Strategy focuses on helping organizations improve and develop their Information Technology over a long period. As for Service Design, this provides guidance on the designing of Information Technology services, processes, and other aspects of service management in the IT departments. ITIL encompasses six major categories of management issues:

Service level management

Availability management

Capacity management

IT service continuity

Information security management

Supplier management

Each level plays and integral part in the ITIL processes.

The goal for Service Level Management or SLM is to maintain and improve on service quality through a constant cycle of agreeing, monitoring, reporting and improving the current levels of service. It is focused on the business and maintaining the alignment between the business and IT. SLM involves the constant cycle of monitoring and reporting on the quality of IT on a regular basis in order to maintain an alignment between IT and the business processes.

Availability management includes the following elements:

Serviceability where a service is provided by a thirds party organization, the expected availability of a certain component

Reliability the time for which a component can be expected to perform under specified conditions without failing

Recoverability the time it should take to restore a component back to its operational state after a failure has occurred

Maintainability the ease of which a component can be maintained and controlled

Resilience the ability for a component to withstand a failure

Security the ability of components to hold off security breach attempts

The key activities of this element are determining the availability requirements of a system, compiling plans for new implementations, and monitoring said availability.

With all major projects following the proper steps is key to their success. Following these steps should result in proper ITIL Service Level Management:

1. Gather Data. Identify a SLM manager and form a team to run the implementation.

2. Build a Plan. Be sure to communicate with the organization about the processes.

3. Execute the plan

4. Initiate the ongoing work of SLM and begin the reporting process

5. Post implementation review. Document lessons learned and identify any changes that should be made to the processes to create better cohesion in the future.

Another type of evaluation for service quality is the RATER approach that was developed based on the concept of the SERVQUAL system. The RATER approach measures processes in five categories:

Reliability

Assurance

Tangibles

Empathy

Responsiveness

The RATER model is a very simple model useful for exploring and assessing customers service experiences and is widely used in delivery organizations. It is believed that this model efficient in helping an organization organize their efforts in bridging the gap between perceived and expected service. By using this model you will measure, manage, and minimize five different categories of such gaps. Gap 1 is the distance between what customers expect and what managers think that they expect. The RATER approach uses different surveys in order to retrieve information to try and bridge this gap. Gap 2 is between management perception and the actual specification of the customer experience. Managers need to monitor and analyze whether or not the organization is providing the level of service that they believe is needed to satisfy the customer. Gap 3 is from the experience specification to the delivery of the experience. Managers have to monitor the customers experience that their organization currently offers in order to make sure that it lives up to its specifications. Gap 4 is the gap between the delivery of the customer experience and what is communicated to customers. More often than not an organization will exaggerate on the services provided to customers or talk about the best-case scenarios rather than the likely case. This raises customer expectations and harming a customers perceptions when such expectations are not met by the organization. Gap 5 is the gap between a customers perception of the experience and the customers expectation of the service. The expectations of customers are shaped by word of mouth, past experiences, personal needs, and information past to them from the organization. In order to know and understand what the perceptions of the customers are the organization will need to conduct routine transactional surveys.

There are two basic strategies for evaluating services, a goal-centered view and a system-resource view. With the goal-centered view, first you must determine the task objectives of the system or the units using the system, and then develop criteria to assess how well these objectives are being obtained. Another way to assess in a goal-centered manor would be to compare actual costs and benefits versus planned costs and benefits. In the system-resource view an assessment of the standards for good processes needs to occur. By monitoring these processes an organization can understand what the customers needs and wants are as well as if the technology being used is being used correctly and in a manor that effectively works with the business processes that the organization follows. This strategy also takes into account that systems that are in use are fulfilling other needs besides the official objectives that are in place, which is important information when analyzing a system.

With all of these strategies, the main goal is to find cohesion between IT business processes and the needs and expectations of a customer. These evaluation processes are used to try and improve the processes that an organization uses in order to meet the needs and wants of their customers. The ITIL practices are the most in depth strategy for obtaining these goals, which in the long run will give the organization that best quality and most information to base their future decisions off of.

Citations

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