Developing the Business Case for ITIL®

Strategic Views

Every issue of Evergreen Strategies explores key challenges facing IT organizations today, with common-sense approaches to addressing those challenges and transforming IT operations. This issue focuses on Evergreen Systems' new white paper about developing the 'business case' for ITIL and other IT process improvements, including identifying areas for efficiency improvements and cost savings. A number of data points are taken from current research and enterprise IT process improvement case studies that consistently document a 20-40% reduction in the effort required for ongoing IT operations, powered by the implementation of ITIL process improvements. The same research clearly links ITIL with strategic gains in customer service quality, accuracy and efficiency while reducing IT risk and easing compliance management burdens. The development of an ITIL strategy is discussed and an incremental approach, which starts with small steps but shows measurable gains quickly, is presented.

This topic is being developed by Evergreen Strategies in a number of different venues over the course of the summer, and is being discussed interactively on our blog, detailed in this issue. The white paper discusses the following:

How the market is quantifying ITIL improvements through case studies and research
What the key business drivers are for ITIL
The development of an ITIL strategy
Applying ITIL improvements to Incident, Problem, Change, Release, Configuration, Service Level and Financial Management

Survey Results

Results from surveys filled out by participants at regional ITSMF conferences have been tabulated and a white paper analysis of these surveys can be obtained at the link below. Key findings of the survey includes the following:

The top 3 business drivers for the improvement of Change Management are service quality, efficiency and cost reduction, with service quality leading at 67%.
More than 36% of respondents say that they are using ITIL best practices to re-engineer an end-to-end enterprise Change Management strategy.
Almost 48% of respondents are using Change Management today to plan and execute release management.
More than 58% of respondents define Change Management as a single, enterprise-wide IT Change Management and policy system.

Upcoming Events

Join us at the national itSMF conference in Salt Lake City in September -- Contact us for a 25% discount on attending the conference and join us Monday night, September 18, from 7 to 9PM for a very special event hosted by Evergreen Systems and our business partners.

Tools

Change Management Manual -- This detailed manual is a 'how to' guide to implementing change management in the organization and includes sections on the definition, scope and processes of change management and all of the workflow tasks, including:

Initiating the Change
Analysis and Initial Approval Phase
Development Phase
Change Approval Phase
Implementation and Documentation Phase
Change Review and Acceptance
Measuring Quality

This manual also addresses roles and responsibilities and discusses how to effectively utilize a change management board.

Weblogs

Building the Business Case for ITIL -- Vice President of Consulting Joe Koester begins a multi-part series on building the business case for the implementation of ITIL process improvements and evokes a thread of provocative discussions on if, how, when and why presenting a 'business case' and 'return on investment' is appropriate for ITIL implementation projects. Joe invites comments on models, methods and tools for calculating hard-dollar savings and measurable efficiency improvements and sparks a variety of responses, from skepticism to detailed ideas about calculating savings.

One theory presented argues that all ITIL project implementation savings are around service delivery and service support for users of IT services and makes the case for ROI based on number of incidents that impact business operations, including line of business productivity and reduced support costs. CEO Don Casson posts research and case study results that note savings in other areas, including efficiencies achieved through improved Change Management procedures and better network infrastructure management, as well as reduced growth in IT headcount concurrent with increased productivity.

Check out Evergreen's exciting blog.

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Evergreen Strategies is a periodic newsletter distributed to clients and associates of Evergreen.

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