Digitization: a changing world
ITIL has become the standard for setting up and optimizing service organizations. Until about 10 years ago, ITIL was mainly used within IT departments. Now, non-IT departments found value in ITIL because it contains many interesting elements for optimizing processes. IT Service Management (ITSM) is evolving into Business/Enterprise Service Management (BSM/ESM). BSM/ESM is currently successfully used , within Energy Distribution Network Operators to capture and process data from digital meters and Public Transport companies to better respond to customer needs and so on. BSM/ESM ensures that processes run smoothly, are reliably and provide Service Transparency to the organization and customers.
Now, there is ITIL 4. ITIL 4 focuses on the customer, to create value for the customer and therefore increase customer satisfaction. ITIL 4 not only offers a wide range of tools to increase customer satisfaction, but it also helps you to set up the internal organization more efficiently and hence cheaper.
IT is the "enabler of the business". Therefore ITIL 4 elaborates on the possibilities of modern technology, as there exist Cloud computing for example. Cloud computing ensures that companies can quickly scale up when customer demand increases. Or they can wind down when demand decreases, without being tied to long-term investments. The smart gathering of customer needs by analysing "likes" and "views" via big data techniques is a valuable source of information in our digital world.
ITIL 4 is referred to as Agile ITIL. Agile encompasses many best practices Frameworks such as Scrum, Lean and Kanban and DevOPS. Scrum and DevOPS are used to make fast, good software and Lean and Kanban have been used since decades to perfect the production of cars.
Lean: create added value for the customer and removing "waste from processes " and hence reduce costs. Take for example the organizational silos, where each department works on its own. Silos prevent efficiency and hence increase redundant work. This could be considered organizational “waste”.
Scrum: work in short delivery cycles, whereby a usable product is delivered in each cycle, albeit with a limited scope. Each subsequent cycle, the scope slightly expands, in close collaboration with the customer and because there is continuous contact with the customer, the result meets the expectations better.