ITIL Offers Range of Benefits, Including Measurement Tools

If you want to improve your services, you may need to make positive changes and enhancements to the way your IT infrastructure runs. You may be asking yourself, “Sounds good, but how do I tackle that?”

The answer may be found in the process of first recording the work that’s being done, and then measuring it against the Information Technology Infrastructure Library (ITIL), a set of best practices for IT management and improvement.

Among the many benefits of the ITIL is that it is a method for taking complex issues like service delivery and IT processes and giving you a framework in which to analyze and interpret real results. If you’re the type who is always striving for the next goal, ITIL can help target your efforts.

Developed by the U.K.’s Office of Government Commerce, the ITIL system can be learned from a series of manual–but you as a manager have the freedom to adapt the principles to see your individual goals become a reality.

The principles have been applied and studied for more than 15 years, and you can think of the practices as a jumping-off point for your IT system providers. Many IT professionals have given their comments and suggestions over time, making the ITIL an even stronger resource.

Other experts talk about how ITIL has helped clear the path for ongoing improvements,  but this benefit is only possible when your staff members record the successes and challenges of your IT system as they are happening. Then, you can examine this information against the principles of the ITIL to see where your strengths are and what your next steps might be.

Deciding to learn and utilize the ITIL practices is no small thing. The process takes time, and can mean your key organizational leaders must seek ITIL certification. Throughout the process, you may also realize the core ways your service and technology departments function need an overhaul.

However, within the challenge of implementing ITIL practices also lies the glory, as well as many additional benefits. Ultimately, your business will be threading the customer;s requests and needs straight into the center of your IT processes. The changes can occur at such a deep organizational level that coworkers across departments react to each other and work together differently.

As you adopt ITIL standards, you may notice that your teammates have to exit their territories and interact in new ones. You may also notice that you have to make these transformations without negatively impacting customer service while your current IT processes are still in place.

The root advantage of ITIL isn’t, however, found in a complicated textbook or a weeklong seminar. It lies in transforming the way your organization thinks so that service is the foundation. You’ll find your reports, job duties and the roles people in the organization play take on a new focus, pointing right toward how the customer interacts with you. A focus on technology takes a back seat to service, and the outcome can be reduced costs and more efficient automation.

Another notable feature of ITIL is that you can adopt it in separate groups of changes, so that you can see some rapid gains in efficiency and service outcomes. Seeing fast returns on your efforts to implement ITIL’s practices makes it enjoyable, and probably even fun–aside from the other tangible benefits of the discipline.