Are You Part of the Current Trends Toward IT Service Management?

What are medium-sized and Fortune 500 businesses doing this year in terms of IT Service Management (ITSM)?

According to current IT service trends, for starters, less than a third of those interviewed (29 percent) are actively working within IT Service Management governance systems for making sure they comply with industry standards and keeping their costs down for IT improvements.

This current IT service trend, and others, is revealed in the fifth annual Consulting-Portal Inc. “IT Service Management Industry Survey.” Interviewers talked to more than 180 businesses to find out more about their plans for governance within their organization, their thoughts toward training, their applications of best practices and measurement, and how they plan to improve, among other criteria.

Another current IT service trend is that more businesses are buying and using IT service-oriented software applications to reach their goals. The survey showed that the number of businesses using hosted IT Service Management applications (i.e., cloud computing or Software as a Service) is sharply on the rise–with an increase from virtually none, to 17 percent–in just the past two years.

In fact, the survey showed that Software as a Service (SaaS) is a viable piece of the IT Service Management tool area. The tools for SaaS are helping increase adoption of a more holistic-based thought process toward delivering service. SaaS tools applied in areas like Customer Relationship Management, for example, means you can have more tailored, distinct options to meet your needs and goals.

In another current IT service trend, support at the executive level for IT Service Management is growing, at around 21 percent for organizational Presidents and CEOs. More organizations than ever have working ITSM groups (69 percent) or are setting aside resources (90 percent) for these efforts.

It’s one thing to have support for IT Service Management, but as a business, governing the way your IT Service Management practices are handled should be an area of high concern for you. Yet governance of IT Service Management remains a resource many organizations are still lacking. The survey of current IT service trends showed that organizations are not managing their practices at levels that could help keep their focus intact. Practices and systems that provide direction and quality of service must be used, not just created, and governance is the key.

The IT Service Management survey results also show a current IT service trend revealing that the space separating IT processes and organizations is shrinking, and you may want to take a closer look at service catalogs and related systems. New this year, current IT service trends show that tools like Service Catalog Management have advanced as focus areas of IT Service Management practices, along with an increased interest in how to implement service level management. This represents a shift from past practices that have typically focused on handling incidents and problem or change management.

Interestingly, more than one-third of current IT service trend respondents (37 percent) are still using a cross-company plan for continuous improvement that leaves out IT processes. If you’re one of these businesses, you need to know that connecting your plan for continuous improvement to your IT strategies is not only doable, but it can also have a big impact on your overall success.

Wherever you fall in the current IT service trends, know that you are part of a valuable, maturing industry marked by benchmarks, new tools and exciting results to come.