Service Matters! ITSM & IT Management: Better Governance or the Right Operating model: A Solution or not a solution?

Posted by Aswin Kumar

Recently we audited the manufacturing design application infrastructure of a major European company that had been affected by a series of major Incidents that had seriously impacted the business.

"I am ITIL compliant !!" uttered the Service Desk Manager from a vendor as soon as I started one of the audit interviews. He showed me number of process documents and walked me through some good looking service management tools. It eventually turned out that every vendor working for the client organization had their own version of ITIL compliance, which they would defend to the last.

Apart from the usual audit experiences, I noted a consistent message from the client operations staff.
Guess what? They were unhappy with the increased outsourcing of all the critical infrastructure support to third party vendors. Further, they were almost sure that the root cause of all the major incidents was with the vendor’s staff and were trying to prove the belief that outsourcing had actually led to more losses than gains.

The story does not ends here. Now listen to the vendor’s side of the story...
The vendor clarified that they had proactively suggested a new support model for the critical application infrastructure, but the client was not ready to spend money on the premium support costs. Logically, the vendor outsourced the work to low cost destinations and arguably in the process subject matter expertise and knowledge management become a challenge.

So what was missing here? Why was the perceived value of outsourcing not realized?

Here are some of observations on the key issues that have affected the success of outsourcing:

Infrastructure outsourcing was done without a formal IT service view in place. Investments were mostly done based on the type and size of the physical infrastructure rather than business usage
The culture and values that are difficult to put on paper and quantified
The absence of a Vendor service performance framework with only a minimum level of reporting
Service Management Governance and process ownership rests with Infrastructure Operations leading to inherent issues arising from a scenario when the definition and adherence rests within the same organization
Many cutting edge infrastructure tools in place but most of them utilized for sustaining a reactive support model
Every vendor signed up to a separate set of Service Management processes (such as Incident Management) with the client resulting into ‘mature’ silos of process excellence
Too many vendors controlling separate portions of the Infrastructure

How common are these issues across global outsourcing organizations?

Does the solution lie in better planning and Governance? Or does it lie in setting the right operating model for the co-existence of the client organization & the outsourcing vendors?

Well..I do not have one answer now but I will continue to investigate as well as call upon bright ITSM consultants to brainstorm on the possible solutions…