ITIL V3 Foundation or ITIL 2011 - Service Strategy
This articles talks about one of the core publications of ITIL - Service Strategy. Please read below to know more about it.
Introduction
As explained in my previous article about ITIL V3 Foundation or ITIL 2011, there are five core publications of ITIL. You can know about each by clicking the article below.
ITIL V3 Foundation or ITIL 2011
This article explains the first publication of ITIL - Service Strategy. Let's look at this concept in detail.
The word strategy means the detailed, well discussed and well consensed business plan. Service Strategy here refers to the detailed and well planned approach towards achieving business goals by integrating them with the IT services provided by Infrastructure services in an organization.
It decides on a strategy to add value to the services promised to the customers along with the core agreed services promised at the time of agreement with the customer or client. It identifies, determines and assesses the customer requirements and comes up with a strategy to deliver the required services by developing creative ideas and execute the same. This is done by an IT organization delivering services. It aims at acting in a strategic manner.
There are five stages of ITIL Service Strategy. They are as follows:
1. IT Services Strategic Management
2. Portfolio Management
3. Financial Management
4. Demand Management and
5. Business Relationship Management
Let's look into each of the above stage in detail.IT Services Strategic Management
It assesses the service providers' catalog of services being offered, their ability of providing services and the competitors in the market to develop a strategy to offer the IT services and values to the customers based on the requirement. After developing the strategy, it drives the strategic plan and makes sure it's implemented and executed.
The owner of this process is known as Service Strategy Manager. He is responsible for assessment of the strategic services, defining the strategic goals and develop strategic plan to achieve the same and the implementation and execution of the plan. Apart from these, he also looks at the KPIs (Key Performance Indicators) for successful implementation and execution of the plan.Portfolio Management
In this process, portfolio manager ensures that the service providers are able to provide the required services which can meet the business needs of the customer. There are a lot of providers in the market but not every provider can offer what exactly is required. Portfolio management aims at the selection of the provider who the right mix of offerings that can meet the business needs at some level of investment.
If the process requires a change based on the analysis of the portfolio management, it offers service change and the impact of the change on existing services. It also determines the assets or resources required to perform the change.
Once it determines the need to bring a change in the existing services, it submits the Change Proposal to Change Management team. When their proposal is approved, it starts developing the change design.
After performing the above two activities, it keeps reviewing the portfolio management to ensure they get the required services from the providers based on service strategy.Financial Management
It aims at the budget and cost requirement of the provider. It's goal is to ensure the allocation and optimization of resources to meet the customer's business needs with IT Budget of the organization.
It does the planning and analysis of the service cost and the benefit from the services. It issues bills or invoices of the delivery of services to the customer. Demand Management
It works with Capacity Management to ensure that the providers have enough capacity to meet the required demand of the customer.
The demand manager is responsible to assess the capacity of the provider to offer required services. He uses the Pattern of Business Activity (PBA) as a demand management tool to determine the demand for a specific service. Apparently, PBA anticipates the service demand.
In a nutshell, the demand manager is responsible for the capacity management of the provider and also the anticipation of service demand to meet the customer's business requirements.Business Relationship Management
It aims at building and maintaining healthy relationship with the customers. It identifies the requirements of the valued customers and makes sure that the exact services are developed to meet the customer needs.
The Business Relationship Manager maintains relationship with the customers, understand the business requirements of the customers and develop strategic plan to achieve the business goals. Apart from these, he also ensures customer satisfaction, handles and monitors customer complaints and feedback both positive and negative and contributes to the best customer experience. He works with Service level managers to meet the SLA.
He conducts customer surveys to identify the strengths and development areas of the services and derives KPIs from the results to ensure the enhanced customer satisfaction which in turn pertains to customer retention.Conclusion
This is the Service Strategy process of ITIL which is practised by a lot of both private and public sectors to ensure the smooth functioning of business by acquiring the aligned IT services.
