Ashford Global IT
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Business Process Management and ITIL®
When the economy gets rough, many businesses react by cutting budgets and even personnel. For the last year, a standard corporate mantra has been “We need to do more with less”; i.e., produce more, cost less. The Information Technology Infrastructure Library (ITIL®) provides an overall mechanism to understand, document, and strategically select the processes and services which are best suited to improve the overall business as it exists today and help prepare the business for the fluidity of challenges to come.
Each company has their own cost reduction model which will usually include supplier efficiencies and resource efficiencies; this model may also include strategies for automating processes in order to deliver services with fewer manual steps. Each company will have different strategies for reducing costs; the set of possible responses are almost infinite. Any change within the structure of the company, whether it be personnel, service, or equipment will impact the overall processes of a specific department within the company and possibly even the company as a whole. That is to say, one change may cascade into many changes when all the dependencies are taken into account. The table below identifies some of the types of process changes associated with cost reduction strategies. This does not mean that costs should not be reduced; it means that when cutting costs, the effects need to be evaluated against the associated cost savings.
Cost Reduction Question | Typical Process Changes to be Implemented |
Where can I get my products or services cheaper? | Cheaper product may have higher failure rate, or have longer lead times, shipping problems. |
Can I get my products or services locally, faster, more reliably? | Use of Approved Suppliers may add compliance requirements, change to process workflow. |
Can I outsource this service effectively? | Changing from internal supplier to external supplier may mean additional time constraints, change to the process workflow for coordination and/or approvals. |
Can I reduce my equipment needs without hurting my production? | Production process change; previous automated processes may need manual steps, or vice versa. |
Can I streamline the overall process? | Overall process change. |
According to a recent whitepaper, the most important process obstacles to overcome are:
- Understanding process and organization issues (20%)
- Internal policies (14%)
- Lack of training of internal staff (13%)
- Excessive scope creep (12%)
- Budget overrun (8%)
Business process improvement strategies incorporate evaluation of expected Return On Investment (ROI) which include the following:
- Automating or accelerating highly manual processes (26%)
- Increasing visibility into processes (21%)
- Improving operational excellence (20%)
- Improving control over processes (20%)
- Simplifying cumbersome processes (18%)
- Promoting better business and IT alignment (14%)
- Improving delivery of new products or services (13%)
- Establishing greater governance and compliance (13%)
- Improving predictability of processes (10%)
- Improving customer intimacy or service (10%)
- Better supporting mergers and acquisitions (7%)
What, then, are the major stumbling blocks of these efforts? Transitioning traditional support to process-centric support requires organizational change as well as process change; these changes need time and focus. The focus moves from “Just get the job done” to “How can we better (faster and more efficiently) serve our clients?” This also means changing metrics from “How many calls/incidents/problems did I answer today?” to “How many calls/incidents/problems were answered to the satisfaction of the customer?” Organizations with strong process management tend to be more proactive and have sponsors who prioritize and fund process improvement initiatives. These initiatives span across organizational lines and emphasize end-to-end process improvements rather than a process silo, touching only within a single group or department.
But business strategy initiatives are addressed using many names, divergent methodologies, and a variety of tools such as BPEL, BPR, Six Sigma, and Business Process Management. All of these are complementary to ITIL. ITIL additionally helps identify the baselines and metrics best used for assuring that the changed services can continue to serve the business of the future.
Contact us to discuss how we can help you assess and improve your process ROI.
