CIS5308 Information Technology Services Proof Reading Services

CIS5308 Information Technology Services Proof Reading Services

Part–1: Introduction

A brief introduction that describes the case study report

The Dutch pharmaceutical multinational company Novo Nordisk had an in-house IT department called NNIT. While providing IT services to the external customers, they gained popularity as one of the foremost and best IT service providers of Denmark. Since this, they had to take care of the needs of their customers from various sectors, maintain a standard in their business and ensure that a certain transparency was brought to their work. They had to also bring about a change in their work culture.  They wanted to put into action a common language for all services rendered. They wanted to implement a specific portfolio. NNIT had made sure that they created a single source of their information and brought transparency. They started bringing a certain standard which simplified the entire process of presales, proposal and agreement and others. This let NNIT function more efficiently and provide services more effectively. Their tie-ups and integration with other companies let them function and expand on a larger scale. The stakeholders of their business have been integrated into NNIT to maintain high performance. This has resulted in easier delivery of services and also after service support. They have been easily allocating resources and funds, provide customer service and even reporting of the KPI. Ultimately they can easily collect data and measure the performance with efficiency. NNIT had been able to implement their service portfolio effectively.

Part–2: Importance of ITSM at NNIT

Explain why is it important for NNIT to have effective processes in place to manage IT services.

The ITSM or IT Service Management refers to the structure within which efficient and effective IT services are provided. Various guidelines, policies and procedures which are to be followed are included in this ITSM framework. The various tools required for carrying out the various IT services is given by ITSM. They also help provide metrics to measure the company performance. They also help to make blueprints of the IT services that are going to be performed (Brockwell and Davis 2012).

ITSM has the following steps:

1.Planning

2.Designing

3.Delivery of the service

4.Operation

5.Control

The advantages that ITSM provide are as follows:

1.Reduces cost and increases revenue

2.Simplifies, establishes a standard

3.Optimizes the value of the delivery system through thechain of value

4.Meets customer demands and builds a satisfactory relationship with them

5.Improves the overall productivity of the company

6.Ensures that the customers receive the best IT services

7.makes sure that quality work is provided and at the right time

8.Provides excellent services

9.Provides information of good quality as per the requirements of the business

10.Helps the service providers to adapt themselves to the requirements and also to become flexible and efficient (Galup and Dattero 2010)

The factors required for proper implementation and usage of ITSM including NNIT are as follows:

1.Training, development and awareness about everything

2.The top bosses and the management should act as leaders and help guide in the right path

3.It should be a process driven business

4.Constantly improve the quality

5.Proper implementation and selection of tools

6.Maintaining an effective communication channel with the stakeholders (Izza and Imache 2010)

An IT business can succeed only if they are manufactured in a well-defined process as the latter is essential for its success. A process performs the important function of developing a service, providing the required service and helps in delivering it. The process however needs to be properly identified, defined, standardized and documented so that they can be conveyed to the stakeholders of the business. To improve on the predictability of IT performances, a continuous process of measurement is required. The well-defined processes help in achieving the business goals. Process management is one of the most important factors of ITSM (Pollardet al. 2010).

Having a poor process has manydisadvantages:

1.They can make unforeseen and unpredictable changes

2.There might be delay in delivery of service

3.There might be barriers to work and reworks might become a regular occurrence

4.Fixing of accountability problems will become problematic

5.No linkages between activities will be found

Part–3: ITIL Processes        

Based on the case study, identify the ITIL processes in place at NNIT and report them in a table, categorized by ITIL lifecycle stages. Based on the case and your knowledge, which of the ITIL processes are of the highest priority to be implemented / improved for NNIT? Justify your selection.

The management of service is very dynamic. IT has various changes which adapt to the high level of competition, performance and also changes in the economy. All the functioning services should allow growth and a change in the business. They should facilitate the process. The ITIL Service Management uses the Service Lifecycle and also the well-defined processes to help support the transformation (Marrone and Kolbe 2010).

The life cycle stages are as follows:

1.Strategy of service

2.Design of the service

3.Transition of the service

4.Operation of the service

5.A continuous improvement in the service

All of these steps depend on the principles, procedures, roles and processes. They rely on the feedback and input that they receive from the lifecycle stages. Due to the constant checks, the Service Lifestyle makes sure that the business can adapt to the ever-changing times and climate. Service strategy starts off the lifecycle (Pereira and da Silva 2011).

a.Strategy of service

This is the very first step of the management of the life cycle. It helps to design the strategy, develop it and also to implement it properly. The following processes are a part of this step:

b)Design of the service

It helps to build a blueprint and provide service accordingly. The focus is shifted onto converting strategy into tiny sections of requirements of real business. A design in a new service is as important as an improvement and betterment in an older one. The steps involved for this stage are:

c.Transition of the service

The design is firstly developed and then a process of transition is followed. This stage makes sure that all the assets are brought under one roof and they are integrated and tested for their performance and returns. It focuses on how services and operations are performed and how the quality is controlled. This stage also helps to analyze and understand what risks might be faced during the process of implementation, finds out what the consumers demand (Neni?ková2011). The capability of technology is also shown here.

d) Service Operation

It is the responsibility of the operational team to ensure that there exists strong end-to-end practices, capable of supporting stable and responsive services. The operational team provides a continuous support system and influence strongly on the perspectives of the business regarding the services received by it. An essential part of the service operations includes Service Desk, which is directly responsible for owning and supporting incident management and placing requests regarding the fulfillment of users, which includes the user satisfaction feedbacks.  The administration teams and the business support are included in the support functions of the Service Desk. With specific regards to the IT specifications, the support system consists of the Technical Support and the Application Management teams contributing to successfully resolving major incidents, which impacts the business. The entire procedure is associated with the SLA management (Zurich 2017). It is the responsibility of the operational team to ensure robust back-to-back practices, supporting the stable and responsive services. They provide continuous support systems as well as strongly influence the progress of the services received by the business. As an important role of the Service Desk is to directly support and own the incident management, along with fulfilling the requests of the users as well as the feedbacks on the satisfactions of the users. It is also the responsibility of the Service Desk to support the administration team and the business support team. With specific respect to the IT, the support teams of Technical and Application Management have contribution towards the successfully resolving various major incidents impacting the business.

e) Continual Service Improvement

The step is responsible for evaluating the returns on the investments. These results are compared with the states that were before and after implementation. Efforts should be made towards continuous improvements of the performances and procedures.

According to the case study, it can be clearly established that the process of “Service Portfolio” holds the highest priority that needs to be improved or implemented at NNIT.

The service portfolio management is justified by the new “Governance Model” as well as the importance of achieving the objectives of the organization which has been established previously. The implementation of the management of the service portfolio was established strategically in the direction of NNIT. For instance, the Governance Committees had put forward the strategic decision of putting forward a video-based collaboration. For taking care of the various aspects of the portfolio management, separate teams were assigned. The visibility regarding the management of the service portfolio and its evolution, post the implementation is clear to NNIT. The following aspects have been discussed in the case:

1.To ensure that the resources and time is utilized judiciously and is not wasted, suitable measurements and metrics were developed

2.To ensure effective and efficient transition services are in order, suitable design packages and models of the services were required. To highlight the importance of the procedure, comprehensive testing, awareness and training were taken up.

Part – 4: Service Strategy

According to the case study, few IT service providers have a service portfolio and the difference between a service catalogue and a service portfolio is commonly not well understood. Based on the case study and your knowledge, explain the main differences between a ‘service catalogue’ and a ‘service portfolio’. What are the main factors that helped NNIT to implement a service portfolio?

It is important to define the service catalog or service portfolio or both, when setting up the “Information Technology Service Management” (ITSM) of any business organization. Although superficially, both the service catalog and the service portfolio might appear to be the same things, there exist subtle variations between them.

Service portfolio is a complete and exhaustive list of the various services, which includes the services or products, irrespective of their life cycle stages. The service portfolio includes each stage of the life cycle, such as retire, development, planning and production. Therefore, in the service portfolio, all the available service such as pipelines, the services that have been terminated and the catalog of the active services(Cronholmet al. 2011). The portfolio provides a better understanding regarding the plans and evolutions offered by the organization. Service catalog is used in association with the service portfolio, to increase the visibility of the business. The service portfolio consists of a list of the all the activities associated with the services and products offered by the organization. Service portfolio is the service management’s comprehensive framework. There are various advantages of keeping tracks of the yet to be deployed services and for maintaining the service records which have been terminated. Through the proper service portfolio management, seamless synchronization can be obtained between the key organizational goals and IT services. The evaluation of the services’ impacts on the business can be carried out precisely and in a prioritized manner. Information technology based service portfolios makes the intelligent decision making more informed, regarding the creation, initiation, retirement and creation (Wong and Karia 2010).

A service catalog consists of the list of all the services and products offered by the organization. The catalog consist of the existing applications, software and hardware offered by the organization, along with the details and other accounts as well as explanations and so on, related to the services offered. In the service catalog, details of service objectives, its duration, costing and other such information are included. Service catalog does not include planned or expired services. By logging into the service catalog, the user can select and request the required services. There exists a streamline in the user interaction and the service helpdesk. Service catalog, unlike service portfolio, is an external document which consists of range of available services produced to the customers (Schwalbe2015). Cataloging is beneficial for the organization providing the services in documented forms with activities being publicized, and delivery of the services being optimized as to how services shall be executed, costs can be reduced by ensuring the funds are being allocated optimally, the communications can also be  improved among the end users. The expectation that is related to service support is bound to be practical and the favor shall be delivered after the realization of the necessary depth for them. The enmity boosts the efficiency of the information technology, discloses the redundancy and wastages, also benefits the economies of scale. The catalogue of services were the ingredients and the subsets for those ingredients for  the vast, historical and vital view of such activities of enmities  that relating to the portfolio for information technology related services (Chaffey and White 2010).

Part–5: Service Portfolio Tool

According to the case study at the time of designing the service portfolio framework at NNIT no ITSM tools were available with the required functionalities to support the management of a service portfolio. Based on your research of available ITSM tools, provide a short list and description of three ITSM tools that could be considered for portfolio management.

The platforms or the standards on which the services of the information technology are delivered by using the IT services management (ITSM) tools (Shahsavarani and Ji 2011). This tool helps to conform to processes, budget, standard of people and functions are highly integrated. This tools helps in solving the problems, handling the escalation, manage the problems and helps in improving the business delivery.

IT service management (ITSM) are introduced to provide framework to the management and to provide the solution to the services of the information technology related to the delivery process (Gacengaet al.,2011). The delivery process of the information technology may vary from the essential ones to the advanced ones. One of the examples of the essential ones may comprise like requesting for the generation of the trouble ticket to solve an issue on the other hand the complex ones may include consulting, analysis, research, knowledge management  and others. This type of tools is used to make the quick solution to the problems and in managing the multiple tasks. These tools are widely accepted in the information technology industry and have gained the popularity in the same industry. These tools have various functions and advantages and some of which are as follows:

1.Integrated and the competent platforms are provided by the tools which helps in practicing to the teams of the information technology.

2.This tool helps in making the operation swift and quick.

3.This tool help in fixing the downtime and it makes sure that such issue does not occur again in the future.

4.This tool provided the function for services which is personalized.

The best tools available in the market place are:

1.ServiceNow: It helps in improving the agility of the business.

2.Cherwell: Focus to deliver the results which are tangible.

3.BMC Remedy: Providing the ITSM solution to the enterprise.

4.SpiceWorks:

5.Symantec:

6.SysAid: it provides assistance for the information security.

Among the above mentioned portfolio tools, a brief of the three important tools is as follows:

1.Cherwell:

Cherwell provides the flexibility to the Information Technology Service Management (ITSM). One of the unique features of the Cherwell is to provide the codeless integration which helps in connecting the client’s module with the other application. It also upgrades automatically from the IT department without diverting the resources (Feldman et al. 2014).  One of the features of the Cherwell is to provide IT assets management. It helps the information technology team in improving and tracking the problems of the actions and problems which helps in retaining the assets of the management of the organization and in up gradation. Configuration of the Cherwell could be easily changed as the same code is used by the application without being influenced by the cloud version or the premise version (Hodgkin 2017).

2.Symantec:

Symantec helps in providing internet security. Symantec is a broad name in the security space (Fossiet al.,2011).

3.ServiceNow:

ServiceNow is the leader of the market. The product is placed on the simple basis for varied activities such as customer usage, setup, process building and others. The product already has the in-built ITIL process which helps the client to get started directly. There is a feature named Visual Task Board in the ServiceNow which helps the information technology teams to keep the work productive without any iteration and the workflow does not have to reorganize. It provides more time to the teams which will help them in focusing to their productive works rather doing the jobs which are difficult. ServiceNow is also available online and has the system which helps customer issue management. With the help of the online facilities the customers can contact the helpdesk and can request the required services. 

Part–6: Conclusion and Recommendation

Summarise the key strength and weaknesses of ITSM implementation at NNIT you learnt from this case study. Provide recommendations for further improvement if ITSM at NNIT, including your preferred ITSM tool for portfolio management.

Service portfolio is used for the improvement of the internal process which helps to enhance the operational effectiveness for the customer satisfaction. It is developed under the supervision of the top management of the NNIT.  An organization has successfully tapped the technology with advancement, effective in the marginal style, business process which is efficient and effective communication which will help the management to implement the service portfolio of the NNIT effectively. The mechanism of the communication can be improved which will further help the staff to set side by side the new demands of an organizations. With the help of the service portfolio usage of data can be maximized and for improvement of the process. With the help of the service portfolio the government model requires to be improved as the policies can be publicly made available to the stakeholders which will be beneficial in taking the essentials actions for solving the problems. Required recommendations are as follows:

1.In order to assess the performance on the periodical basis the process owner are given advised to use the required metrics.

2.The top management should provide adequate training facility to the person who directly interacts with the customers.

3.Process owners should be made from the top management and their support is essential for successfully implementing the service portfolio.

Reference List

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