A Major IT Trend Affecting Business - Literature review Example

? IT Infrastructure Library (ITIL) Service Desk: A Major IT Trend Affecting Business IT Infrastructure Library (ITIL) Service Desk: A Major IT Trend Affecting Business With the evolution of the service support industry, the service desk has advanced and has become a business function that is discerning to the success of corporations, institutions and government that have business processes and functions which are technology oriented. How did service desks evolve? Rick Jolsin says that help desks are an older version of service desks and their main function was to reduce the impact of service disruptions on IT resources only. They were reactive in nature. But now their main function changed into reducing the impact of service disruptions on business and these are the current proactive service desks. They have, thus, transformed from having an IT centric focus to business service focus (that is organizations now adopt service oriented approach to managing IT services rather than the technology oriented approach) and this fact has affected the business entirely. (Knapp, 2010, p. 14). Furthermore, organizations have started to value the service desk and work on its expansion as it has given great boost and support to their business services and increased customer satisfaction tremendously. Brief Introduction of ITIL and Service Desk ITIL is among the many standards that provide best practices and frameworks to business professionals and organizations on how to manage, optimize and improve the quality of their business services through the management of IT services. However; such attempts have been made previously before ITIL came into being. So what is the difference between ITIL and other concepts before it? ITIL differs from other concepts because it contains all of the Service Management best practices along with the best practices related to the management of IT services for the betterment of business functions. The first series of ITIL books incorporated Service Management on the viewpoint of information technology. Before the first series guideline became outdated, ITIL brought its second series that focused on the business perspective on Service Management which became a huge success and the rate of evolvement of Service Management Industry increased. (Grande-Bretagne, 2004, p. 3). ITIL was first produced in 1980. At that time, it had ten books which were on two main topics: Service Support (which is a user oriented point of interface) and Service Delivery (which is a customer oriented point of interface) . Five of the books targeted the former topic and the other five targeted the latter. The ITIL guidelines progressed and version 3.0 was published in 2007 that consists of five books which include Service Strategy, Service Design, Service Transition, Service Operation and Service Improvement. All these five books discuss a total of twenty processes that can help to implement and manage IT services effectively. Also the functions that carry out these processes are discussed. In the Service Operation book, one of the functions discussed is the Service Desk function. The Service Desk function is a business function that involves all the ten processes that come under the Service Support and Service Delivery and thus it provides a single point of contact from customers to the information technology. (Knapp, 2010, p. 129). Furthermore, all service requests, incident reporting, problems and changing of requests by customers/users of a business organization go through the service desk of the organization as it is the interface through which a user can connect to the IT Department of the organization. The service desk function in an organization binds the users with the service providers (IT department professionals) and through this function the service providers are able to perform the end users informed of service action and events that may affect their daily transactions and any other IT related issue. Hence, it becomes a single point of communication which helps in a timely and effective management of business processes. (Price et al., 2007, p. 4). Service desk is also a point of interface for other business activities such as accounting. A true service desk tends to incorporate multiple business activities into a single system. There are two main purposes and aims of Service Desk: 1. To provide a single point of contact for customers. And also an operational single point of contact for managing issues to resolution. 2. If customer faces any problem, the service desk tends to bring back the normal operational behavior of the service. It tends to do this with the aim of bringing minimum business impact on the customer within agreed service levels and business priorities. (Collier & Ampomah, 2007, p. 227) Advantages of Service Desk on Business Regardless of the size of the company, a service desk brings several positive impacts on one’s business. ITIL service desk mainly aligns the IT services of an organization with its business requirements. This is one the major advantages of service desk. As work and information flow are synchronized because of service desk, this has a positive effect on the efficiency of an organization’s productivity and results in high levels of customer satisfaction. Incident management carried out by the service desk, helps to reduce any critical effects on business operations and therefore ensures high quality of service and availability. The problem management strategy of ITIL service desk focuses on the improvement of quality of IT service by helping the service desk resolve problems at the time of logging. Such quick problem solving reduces business impact and improves business and IT efficiency. Through configuration management, the entire IT infrastructure is maintained and kept up-to-date. In this way notification of information regarding components and assessment process becomes efficient. The ITIL service desk has the capability to cope with the changing IT infrastructure which happens at regular intervals. As new software updates occur frequently, the service desk is able to cope with it. Budgeting is managed efficiently. It breaks down the money spent on IT services so that a business person can view the money details. Furthermore, it helps make decisions regarding future investments on IT services and infrastructure. Through capacity management, the current and future capacity and performance requirements of a business are met. When new technology is introduced, capacity management helps to maintain the performance. (Price et al., 2007, p. 7). Hence, the positive impacts of service desk show that they can improve business process management to a high extent which attracts the companies and they tend to implement it. Disadvantages of Service Desk on Business With benefits comes a list of negative impacts of service desk on business. The main thing that might occur is the displeasure of the service desk team. This happens when other members belonging to different departments of business start blaming the service desk team to be responsible for the occurring issues and problems. They also start telling ways on how the service desk team should perform their job. This causes a conflict. There is a considerable amount of cultural change involved. This causes the adoption of ITIL service desk face some difficulties. Adopting the processes described by ITIL is a time consuming activity as well as costly because an organization is required to train its personal in order to effectively implement the processes which results in improvements in their business functions and outcomes in terms of quality and efficiency. (Knapp, 2010, p. 130). The budgeting management can give a negative outcome in cases when customers are charged for the IT services provided through the service desk. A customer can take his business somewhere else. Charging systems are expensive and can cause profits to compensate by the money generated by the system. (Price et al., 2007, p. 7). The service desk needs to consistently change in an effort to align itself with business goals and policies and keep and increase customer loyalty. Hence, the service desk team needs to be highly skilled in many areas: business, technical and self-management skills. To find such skilled people is hard and the company then has to train its people which is an increase in labor cost. (Knapp, 2010, p. 18). The disadvantages of ITIL service desk are not fixed in nature. They occur if any mishap occurs. As the service desk is capable of change and error management, the disadvantages may take effect in rare cases. Where do I stand on the trend? As technology is advancing and use of information technology resources is becoming common, there is a growing need to improve the IT services. And this can happen when activities related to a company’s business, customers and employees are integrated into one single system. I am in favor of the trend raised by service desks as they are a modern way to support and manage business functions. Conclusion Companies that have attained high levels of customer satisfaction came to know that there are many factors that influence the way customers perceive about their experiences with the service desk of the companies. They are also aware that their service level should be monitored and maintained in order to cope with the changing demands and expectations of customers. This suggests that there is a need to manage people, processes, technology and information. An ITIL service desk is a solution to the integration, incorporation and synchronization of the four aforementioned elements to produce high level quality of service, business management and customer satisfaction. Works Cited Collier, Paul M. Ampomah, Samuel Agyei. (2007). Management Accounting Risk and Control Strategy. Netherlands: CIMA Publishing. Grande- Bretagne, Office of Government Commerce. (2004). Service Support. United Kingdom: The Stationary Office. Knapp, Donna. (2010). A Guide to Service Desk Concepts. United States of America: Course Technology. Price, Brad. Mueller, John Paul. Fenstermacher, Scott. (2007). Mastering System Center Operations Manager 2007. Indianapolis, Indiana, Canada: Wiley Publishing. Read More