Information Technology (IT) service delivery is when an organization or service provider offers users access to IT services, including applications, data storage, and other business resources. IT service delivery is different from IT service management (ITSM) as it iscustomer-facing, and typically relies on service level agreements (SLAs) to ensure customers are receiving a high level of service. The two terms are often used interchangeably, however. And while they should be understood as separate disciplines within an IT organization, ideally these processes would be well integrated to help improve mean time to detection and repair, as well as reduce the number of tickets coming into IT, ultimately lowering IT costs.
IT service delivery aims to weigh and justify the cost of IT services against the benefits they provide. If IT provides a service to the business (or contracts with an outside IT service provider for that service), the business generally requires some guarantee that the service will perform well, and deliver at the level identified and formalized by the corresponding SLAs. IT departments that fail to meet an SLA will commonly face financial and reputational penalties.
In this article, we will explore how IT service delivery is evolving, the challenges it may present, and how your business can get started with the discipline.
What is modern IT service delivery?
Modern IT service delivery is a system that can provide enhanced visibility into the health of an organization’s IT services, thus improving related metrics. Full-stack visibility into IT operations includes the entirety of the enterprise’s infrastructure, from on-premises servers and network hardware to cloud-based services, online storage, and virtualized applications. Modern IT service delivery also requires enhanced application performance monitoring (APM), cloud infrastructure monitoring, and machine learning-driven analysis of all event, metric, trace and log data from a centralized console to optimize and improve performance, system health and speed of service resolution.
One of the major goals of modern IT service delivery is continual service improvement and making the IT function more proactive and predictive. Thus, well-defined KPIs are critical and give businesses the ability to tie throughput, service quality and stability to business results such as profitability, productivity and user satisfaction. Enterprises that use a modern IT service delivery methodology with associated KPIs are more efficient and faster at remediating offline services while communicating their impact on the business.
What are some examples of IT service delivery?
An IT service is any technology that provides benefits to its end users, and IT service delivery relates to the effective, high-quality provision of these services. In most organizations, these services are specified in an IT service catalog, which outlines the services available to end users in a well-organized, curated fashion.
Common examples of IT service delivery might include:
• Provision of accounts (for example, email, storage) for new users.
• Credential resets, including password resets.
• Requests for new hardware, like a laptop or phone.
• Repair requests for various end-user equipment (such as a jammed printer).
• Implementation of a new software or cloud service package in response to user needs.
• Requests for additional storage resources, either on-premises or in the cloud.
• Requests to initiate cloud-based computing services.
The day-to-day technical tasks of maintaining hardware, software, cloud services, and the overall network — and ensuring that everything is stable and operating at a high level of performance — might not appear in a service catalog, however, this would still fall under the purview of IT service delivery.
What is an IT service delivery framework?
An IT service delivery framework (SDF) is a set of guidelines, standards, and procedures used to evaluate, develop, deploy, manage and retire IT services to the enterprise. Essentially, the IT service delivery framework specifies the way your IT function works from day to day to provide services to end users.
More specifically, the IT service delivery framework defines and manages the service catalog, as well as manages the day-to-day service desk and help desk operations, provides configuration management services, and monitors the performance of all hardware, software, and services to ensure that SLAs are being met.
In a very small business, an IT service delivery framework may not be necessary. As the enterprise grows, however, it requires more formality around the distribution of IT services. What’s more, as cloud services have become more prolific, the IT department has increasingly provided more oversight around how these tools are selected, implemented, and secured — a task that would be near impossible without a comprehensive services delivery framework. One 2019 report found that the average enterprise was using 1,295 different cloud services.
One of the most notable IT service delivery frameworks is the information technology infrastructure library (ITIL), a set of guidelines that define processes and procedures for a wide range of IT activities. Additional ITIL service delivery frameworks include Microsoft Operations Framework (MOF), Control Objectives for Information and Related Technologies (COBIT), and Business Process Framework (eTOM). You can explore ITIL, including ITIL v3, in more detail in our primer on ITSM.
What is the role of an IT service delivery manager?
The IT service delivery manager is responsible for overseeing all IT service delivery operations, and the role can fall to any number of positions within the IT function. The primary goal of the IT service delivery manager is to ensure that stakeholders are kept happy by meeting or exceeding stated SLAs. This requires constant attention to performance metrics and other quantitative measurements.
The IT service delivery manager also operates and maintains the service desk, which includes IT service continuity management. They also manage the service catalog, which includes determining which products and services should be added to or removed. Ultimately, the IT service delivery manager makes broad recommendations to the business about resources, tools, and funds needed to improve operations across the IT function.
What are some IT service delivery modern best practices?
There is a range of recommended best practices that improve the modern IT service delivery process, including:
• Defining KPIs relevant to your business: This process should be done in collaboration with IT, business management, and IT service continuity management to determine what KPIs matter most (i.e. page load speed, network uptime, help desk ticket resolution time, meantime to repair, etc.).
• Developing systems to collect and monitor these KPIs: These are developed preferably through a centralized dashboard that is visible to both IT and management.
• Developing workflows that emphasize meeting and exceeding KPIs: Hold departments and individuals accountable for achieving the required results.
• Reporting KPIs regularly, during daily scrums: These can be done in formal reports to management, and in broader reports to other enterprise stakeholders, ideally with the most current IT infrastructure data available.
• Leading discussions and focus groups to generate ideas about how to improve KPIs when they’re not being met: Identify ways to improve operations, service support, timeliness, optimization, and operational level agreements, as well as simplify workflows, or implement new technologies that will lead to tangible business results and better customer experience. Develop root-cause procedures for errors and problems through a blameless investigation process and prevent them from recurring.
Using mobility whenever possible: KPI information should be available on any type of device at any time, including mobile devices, in order to promote a culture that values real-time data availability.Source: www.splunk.com
In part two, we will discuss the challenges and tools used in IT Service delivery.
The author is a Speaker, Mentor, Educator, Trainer, Professional & Community Leader, and IT Service Delivery & Cybersecurity. For comments email: ICTMatters@kingston.co.zm; www.kingston.co.zm