Voici un article traitant d’ITIL, trouvé sur le site www.gantthead.com, rédigé par Andy Jordan, President de Roffensian Consulting, un cabinet de conseil en Management basé au Canada, et spécialisé dans les méthodes de gestion de projets.
L’objet de cet article est de se questionner sur la communication que les prestataires devraient avoir autour d’ITIL. Est-ce un facteur différenciant de dire qu’on applique ITIL ? Les clients sont ils intéressés par le sujet ? Comment utiliser intelligemment ce référentiel pour convaincre de nouveaux clients et leur apporter une réelle valeur ajoutée ?
Morceaux choisis :
In the last decade or so, there have been a lot of “new” ways to do things, or at least “new” ways to measure how well we do things. I remember a company that I worked with in the early 2000s; it was looking to implement CMM. They were struggling to get to CMM level 2 at a time when I was receiving multiple communications each week from different offshore outsourcing vendors who were all claiming to be CMM level 5 certified. In some ways it was depressing; in others it became meaningless–everyone was certified and it didn’t mean a thing when it came to their ability to help me in a practical sense.Now we have ITIL, and my age-addled brain has to wonder if I am reliving history. I know that ITIL isn’t new, but it has only recently exploded as the “must have” for the IT company on the move. So is this a meaningful differentiator that will make potential customers choose us over the competition, or is it just another thing that you have to do in order to keep the playing field equal and that only becomes a differentiator if you don’t do it?What the heck is ITIL ?
One of the biggest problems with IT standards is that our customers don’t always understand them. If they aren’t familiar with IT services, then a claim to be an ITIL organization is meaningless–and attempts to explain it may just create more confusion (“So you are saying that you have processes to help you make sure that you do things the way that you are supposed to do them…shouldn’t you be doing that anyway?”).Even if you can help the customer understand the fundamentals of ITIL you may still be faced with the question of why they should care.So what makes you better than that other guy who has ITIL ?
If you manage to convince your customers that ITIL is a good thing and that any potential vendor who has failed to implement ITIL isn’t worthy of their business, then you need to convince them that your ITIL implementation is better than your competitor’s.ITIL offers a better opportunity for differentiation–it defines the “what” but not the “how”. By demonstrating how you have implemented your ITIL processes you can begin to develop a true differentiation, although once again there is a danger of getting a “so what ?”. Customers expect changes to be managed efficiently and problem free; they expect prompt, accurate problem resolution the first time, etc. But they don’t necessarily care how you achieve that.I just don’t care !
Depending on your customer’s needs, ITIL may have no benefit to them. If the customer’s concern is to get a project completed as quickly and cheaply as possible and they have a high risk tolerance, then ITIL may actually be a negative. If they need to be first to market in order to gain or keep a competitive advantage, then they aren’t going to be swayed by a rigorous process (although maybe they should).Ultimately, we can’t tell our customers what they should care about. We can simply outline the benefits of our approach and allow them to make the decision for themselves. But if the customer can see the benefit…That’s just what we needed to hear !
ITIL should be a differentiator for you. A company decides to implement ITIL in order to improve the quality of its services, to align processes with industry best practices, to provide consistency and to reduce ITSM costs. All of those things should be important to customers –they should have confidence that you are doing the right things, in the right way as efficiently as possible.If you can get that message across to your customers, then they should see you as a partner that cares about their success and has made quality a fundamental part of the way you do business–your approach to the management of IT services is built into the framework of the company.Conclusions
Not all customers will “get” ITIL. We often deal with customers who are not part of the IT industry and have no interest in the way that it operates–they just want to get their projects on time, scope, cost and quality. Of course ITIL can help you deliver that as long as you can help the customer understand why they should care.Work with your sales and marketing teams to help create material that will explain to potential customers the tangible advantages of choosing a partner that has implemented ITIL. Make sure that it focuses on what’s in it for them–a lower-cost solution with fewer issues, faster problem resolution and a consistent approach. After all, you’ve already invested in ITIL because you believe that it brings benefits to your organization–now leverage those benefits by using them to bring in new customers, preferably ones that you win away from the competitor who laughed at you for thinking ITIL was important!
