Business Service Management (BSM) is an approach whereby an organization’s business needs and its IT services are aligned. The BSM approach is applied with the critical understanding that an organization’s success is dependent on the reliable delivery of its IT services — much the same way that a restaurant’s success is dependent on the reliable delivery of its services.
BSM facilitates the reliable delivery of our services to our customers and focuses our attention on problem areas that could impact the quality of our products or services. Dining out is an experience shared by most, which is why application of the BSM approach to restaurant management should provide you with a new appreciation and insight into your customers’ experience.
We can likely all agree that a restaurant is nothing without food. With few exceptions, the first thing you receive once seated is the menu, which is a key component of any restaurant’s success. Where customers see just a list of food items and prices, the restaurant manager sees an effective tool that:
If you were to rate your experience at a particular restaurant, what factors would you consider? While everyone has their personal preferences, it’s safe to say that there are three factors considered absolutely critical to a restaurant’s success: 1) quality of the food, 2) atmosphere, and 3) customer service.
While you may have an idea of what situations in your organization constitute a failed delivery of services, it’s sometimes hard to understand the impact those situations have on your customers. Try to imagine yourself in the following restaurant situations, all of which will most definitely lead to a negative customer experience.
We’ve all experienced at least one of these situations when dining out, and they all come back to one thing: lack of reliability in delivery of services.
In my next blog entry, I will discuss what the BSM approach looks like operating within a high-maturity IT organization. Following that, we will discuss some of the challenges faced by less mature IT organizations and how those challenges can be addressed by implementing the BSM approach.
To learn more about ITIL, check out Learning Tree’s course, Achieving ITIL Foundation Course.