Measuring Business-IT Integration – Part I

So we understand now what is meant by business service management or BSM and some of the critical success factors. Measurements are at the core of enabling IT organizations and IT leadership to assess how well IT organizations are supporting their respective businesses and customers. We will focus on indicators that help IT organizations appreciate the extent to which they understand their customers’ businesses and the level of support that they provide to their customers to achieve their respective business objectives.

Some of the factors that will be critical (aka Critical Success Factors or CSFs) to the overall success of Business Service Management initiative are listed below.  Each Critical Success Factor or CSF in turn comprises of a range of recommended indictors that will help us assess / measure the performance (aka Key Performance Indicators or KPIs) of our Business Service Management. Depending upon your particular situation and circumstances, you may decide on a subset of these metrics.

• Quality and maturity of business and technical services (IT services)
• Business process enablement and support
• Business-IT integration

In this blog, we will discuss the key indicators that will help us measure how well we are able to achieve the quality and maturity of business services that we offer to our customer(s) and technical services that actually implement those business services.

Quality and maturity of business and technical services (IT services)

This critical success factor or CSF is about the quality and maturity of IT services. Once an organization embarks on the BSM journey, it is vital that we are able to demonstrate an improvement in the quality of services that we deliver to our customers. In addition, we need to continually measure and improve our IT processes that underpin our IT services.

Some of the KPIs that will help us measure this factor are as follows:

• Average response times to changing business goals and needs

• %age of IT resources involved in operations (keeping the lights on) vs. new development

• %age of IT budget spent in developing new IT services / capabilities compared to the total IT budget

• %age of IT budget spent in managing existing IT services

• Ratio of IT budget spent on developing new services to managing existing services

• %age of IT services (business or technical services) provided by supplier (i.e., outsourced)

• %age of IT services that use standard technology components and other standards

• %age of technical documentation and other training manuals that are up-to-date

• %age of incidents for which external suppliers are contacted for further assistance.

• Ratio between the total number of employees within IT organization to the total number of non-IT employees within the business organization.

To learn more about ITIL, check out Learning Tree’s course, Putting ITIL® into Practice:  A Roadmap for Transformation.

If you haven’t already done so, please also refer to my previous blog posts where I discuss factors that impact BSM implementation.

Ahmad K. Shuja

*ITIL® is a registered trade mark of the Cabinet Office