My first formal introduction to ITIL V3 was at the itSMF Conference in Brighton, UK in November 2007. Linking the activity of the IT organization to the goals of the business makes perfect sense to me, and its something we’ve been working on for some time. With V3 out the door, what’s V4 going to look like?

Whether the service provider type is internal to the organization or serving multiple business units in the same organization, it matters whether the business has a Products Offered or a Markets Served Driving Force. If the service provider type is an external service provider, then clearly they have a Markets Served strategy.

For a Products Offered company, there is no long-term relationship between the end user of the product and the product provider – with the product being differentiated from other competing products by a uniqueness; price, value, quality etc.

The Markets Served business is attempting to build a powerful franchise or relationship with clearly defined customers or consumers, and competitive advantage is achieved by sustaining a superior relationship with its market and fulfilling needs better than its rivals.

Perhaps there is a very big pattern developing as ITIL evolves? I do not profess any knowledge of ITIL V1 other than it consumed several rainforests to produce and was carried around by Chinook. ITIL V2 is firmly grounded in operation of the IT department as if it were a function serving itself. ITIL V3 extends the horizon to the direct customers of the IT Department and aligns the mission of IT with the needs of the business. This rather fabulous focus change allows IT to have serious and much more interesting strategy and budget discussions with the business and turns the IT department away from being a cost center, toward it being competitive advantage. For a Products Offered business, this is probably enough.

The opportunity I see is where the IT infrastructure is operating within a Markets Served business, because when we align the Service Management with the needs of the customers of the business that is being supported, then we have a further mindset change, a further [r]evolution and even more interesting discussions may be had.

With the alignment of the IT Services with the mission of the customers of the business, we can begin to think of the Service Management strategy and operations directly influencing the Lifetime Value of the Customer to the business, and then I believe IT Services Management will have come out of the basement, shrug off the ‘cost center’ reputation and take it’s rightful place, shoulder–to-shoulder with Sales and Product Development as a direct contributor to maximizing Customer Lifetime Value.

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Steve White provides global leadership for KT ResolveSM, a systematic approach to achieving step-change improve­ments in the quality, speed, and cost of technical support operations and other client-facing organizations. As product manager, he collaborates with client and Kepner-Tregoe (KT) teams to develop improvement programs that combine process improvement, skill development, and performance management to achieve rapid, targeted results and lasting value.
Before joining KT, he was global program manager at Sun Microsystems where he managed the implementation of KT Resolve in the global software and hardware support operations. Under Steve’s leadership, the Resolve Programme for third- and- fourth-line support successfully reduced the MTTR for poorly defined escalations from 32 days to 6 days and, when expanded to second-line support, positioned Sun to reduce customer wait time by 1,200 years per year.

Kepner-Tregoe, Inc. (KT) is a consulting and training company that collaborates with organizations worldwide to meet complex business challenges and achieve rapid, measurable results. The renowned Kepner-Tregoe processes for problem solving, decision making, and project management provide logical and consistent approaches to tough business issues that produce enduring value.

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