Book Image

A Practical Guide to Service Management

By : Keith D. Sutherland, Lawrence J. "Butch" Sheets
4 (1)
Book Image

A Practical Guide to Service Management

4 (1)
By: Keith D. Sutherland, Lawrence J. "Butch" Sheets

Overview of this book

Many organizations struggle to find practical guidance that can help them to not only understand but also apply service management best practices. Packed with expert guidance and comprehensive coverage of the essential frameworks, methods, and techniques, this book will enable you to elevate your organization’s service management capability. You’ll start by exploring the fundamentals of service management and the role of a service provider. As you progress, you’ll get to grips with the different service management frameworks used by IT and enterprises. You'll use system thinking and design thinking approaches to learn to design, implement, and optimize services catering to diverse customer needs. This book will familiarize you with the essential process capabilities required for an efficient service management practice, followed by the elements key to its practical implementation, customized to the organization’s business needs in a sustainable and repeatable manner. You’ll also discover the critical success factors that will enhance your organization’s ability to successfully implement and sustain a service management practice. By the end of this handy guide, you’ll have a solid grasp of service management concepts, making this a valuable resource for on-the-job reference.
Table of Contents (28 chapters)
1
Part 1: The Importance of Service Management
6
Part 2: Essential Process Capabilities for Effective Service Management
18
Part 3: How to Apply a Pragmatic, Customized Service Management Capability
Appendix B: SLR Template

What are the service management frameworks for enterprises?

Enterprise service management (ESM) is defined as the practice of applying IT best practices across the business to improve effectiveness, efficiency, and overall service delivery. The result is improved customer experience and business outcomes. Though the concept of ESM has emerged over recent years, it is not new. There is evidence dating back to the early 2000s. Business partners saw the gains their IT departments made in managing services, by adopting formal ITSM, and worked with IT to bring some of those very concepts (for example, change management) into their business units. This is an example of where those IT service providers had proven their worth before they were looked upon as business partners (versus just IT).

Another proof point that’s seen with ESM is non-IT resources attending service management platform (technology) conferences. It is because these platforms now tout functionality (utility), which...