The Connection between Business Service Management and Pink Cadillacs
One of the presentations I attended at the recent itSMF USA conference in Charlotte, North Carolina had the intriguing title of "How does earning a Pink Cadillac relate to BSM/ITSM." With a title like that, I had to check it out.
The presenter was Steve Moore, technology leader at Mary Kay, the $2.2 billion Texas-based cosmetics and fragrance wholesaler.
Moore shared that, in many organizations, IT service management is "unpredictable" and is often solved by "thowing people at the problem." He said IT needs to start asking questions like:
- How do I prioritize my IT staff based on business priorities?
- What effect do IT changes or failures have on the business?
- What is the cost to the business?
As part of Mary Kay's efforts to provide better service to its customers, the 1.6 million independent beauty consultants, Moore and the rest of the IT department have focused on developing a Business Service Management approach to IT.
Moore described the growth from infrastructure management to IT service management to business service management as the pursuit of "one master version of the truth." To overcome the challenges to adopting BSM, Mary Kay followed four key steps:
- Link the effort to the existing company direction (standardize)
- Gain an in-depth understanding and consolidation of like processes (change process)
- Consolidate systems
- Educate (ITIL Foundation was a key resource)
Another important tip that was echoed in an earlier presentation by Phyllis Drucker from AutoNation.com, was to not try to tackle every aspect of ITIL initially. Like Drucker, the team at Mary Kay focused on Configuration, Change, Service Impact and Incident Management during the beginning stages.
One cautionary note Moore shared for any IT professional looking to undertake a BSM or ITSM initiative was to educate your executives on the terminology. Be able to not only define the terms, but be able to articulate the opportunities that can be provided for the business (see the two earlier questions to know what those opportunities might be).
On a related note, I wasn't the only one who thought this year's itSMF event was an exceptional opportunity to gain insight into some real-world examples of how to add value to the business through IT Service Management. Check out Denise Dubie's post on Networkworld.com today. By the looks of it, Denise and I were in a lot of the same sessions together!
Contributed by Mark Tordoff
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