Why Organizations Are Embracing ITIL Managed Services

ITIL (Information Technology Infrastructure Library) is nothing new to IT departments. For decades, organizations have followed the best practices outlined in the ITIL framework to deliver high-quality and cost-effective IT services.

In the search for a managed services provider (MSP), you might find it difficult to discern the value of one provider over another. To receive the best services, today’s organizations should engage an MSP that follows the ITIL framework.

The Value of ITIL to Today’s Organizations

The importance of ITIL has only grown as IT environments have become more complex and distributed. Today’s organizations use ITIL to align their IT services with their ever-evolving business needs and customer expectations.

The primary focus of ITIL is to automate processes, improve service management, and integrate IT departments. The ITIL service lifecycle comprises five main stages:

• Service Strategy focuses on understanding the business objectives and customer needs by defining a strategic approach to IT service management.
• Service Design means designing new services or modifying existing services based on the defined requirements and strategies.
• Service Transition involves implementing new or modified services in the operational environment of the organization.
• Service Operation refers to the actual delivery of services to customers, including incident and problem management.
• Continual Service Improvement aims to optimize service delivery through performance assessment and change implementation.

These five stages provide today’s organizations with a structured framework for managing IT services and improving service quality on an ongoing basis.

ITIL has gone through several revisions and consolidations since it was introduced in the late 1980s to accommodate new technology developments. ITIL 4, the latest version of the framework, was released with updates that help IT departments like yours foster greater agility and flexibility.

What is a Managed Service in ITIL?

A managed service for ITIL is the outsourced delivery and management of an organization’s IT services by a third party known as a managed service provider. They support the IT infrastructure and systems of their clients based on the optimized processes outlined in ITIL.

Top Reasons Companies Invest in ITIL-based Managed Services

You might engage an ITIL managed services provider for a number of reasons. You might want your employees to focus more on your organization’s core functions and strategic initiatives. You may be looking for opportunities to achieve greater scalability, flexibility, and cost advantages through economies of scale.

Here’s a closer look at some of the primary reasons companies use ITIL managed services providers.

Streamlines customer onboarding.

When a managed services provider uses the ITIL framework, they build standardized procedures for customer onboarding, ensuring that the process remains consistent and efficient. From there, they work with you to define roles and responsibilities within the onboarding process, which eliminates confusion and enables coordination between all teams involved—ultimately leading to a better experience for your team.

MSPs may also use ITIL to build a knowledge base for customer onboarding based on best practices and lessons learned. This knowledge can be shared throughout your organization to further improve consistency.

Helps MSPs deliver excellent customer service.

MSPs can use ITIL to align their service offerings with your business requirements, which ensures that the services they provide are valuable and relevant. With Service Level Agreements that establish clear expectations, metrics, and targets for service delivery, you and your MSP will have a basis for measuring and reporting service performance. Moreover, ITIL provides MSPs guidelines for effective incident management so your issues are resolved promptly with minimal impact on business operations.

Increases the value your MSP can deliver.

ITIL allows MSPs to implement well-defined processes, which minimizes errors in service delivery. It also provides guidelines that enable MSPs to manage incidents systematically, allowing errors to be detected and resolved faster—which means fewer fires for you to worry about. In addition, ITIL lowers the risk of disruptions during change implementation so MSPs can deliver more stable and reliable IT services.

Includes process review cycles for continuous improvement.

ITIL provides MSPs with a structured approach to constantly update their IT service delivery. The process review cycles involve periodic assessments of service management processes, which help MSPs to pinpoint areas that require improvement—within their organization and within yours—including bottlenecks and inefficiencies.

With this information at their fingertips, MSPs can work with you to define key performance indicators (KPIs) based on ITIL’s standards to track performance and gain insights into the gaps in service delivery.

Engage with a Leading ITIL Managed Services Provider

Organizations are embracing ITIL managed services because MSPs establish a robust framework that guarantees service quality and reliability when managing and delivering IT services. This significantly lowers the risk of disruptions and improves customer satisfaction for your organization.

OneNeck is a leading ITIL managed services provider with an extensive portfolio of managed services, including managed database services. OneNeck’s experienced database administration team proactively monitors systems to ensure peak performance at all times, while standardizing and optimizing routine tasks to reduce costs.

Learn more by reading about our Managed Services.

Additional Resources: