Johannesburg, 24 Nov 2004
The global drive to align IT and business has stepped up a gear locally as more South African companies seek to save money by accurately managing the accounting of skills, software and hardware components within their businesses.
Business Connexion set up a service management business unit specifically to deliver an enhanced service offering in this arena to its clients.
According to Marius Lotter, business unit executive for service management, a consistent, coherent service management process could save clients 20% of their average maintenance and service costs in conservative terms.
Lotter says all SA business sectors are considering the implementation of enhanced service management methodologies like the Information Technology Infrastructure Library (ITIL). This includes industry leaders such as Absa, Anglo Gold, Engen, Sasol, the government sector, SITA, Telkom and Total SA.
"We are currently enabling companies to save money by aligning their IT resources to achieve business goals consistently across their organisations. An emerging core discipline for many companies is IT service continuity - traditionally named disaster recovery - which is being driven by global corporate governance requirements and specifically locally by King 2."
Lotter emphasises that improved service management is rapidly becoming non-negotiable for companies as the cost savings of accurately tracking people skills, software and hardware components, through entrenched service management processes like ITIL cataloguing, becomes apparent. ITIL is an international "de facto" standard for delivering IT services.
"Accurate tracking can save companies substantial amounts of money. For example, the travelling time of IT maintenance staff to a company`s site in Namibia needs to take into account both the total service time to repair a PC and the hours used to reach the destination.
"Looking at the bigger picture in this manner can enable informed decisions to be taken by management when restructuring their service capability with available resources. Cataloguing people skills is especially important as they are often the largest cost in managing services."
Lotter concludes that the growth of service management across all local business sectors is expected to increase rapidly throughout 2004 and for the next few years moving forward.
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