Just over a year ago, the ITSMFsa embarked on a joint initiative with various partners to better understand the extent to which service management is being applied in South Africa.
Today over 25 organisations have participated in the SMPI (Service Management Proficiency Index) programme and with the interest generated in the marketplace, the forum is signing up new organisations every month. So what is all the excitement about and why are organisations queuing to get involved?
The simple answer is that the itSMFsa, in partnership with Digiterra (Pty) Ltd, has created an effective assessment tool that:
* Measures the IT maturity of your organisation in accordance with the ITIL framework, good service management practices and King III corporate governance.
* Provides insight into the capability to execute the required service management disciplines from a 'people', 'process', 'technology', 'governance' and 'quality assurance' perspective.
* Provides recommendations and an action plan to address the identified inefficiencies and close the gaps.
Organisations are seeing value to gaining this understanding as it provides an immediate benchmark against which they can measure any improvements. Over and above this, the assessment provides the participating organisations with a comprehensive gap analysis and includes recommendations on how to best address these gaps.
This is important because it provides companies with the means to make better decisions on what needs to happen in order to provide better levels of IT service to the business. This, in turn, equates to a better managed operation with improved efficiency and reduced risk which assists in reducing costs. Through this comprehensive assessment and subsequent report, organisations gain the following tangible benefits:
* Clear understanding of current gaps and required actions to address these.
* Means to create a benchmark and apply actions to measure improvements against.
* Ability to compare their performance in relation to the rest of the market and their respective industry sector.
* Means to measure trends for ongoing manageability of IT operations.
* Independent, non-biased external proficiency index that assures impartiality in providing an accurate rating.
itSMFsa in partnership with ITWeb's SMEXA conference and exhibition
More information about SMEXA, which takes place on 3-4 August 2010 at The Forum in Bryanston is available online here.
The value of the SMPI has been felt by many organisations already; these are just a few of the comments that have started to flow in:
“SMPI provides valuable insight as a service manager as to the maturity of the ITSM governance, people, processes, quality assurance and technology across the IT enterprise with the added ability to self-assess the maturity progress as recommendations are implemented.”
Dave Norman, IT Services Manager, Sun International.
“The SMPI survey conducted within DSA was initially accepted because it was free - what a surprise outcome. We now have benchmark information that has greatly assisted us in defining areas for improvement. It has also added ongoing context, enabling a continued lifecycle management approach that is identifying continued cost benefits.”
John McDonald, Technical Manager, Information Management, Denel Saab Aerostructures (Pty) Ltd.
“We found your SMPI workshops a very useful maturity assessment of our implementation of service management disciplines, and it also served as external validation of the path we are on with respect to service to business goals we have set ourselves. Even the internal and solicited feedback was unexpected and yet extremely insightful.”
Russell Boezak, Principal, Head of Application Management, Absa Capital.
With the research insight that the forum is now gaining through this programme, it is well positioned to offer valuable feedback to that South African market as a whole.
At SMEXA 2010, the forum will be presenting its second annual overall SMPI report. Here it will cover some of the core focus areas that organisations are engaged in regarding service management initiatives. In many instances there are activities that we continuously keep getting wrong, this presentation will cover some of those areas and provide ways to address these shortfalls. The collective data has also provided insight into certain trends in the market; this presentation will reveal what those trends are and more importantly why they are there.
Don't miss out on the results of some fascinating research that is revealing some interesting facts around service management and what's happening in the market.
See you at SMEXA 2010 on 3 and 4 August.
Share
