As the person on the front lines, you know that providing the best service possible can be what makes your ITSM organization succeed. Every day, you work to build the relationships that help your organization create value for end-users. However, when you have inefficient processes, you end up having to be the person responding to an upset user.
Using centralized log management and ITIL 4 for Service Management creates efficient, consistent processes that allow you to deliver the results your end-user need – and want.
What is Service Management in ITIL
In ITIL 4, IT Service Management (ITSM) is a framework based around delivering service in a way that maps to the value people expect and require from the service. Historically, people viewed ITIL ITSM as an inflexible, prescriptive, process-based framework, ultimately limiting their ability to gain value from it.
To fix this problem, ITIL 4 refocuses its approach to define value as something co-created across:
- Service providers
- Customers
- Regulators
- Suppliers
ITIL 4’s move to value co-creation requires all parties to create a common definition, understanding that service components provide value only when customers access and use them.
What is the Service Value System (SVS)?
The Service Value System (SVS) helps ITSM organizations collaborate more effectively so that they can shift away from prescriptive processes and embrace co-created value. The five elements of the SVS are:
- Guiding Principles (GP): Values and flexible framework that ITSM organizations can use to achieve value
- Governance: Organizational structure that creates accountability
- Service Value Chain (SVC): Flexible operating model
- Practices: Categories that align processes and capabilities
- Continual improvement: Reviewing metrics to better align services to stakeholder expectations
What is the Service Value Chain (SVC)?
As the core operating model for ITIL 4, the Service Value Chain (SVC) consists of six core, integrated elements with defined activities that create a feedback loop where inputs generate outputs that trigger next steps.
Plan
A shared understanding and validation of the vision, current status, and improvement direction to define objective, outcome, and value throughout the product and service lifecycle.
Improve
Activities embedded into planning, operational activity, and performance that respond to evolving customer demands for continual value co-creation.
Engage
Communication between the provider, customer, and all stakeholders to build strong relationships and respond to needs.
Design and Transition
Quality, cost, and time to market requirements aligned to business needs and customer expectations.
Obtain or Build
Building to design specifications and service models or procuring components necessary to deliver products or services.
Deliver and Support
Service available for user access with a focus on the service desk as a single contact point for support related to service issues/incidents and requests.
What ITIL 4 Practices support the Service Management SVC?
Service Management is a unique SVC whose chain of activities require more than processes. In the past, ITSM organizations struggled to implement ITIL because they viewed it as prescriptive. However, under ITIL 4’s flexible approach, ITSM organizations can adapt and implement the guidelines that work for them.
The ITIL 4 practices focus on the different areas that ITSM organizations can use to measure service quality. The key ITIL 4 practices for ITSM are:
- Continual service improvement: problem and knowledge management improve services
- Incident management: Restoring failed or interrupted services as quickly as possible
- Problem management: Identifying trends to remove the root cause of recurring incidents
- Request management: Tracking requests for services or equipment
- Change management: Controlling, assessing, minimizing, and managing risks and impacts arising out of changes to service
- Service level management: Setting clear delivery targets by defining business services and service levels that can be used to measure success
- Configuration management: Defining and maintaining records of assets, technologies, people, and organizational details mapped to and assessing risks and interdependencies
Processes within these different areas enable you to create a feedback loop. By assessing risk or reviewing trends, you can take proactive steps that reduce service interruptions. By implementing metrics, you can limit impact to end users, ultimately improving service levels by focusing on weaknesses across processes and knowledge management.
How does ITIL improve customer service
Service Desks operate as the single point of contact (SPOC) between customers and support services which means they’re often viewed as the face of service quality and improvement.
Using ITIL 4 improves customer service by establishing a chain of collaborative activities that drive:
- Consistency
- Efficiency and accountability
- Repeatable processes
Some concrete ways that ITIL enables better customer service include:
- Increase quality by reviewing metrics then planning solutions to weaker areas
- Decreasing IT delivery costs with efficient processes
- Provide better services by understanding customers’ needs
Using Centralized Log Management for ITIL Service Management
Viewing the service desk within the Value Stream model enables you to create a collaborative approach so that you have the right people with the right skills working on the right request at the right time.
Improve Support
As the SPOC, the Help Desk needs to focus on answering end-user requests as quickly as possible. With centralized log management, you have all your device, network, user, and system event log data in a single location. Your centralized log management solution enables you to aggregate, correlate, and analyze this data for faster incident response times.
Enable Business Change
With centralized log management, you can bring together your Incident Management, Problem Management, and Configuration Management practices. You gain the observability you need to see interdependencies, preventing downtime that can happen when you make changes to systems.
Deliver Better Services
Centralized log management also enables you to create dashboards that enable you to track trends over time. With these metrics, you can find areas of improvement so that you reduce the number of service disruptions overall, enabling continuous service improvement that ultimately reduces end-user requests.
Graylog Security: Security Analytics for ITIL 4 Service Management
Graylog Security enables you to build collaborative help desk processes that align with ITIL 4 Service Management. Our purpose-built centralized log management solution provides lightning fast search capabilities and flexible integrations that allow your team to collaborate more efficiently.
Our integrations with ticketing, alerting, and communication tools enable you to escalate issues more effectively by giving you a way to share searches directly rather than explain your processes with text and screenshots. These integrations also enable you to track status and ownerships to achieve accountability and respond to stakeholder questions.
Since you can easily share Dashboards and searches with Graylog’s cloud platform, you have the ability to capture, manage, and share knowledge consistently and efficiently, supporting your ITIL 4 initiatives.
With Graylog Security, you save time and money while providing better customer service outcomes.
