IT departments are realising the importance of a Service Catalogue, but the business still needs to be convinced
United Kingdom, 20 January, 2010 - Axios Systems, the world's leading provider of IT Service Management (ITSM) solutions, including the assyst software, today reveals the results of a global survey that shows the majority of organisations can now see the importance of a Service Catalogue, with 64% implementing or looking to implement one in the next 6 months and only a small percentage (3.6%) not considering it at all.
Service Catalogues are seen as the method by which organisations can demonstrate the value of their services and accelerate their ITIL maturity. Not implementing a Service Catalogue can be detrimental to the continual improvement of the organisation. Gartner explains, "To reduce costs in the business, IT organisations should develop an effective IT service catalogue to connect IT capabilities with business outcomes." 1
Despite the importance of a Service Catalogue, IT are still finding it difficult to convince the business of its value. The research indicated that 60% of organisations believe the business decision makers within their organisations still don't understand the full value that can be delivered to the business from a Service Catalogue implementation.
According to the research, the majority (65%) of the Service Catalogue projects started, or that are due to start, are driven by the IT department, with just 24% driven by the business. Only half (53%) of those surveyed believed that they had a good understanding of what customers expect from the services that are provided, indicating a need for increased knowledge and research for the Service Catalogue project to be a success and more dialogue between IT and service owners.
Ailsa Symeonides, Sales & Marketing Director at Axios Systems, says, "Gaining buy-in from the business is essential for a successful Service Catalogue project. Axios can help organisations build a strong and convincing business case around a Service Catalogue implementation, which will enable them to prove its value."
Sharon Taylor, ITIL v3 Chief Architect, says, "By helping the business understand the benefits that will be derived by a Service Catalogue implementation, IT will be able to prove its value. The challenges of implementing a Service Catalogue project can be minimised if the IT department and the business realise they are working together to reach the same end goal."
The study was conducted in November and December 2009 and is based on over 1200 IT professionals from North America, Europe and Asia.
1 A Checklist for Cost Optimisation,Publication Date: 12 May 2009/ID Number: G00167576 - Gartner
About Axios Systems
Axios Systems is the world's leading provider of IT Service Management (ITSM) solutions. Its customer-centric approach, combined with its award-winning software, enables customers to improve their Service Delivery and Support and deliver Continual Service Improvement (CSI) by helping to align and realign IT services to changing business needs, supporting business processes and improving productivity.
Benefiting from more than 20 years of development and investment around Best Practice principles, Axios Systems' core solution, assyst, built around its market-leading Configuration Management Database (CMDB), intuitively steers users through the ITIL (Information Technology Infrastructure Library) processes which help organisations transition toward the next generation of ITSM and Service Desks. assyst offers a unique lifecycle approach to ITSM with the integration of all ITIL processes (including Incident, Capacity, Problem, Change, Asset, Configuration and Service Level Management), twelve of which have been verified by Pink Elephant's PinkVERIFY service as compatible with industry best practices (based on ITIL V3), in a fully integrated, out-of-the-box application. It empowers management with a dashboard-based transparent view of real-time performance against Service Level Agreements (SLA), and Operations Level Agreements (OLA).
Implementing assyst into an organisation optimises IT Infrastructure efficiency, reduces overheads and lowers the total cost of IT ownership (TCO), helping to ensure a significant return on investment (ROI) with rapid time-to-value. Axios also offers a comprehensive set of consulting and training services to support ITSM best practices in an organisation.
Axios is headquartered in the UK, with offices across Europe, the Americas, Middle East and Asia Pacific. Axios' global presence is further strengthened with a worldwide network of partners. For more information, visit: www.axiossystems.com.