It may appear to be stating the obvious but when considering a new or replacement Service Management tool it is paramount that as an organization you define your existing and/or future Service Operating model. The model should assist with understanding how the organization plans to operate and highlight expectations of the new Service Management tool.
It becomes absolutely vital to define such a model if you are contemplating Service Integration and Management (SIAM) strategy. Consideration should be undertaken for external suppliers who may not wish to share or input certain information into a Service Management tool due to the fear of compromising intellectual property. Some external suppliers may wish to simply use their own Service Management toolset, which may have a negative impact on existing or proposed Service Levels offered to the customer base or community.
Another consideration are the cloud Service Management toolset offerings. As an organization adopting ITIL best practices it is worth evaluating how much customization of the toolset may be required to support your organization. Customization will result in additional ongoing costs as new releases or upgrades of the toolset will more than likely require customization being re-applied and possibly modified.
Some of the long established toolset suppliers have struggled to come to market with a truly ITIL aligned service offering, resulting in the various idiosyncrasies of the product being either exposed or simply being undeclared. You may need to consider a different Service Management toolset from what your organization uses today, with obvious additional expenditure regarding re-training staff.
It is strongly recommended that a series of visits are arranged, preferably without the attendance or representation from the supplier, to a selection of existing users of the toolset. Consider talking with the team who evaluated and selected the toolset providers and hopefully glean from them the reasons for their final selection. Talk to the implementation team, administration and operational users of the team. Understand what went well and why and also what did not go well. All the information gleaned will provide the opportunity for an informed and evaluated decision to be made.
Failure to even consider some of the points above will simply prove the following adage to be true : A Fool and a Tool is still a Fool.
If you have any questions or contributions to make to this article then please comment below.