ITFM Pathway to Success: Step 1 – Assess and Plan

The MagicOrange ITFM Pathway to Success was specifically designed to help those leaders responsible for managing the finances of the IT organization, such as CIOs, CFOs, IT Finance VPs and their respective teams to improve their ITFM capabilities.

MagicOrange understands that a well-designed plan needs to be developed first. It needs to be aligned with the company’s strategic plan and must be based upon each customer’s unique situation.

The first phase of the MagicOrange ITFM Pathway to Success framework is critical. Step 1 is a comprehensive current state assessment that needs to be performed. It will help the company understand the current level of ITFM maturity, availability and quality of cost and service usage data and the level of customer satisfaction of IT services.

More importantly, it will indicate how well aligned IT is with the corporate strategic plan.

This phase is to review the IT strategic plan, the current and future goals and objectives, to determine how it aligns with the business strategy. Every organization needs to have a set of objectives that support the overall business strategy and a plan to achieve them. If there is no strategic plan nor clear goals and objectives, then this should be first priority.

The relevant financial, organizational, operational and service consumption data should be collected and analyzed, with a focus on the following key points:

Data quality

The Consumption Data Review will require the company to have IT service consumption data for each service. The quality level of that data is important. Are the users of each service identified by name and department? Is the quantity of service consumed available? Also, how is the data generated – manual versus automated.

The Cost Data Review will show how IT costs are captured and reported in the general ledger. Ideally, the costs for each major service should be captured in its own account and/or cost centre. If the IT costs are not segregated to the proper level, then the chart of accounts should be modified.

For example, this can be achieved by adding accounts and sub-accounts to get the cost data in the right place to facilitate transparency, simplify the import into a future ITFM tool and aid automation.

Service definition

The MagicOrange ITFM Pathway to Success framework will ensure that the charges for IT services are transparent and that the business understands them. Some benefits include improved financial compliance and control, better operational control and better decision-making.

There needs to be a customer facing IT service catalog with clearly defined services with costs and usage mapped to each. The service definitions must be easy to understand by everyone in the company and should be customer facing with less than 25.

If there is no customer facing IT service catalog, one needs to be created as a matter of urgency as this is a foundational element for a well-run IT organization.

MagicOrange ITFM Pathway to Success acts as a bridge between collective financial systems and service management systems. It gives management a better understanding of the delivery and consumption of services.

Assessments

Once the data analysis has been done, interviews with IT and business leaders should be performed so that areas for improvement can be identified. These interviews should be no more than 30 minutes and should focus on how IT is addressing their specific needs and challenges, and noting suggestions for improvement.

They should also rate overall satisfaction with IT on a 5-point scale. This quantitative data will help determine the benefits, with customer satisfaction scores being compared before and after any improvements are made.

Results

Based upon the results of the assessment in this step, one needs to develop an action plan for the future. This should include:

• Defining specific ITFM initiatives to be undertaken in priority order
• Developing a project plan for selected initiatives for the current year
• Securing stakeholder approval to move forward – both IT and Business leaders
• Communicating the plan both internally and externally to keep all key stakeholders informed and to gain adoption

In order to achieve the benefits of implementing ITFM processes and best practices, a series of planned and measured steps must be taken in a methodical manner over a period of time. These benefits could include reducing costs, increasing customer satisfaction and creating greater value.

Ask the Experts

MagicOrange recognizes the complexity of the overall journey to ITFM maturity and its experts are well equipped to guide its customers through the step-by-step process to ensure they realize all the benefits of a successfully implemented ITFM framework.

Guided by the MagicOrange ITFM Pathway to Success framework, customers can now drive cost optimization throughout the organization by approaching savings initiatives systematically and holistically, from the perspective of both IT supply and business demand.

MagicOrange is an established ITFM solution recognized by Gartner and successfully implemented at a number of large and international enterprises across various industries. It provides business leaders with a progressive cloud-based ITFM tool and professional guidance that brings full transparency into the value of technology in the organization.