A new new Enterprise Management Associates (EMA) study has found that overall success rates for business service management (BSM) initiatives are high, with 89% of respondents indicating that their BSM initiatives met or exceeded expectations. The study also uncovered the top factors that helped these real-world organizations avoid failure and achieve success with their BSM initiatives.
“Solid organizational support and executive commitment, effective communication between business and IT and well-documented requirements are all critical success factors for BSM projects,” stated Paul Burns, EMA research director and study leader, in a statement. “In addition, it is crucial for IT leaders to set realistic expectations, focusing on the most important benefits rather than promising that all possible benefits will be achieved.”
For this study, Business Service Management: Strategies for Success in 2009, EMA surveyed 160 North American and global IT and business professionals involved in selecting and using BSM solutions for their organizations. Key findings include:
- BSM is a strategic initiative for the majority of organizations adopting it, with 57%having C-level roles responsible for their BSM mission.
- Seventy seven percent (77%) of respondents chose definitions that describe BSM as a process or approach to managing IT―leaving out the role of IT products.
- Yet, products are instrumental in implementing BSM strategies. Seventy one percent (71%) of respondents indicated that associating business metrics with end-to-end IT services is a critical technical capability that must be supported in BSM solutions.
- Organizations need to go beyond IT metrics to gather business and customer metrics when assessing BSM success.
- Respondents identified the top business benefits achieved through BSM as visibility into IT’s impact on the business, increased user satisfaction and ability to prioritize IT activities based on business needs.
- The top IT benefits associated with BSM included better quality of IT services, greater IT management process maturity, IT cost reduction, increased automation and improved productivity.
“BSM represents a strategic approach to managing IT that aligns business and IT goals,” Burns continued. “By managing IT from the business perspective, companies can understand how the performance and availability of IT resources, including both infrastructure and services, affect and power their business processes.”