Services. IT Governance

From strategic assessments to complex IT governance

ITIL has become the global practice and process standard for IT service and support. Companies are adopting these standards at a rapid rate. Business practices, organizational structure and technology implementation are all critical factors. Successful companies are increasing their quality of service and reducing their operational costs as a result of adopting ITIL. Not all are successful, however.

Software Associates works collaboratively with our customers to develop the best approach to fit the customer’s objectives, constraints and unique situation.

We know that to be most effective for you - and to help you drive the desired changes within your environment - we must have the deepest levels of skilled professional services available for you at the appropriate stages of your IT lifecycle. It's all about delivering the right skills at the right time.
Our services team provides comprehensive consulting support at every phase of the IT lifecycle, with assessment experts available to help you evaluate change in your environment. Expert technologists are also available to help you plan, design, implement, and support your technology solutions. We recommend a structured, step-by-step engagement, summarized as follows:

ITSM – ITIL Assessment. To deliver cost-effective, high-quality services aligned with business goals, it's critical to transform IT operations from a component-oriented view to a business-oriented view. But according to Gartner, "fewer than 20 percent of large organizations" have successfully made the transition. Understand the current environment. This means conducting an as-is assessment of current business processes and tools. How close to ITIL guidelines is the current process? Which processes are key to the organization? Where is the sharpest pain? Are the current tools supporting the processes?

To help meet this challenge, Software Associates has designed a comprehensive IT Infrastructure Library (ITIL) Assessment and Roadmap. The program not only provides an understanding of current ITIL maturity, it gives clients the details needed to actually begin re-engineering critical processes. The key deliverables of the assessment are:

• Develop an IT Service Management Vision (identifies where you want to be) and Strategy (defines what needs to be in placed in order to achieve the vision and when) relative to underpinning strategies and business objectives.
  • Assess maturity levels of existing processes
  • Benchmark with ITSM best practices such as ITIL
• Develop an IT Service Management Roadmap (describes how) that defines the work to be completed to achieve the IT Service Management vision. This Roadmap is based on the business priorities and the interrelationships between the processes and provides clearly defined business benefits, to justify the investment, for each phase. These phases are called Service Improvement Initiatives.

ITSM – ITIL Analysis and Design. Software Associates works with our customers to develop optimal processes in a way that considers the current or selected tools. Software Associates helps analyze the business and IT challenges, create and execute a clear solution plan to address them, and measures for business results. Each engagement is designed to yield a business view of the organization (ensuring the benchmarking of costs and alignment with business goals, the simplification of operations through elimination of needless complexity and reduction in firefighting, re-work and recurring problems. The key deliverables of the Analysis & Design are:

• Business Service Management Design
  • Model IT Operations to align with business services
  • Enable IT services to support strategic business objectives
• Service Management Process Implementation
  • Roadmap for a Phased Process Implementation
  • Sustain process implementation efforts on an ongoing basis
• IT Service Management Process Design
  • Develop a Technology Functional Specification. In order to meet the process requirements, a service management tool may need to be selected which can provide not only support for the ITIL processes but also meet a number of key functional requirements to fit individual business needs. Software Associates will produce a functional specification based on the general requirements of this type of product and key functionality items raised by and discovered during, the assessment process.
  • Create a process-focused organization. instead of people-dependent
  • Establish IT Operations processes based on ITIL best practices

ITSM – ITIL Integration and Implementation. Software Associate offers specialized engagements in the areas of Services Support and Service Delivery. The key deliverables are centered in the successful adoption of ITIL business practices and standards in the following areas:

• Incident Management
  • Categorization
  • Assignment o Escalation
  • Resolution
• Problem Management
  • Root Cause Analysis
  • Error Control
• Configuration Management
  • CMDB
  • Application Mapping
  • Updating and Maintaining Configuration Data
• Change Management
  • Request Categorization
  • Change Authorization Board (CAB)
  • Approval Definition
  • Dependencies
• Release Management
  • Package Development
  • Release Planning and Communication
  • Testing and Rollout
• Service Level Management
  • Business Service Definition and Mapping
  • Service Level Definition
  • Service Level Monitoring and Reporting
• Availability Management
• Capacity Management
• Business Continuity Management
• Security Management