Why should I have a Business Service Management (BSM) Strategy?
The industry is awash in marketing speak, rhetoric and hoopla on what BSM is. Nearly every vendor and analyst has established their own definition trying to position BSM as they see it or as their product and technology portfolio attempts to bring it to life. Most try to explain some fundamental capability, feature or function that BSM must or should have. Analysts are now even beginning to tout what the next generation of BSM or BSM 2.0 may look like. Heck, I’ve even proposed my own working definition for what I think BSM is. I’m always thinking and expanding my thoughts here and will introduce a whole new way of thinking about BSM in 2009.
The first of four reasons you should have a BSM Strategy is that it will be used to clearly define what BSM is for your company in your own words – not your vendor’s, consultant’s or some analyst’s definition. Put all the crap out there into a clear, concise definition for your company, your business unit, your IT organization. Let your company’s business goals and objectives, culture, technology and maturity influence and add clarity to what BSM means to you. List the expected capabilities, features, functions that you expect to leverage and why they’re important to your BSM strategy. Ensure that you can link your definition of BSM to some higher level business goal, objective, mission statement, campaign or initiative in some way.
In the end, establishing your own definition for what BSM means to your company will help you develop a BSM Strategy that can stand the tests of time, vendor or analyst messaging changes and the ever present risks of competitive vendors in the market. Trust me, everyone “seems” to have a better gee-whiz BSM thing vying for the attention of your executives and your decreasing IT budget dollars. You do not want business and IT executives to be easily swayed by cool sounding technology, eye candy, quick fixes or an apparent “cheaper” solution. The BSM Strategy will help business and IT executives to “see” things more clearly with the right focus for the business and company hopefully minimizing the risks of jumping at an opportunity that may not fit into what BSM means to the company.
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