Why should I have a Business Service Management (BSM) Strategy?
In our previous posts, we talked about how important it is to establish a BSM Strategy for long term BSM success.. We then talked about the first two core components of your BSM Strategy. The first component is a personal and intimate definition for what BSM means to your company. The second component of your BSM Strategy is that it’s used to set YOUR vision, YOUR value statement, YOUR governing principles and how YOUR company will use BSM to achieve value and competitive differentiation. The third component of your BSM Strategy I talked about painting a picture of how strategic business and IT initiatives will be more successful through the adoption of BSM principles because you’ve focused on everything else around the technology (people, process, workflow, culture, etc.).
The fourth component of why you need to establish a Business Service Management (BSM) strategy is one of the most important. One of the reasons long term BSM success is so very difficult to achieve is that the right level of support and commitment is seldom achieved or more often the case, not maintained. This can be for many reasons, many closely related to failing to consider the BSM Strategy topics I’ve written about so far. The BSM Strategy should create consensus and buy in within key sponsors and audiences.
Vendors, analysts and consultants are flooding the airwaves with why your company needs BSM. You’ve seen this. Every Tom, Dick and Harry has a BSM story to tell you and every listening ear in your company. I expect the BSM story to be told increasingly to direct line of business (LoB) executives. This causes unnecessary confusion, unrealistic expectations and a sense of “magic out-of-the-box” for those not properly in tune with a more established, personal and intimate BSM story for your company and business goals and objectives.
The BSM Strategy neutralizes opinions and speaks in “good for business” terms. This is important when you’ve got a very siloed organization and lack a good end-to-end service management mentality or maturity level. The network, distributed, mainframe, application, security, facilities/datacenter guys have their preferred vendors, products and tools. The guys getting the better lunches or tickets to the hockey game may be even more of an influencer in one direction or another. Your BSM Strategy should focus on the business and the goals and objectives that drives your business to success. It should focus on doing the right thing, focusing on the right results, and highlighting important business initiatives. Getting buy in for these types of things helps neutralize opinions and preferences making for a much easier “apples to apples” assessment of technology to underpin your BSM Strategy.
With the right level of agreement and support, the BSM Strategy establishes the value the initiative has for the business and that it’s not just another pet IT or business project vying for scarce budget dollars or resources. This is the mentality you must have. This is what you must convey in your BSM Strategy. BSM is so much more than the underpinning technology. It’s transformational. Yes, it’s change, but change for something that easily enables everyone to think, operate and respond different because they all have an intimate understanding of how IT and most importantly, themselves personally and their role support the business’ goals and objectives. It’s about integrating this into your culture. That’s BSM and your BSM Strategy paints this picture estblishing top to bottom, side to side buy in and fanatical support!
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