ITIL Helps Organizations Become More Efficient – A Real Life Case at SKILup Days 2024

Hi, everybody. My name is Melvin Gonzalez, and I would like to present today, uh, how Idle helps organizations to become more efficient, more, and I will present in a real life case about how this works. I have been in the industry for over 28 years now, and, uh, I started working with title since 2003.

Um, and besides being an instructor and, uh, a consultant, uh, I have been working with title in, in, in organizations, in, in how to implement it, uh, to do it in real life, to, to, to achieve results, to learn from, from mistakes, and, uh, and hopefully all that knowledge, um, it will be available for you today. What I would like to, to talk about, um, today is about how the concepts of idle, especially, um, value strings, can help organizations to arrange their processes to achieve their goals, and especially to create value. Um, to give you a little bit of context about this, uh, real life case, this is about a large Central America financial company.

Um, like a year ago, they, uh, had three big initiative in three different business areas. Uh, these areas are enterprise architecture, which is, you know, the entire area of enterprise architecture, obviously, uh, uh, responsible to create and maintain and, and envision the, the business architecture. Uh, then you have the business continuity that originally, uh, was an, uh, an area and now this, uh, business area has merged or has been absorbed by the risk management, um, area.

So the business continuity, uh, initiative is about to have, obviously, you know, the entire business continuity plan, business continuity strategy, and then a business continuity, um, tool, uh, and, and, and technological tool to manage the entire business continuity processes and plans. And finally, we have the information technology area, or department, or unit, whatever you wanna call it. In this case, they started like, uh, more than a year ago, uh, about to think of how to arrange all their IT management processes, uh, in order to become more efficient.

And, uh, they had been planning to acquire an IT SM tool, uh, with these tools in Martin, obviously, to manage the, the, the common it, uh, service management, um, uh, processes. So at some point of time, and because of, uh, a couple of audits that they run internally, um, they found that there are some contact points between these three, uh, initiatives. So, uh, at some point in time, actually, they were trying to acquire different tools, uh, to meet the, the requirements for each area separately.

Now, uh, when they found, due to this audit, when they found that there are some common areas, that's where, where they invited me to take a look, uh, see what they have in common, and how actually can be this initiative get integrated. And that's the story, that's the idea. So, uh, what I did is try to understand the requirement for each business area, uh, understand what is important for these three areas, uh, which are, like I said, one of those are it, but the other two, the other two are in the business area below the general manager manager.

Um, so try to understand those requirements and trying to understand the vision, the idea, the purpose, the objectives that these areas have or have actually, uh, at this, at this time, and trying to merge that with the initiative from it. So, uh, before going, um, any further, uh, some of the, the problems that we found at the moment that I, uh, start working with them on this particular, uh, uh, challenge that I will like to call it challenge, is that, uh, we found that there are, there is work duplication and actually that application, because in, in some cases, in order to feed up or to, to, you know, to populate data in one database, in one of the, of the systems, the same data with some minor, you know, difference, we're storing another database, but these two database are not synchronized, uh, is not validated, validated whether the, the same data, uh, what store exactly the same data in the other database. So for instance, in this database, the name is, uh, IBM, and in the other database is IBM company.

So there's a difference, although, uh, they try to say the, the, the same thing. So this lack of integration for me was the main problem. Now, the main pain, the main pain for the business is how slow are they?

And, and this were, uh, this was, uh, you know, uh, vocalized by the, by the managers of the business, uh, that these systems that these separated systems, um, provide low quality data, and especially data that is not updated on real time. So, uh, in one of the scenarios, which is the business architecture, in order for you to have an idea, uh, they sent an Excel file or Excel spreadsheet or some area to populate that, Excel that area, complete the Excel, fulfill the Excel, send it back, and they asked for the same Excel three months later. So during that, uh, time period, things could change, but this area have three month old information to make decisions.

So, uh, uh, obviously this is an, is this is not a good, uh, ary for, uh, decision making. So what was the challenge, or what is the challenge? Because, because we haven't, uh, we haven't done this, uh, entirely.

We are still in progress, and we are seeing results now, but there are, there are some way to go. Uh, yet the cha the big challenge were to, or, or was to integrate this initiative and to satisfy the requirement from three different areas. Obviously, each area, uh, wants to, you know, be sure that all the requirements are met, but at the same time, when you are looking for integration, well, uh, maybe somebody has to, you know, uh, look for the middle ground, right?

Uh, in order to, to, to, to, uh, please or to satisfy most of the requirements. So, before going in the, into the details of the project, um, just to have all the audience, uh, you know, on the same page about the language and the concepts, uh, I, I, I will let me, uh, to explain these, uh, these concepts at very high, uh, a very high level. Uh, the first one is enterprise architecture.

Enterprise architecture is about how, um, business processes are supported by, uh, it that is basically, and please forgive me, you know, all of you that are familiar or are experts in, in business, uh, in enterprise architecture, uh, I know that I am being very, you know, very high level or very simplistic, uh, in explaining this. But basically that's, that's what it is, is, uh, you have the business processes, and then you have all the IT that support those, uh, business processes. Uh, so business architecture is created on layers.

You have the business processes, you have, uh, data, uh, which is, you know, the data that business processes interchange, uh, each other. And then you have the it, uh, applications, the IT systems, whatever you want to call it. And in those systems, you have the, the application layer, and then you have the infrastructure or technology layer, right?

Uh, which is, you know, all the, uh, servers and network and things like that. So this is very simple. In very simple terms.

Uh, enterprise architecture create a map between the business processes and the it, uh, that support those, those business processes. The second concept is about business continuity, uh, as the main states. Business continuity is about the continuation of business processes, business operations, whenever a disaster, uh, comes along, right?

So, uh, you can have disasters, uh, created by, by, by human or created by nature, right? Uh, in, in, in case of a disaster created by human lately. And this is, you know, worldwide, we have the cyber, cyber attacks and the cyber, uh, criminals that, uh, really are impacting businesses all over the, the, the place.

So, uh, businesses has to be prepared to recover from a very large, you know, interruption. Let's put it in that way. In this case, again, business has to work with it, especially in those companies where it is, uh, uh, is critical for the business operations.

So in that case, um, you will have obviously, uh, the business and the first of all, and the, the priority number one is to, uh, ensure people safety. You know, the people. So protect the people, save the people, and then we see how the building is, and, and then we see how the, IT is working.

First, the, then you have to manage ones that you are sure that you know, people are safe and is, uh, located in, in, in a better place to continue working. Uh, you have to resume the, the business operations. And in this case, in some cases, you can, you know, proceed without it.

In some cases, you can do manual work and, and do, you know, some sort of labor, uh, without the IT component. In other cases, the IT services are critical, uh, in order to continue the, the, the business. So that's how, you know, these concepts are, uh, or, or come, uh, together to really, uh, allow the business to continue after a disaster.

And finally, we have the IT service management, um, IT service management, which is the general concepts and idle, uh, from people. Service is the, um, the, the, the, uh, you know, the most common and, and accepted framework for IT. Service management is, um, is a group of components in a service value system that work together to create value through IT services.

And that value is for the business. So that's the other part, right? As you know, the IT services has to create value, has to, you know, allow, allow, allow the, the, the, the value, uh, reach the business, uh, through it.

So in this case, um, this is a, you know, a small view, a, a very narrow view, actually, about what ITSM is. But this give you an idea of the most common practices of ITSM, you know, NC management, uh, change management, the, uh, service catalog, the service desk. Those are some practices, uh, well known, uh, on the, on the, on the service management, uh, eh, concept.

So, and perhaps this is the main, uh, main, let's say the, the principle or the, or the key slide that I want to show you today. Um, this is the big picture. This is where all the three initiative merge, uh, and combine and, and, and work together.

So basically what you are seeing here is that you have the enterprise architecture that, as you saw in the previous slide, uh, is about the business processes, and then it, right? Business processes it, and then you have it, you have the IT TSM, where it started from the IT services. Yeah.

And IT services are, um, comprised by, uh, IT applications, IT infrastructure, all their, uh, external IT services. So, uh, when you try to manage the enterprise architecture, which has a large component in it, it is important to understand that this other layer right here is managed by it SM. So this is very natural.

This is, this is something that is, uh, very easy to understand in a, in a busy, uh, in a busy, no, in, in a business, uh, wide perspective, right? And, and when you're trying to understand what is happening down there, most of the, um, tools for enterprise architecture are focused on, you know, create the vision of the architecture, identify the opportunities, uh, identify, you know, the, um, uh, transition architectures, uh, manage the, the change from one architecture to another architecture. And, uh, govern, govern all of that.

Meanwhile, the IT TSN is worried about that all these IT services are working, are working according to, uh, expected, uh, um, service levels, uh, that any change to these services are, um, release without any, uh, problem to the business and et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. On the left hand side, you have business continuity. Business continuity has two parts.

One part, like you saw in previous slide is, you know, have the people safe, uh, from, from a disaster. And that's the first thing. It has nothing or very little to do with that.

And then when you try to restore to resume the business operations there is where it, uh, you know, uh, came into the game. In order to do that, we need to have this mapping from business processes to it, because if you want to continue the business, you need to continue those business processes that are critical for the success of the business. Those are the, the, the main processes that has to be resumed, uh, with high level priority, uh, in order for the business to do at least the core business.

Some other processes, some other business processes, you know, can be restored later on. But, uh, it's very important for the business to restart, to resume to, uh, to, to start working again in at least those core business processes that support the business service. So this picture give you an idea of on how these three areas work together, and that's what we did.

That's, uh, when, when we work with this, uh, with this institution, with this, with this, uh, financial organization, we, um, have the entire team understanding this idea. So in order to, um, make this, uh, real, what we did is to understand the value stream, which this is a new concept in this particular, uh, client of mine. Uh, obviously they, they came from, you know, where, where you talk about processes and processes, but most of the time it's about isolated processes.

Uh, so in this case, we bring the concept from idle, uh, and, and ask them to think about value streams where there is a requirement, and then you have a final result that meet that requirement, that satisfy, you know, that requirements, hence creating value. So in this, it's like, what you can see is that, uh, from, for any change in the business, you know, normal change or any change in the, in the business, new service, new process, uh, process improvement, uh, creating a new area in the business, whatever, um, that happens, it is important that there isn't an alignment, you know, and strategic and operational alignment between the business requirements and the IT services that support those, uh, those requirements. Then you work in creating, uh, modifying, updating, adjusting the, the service, uh, the IT services that you have, or if you have to create a new one, uh, well, you will do it.

Uh, we'll construct that service taking into account enterprise architecture, business continuity, security, capacity, availability, and other factors. Then the service, uh, goes into operations where hopefully if that service was well, uh, designed and construct, uh, and built, sorry, uh, that is from the Spanish, uh, and built, uh, hopefully during the operation, we'll have the resilience that the business requires. So in this, uh, part of the, of the, of the string or the of the flow, uh, we will build the business, uh, resilience, and we're able to achieve this.

We will create value for the business. So at this point of time, where are we in the, in the, in the project? We already did this.

We already have everybody on board. Everybody understood the requirements from the areas, and we understood that these concepts can be merged and be, uh, integrated thanks to the idle, um, the idle practices and the idle overall idea about, um, extreme values and value stream. Sorry.

Okay. So, uh, in order to recap what, uh, have we learned, uh, as, as far as today, is that we needed to think in value streams instead of processes in isolated processes. The other thing is very important, the ILE principle of collaboration.

Uh, and, and I can tell you, uh, from, from real experience, this is not an slogan. This, this is true. Uh, when you have different people, different areas, different groups, uh, within the business, uh, that they work, uh, in as isolation, you cannot achieve this type of results.

There is no way that you can achieve this type of results because of the value stream, you know? So, uh, different interested from different areas has to work, uh, in a real collaboration where everybody, uh, gets, um, the benefits that they're are looking for. And where sometimes, perhaps most of the time, uh, we need to negotiate and agree that some requirements, uh, won't be met or, or that will be made, uh, partially in order to see the entire, or the bigger, the bigger picture, right?

The, the entire forest, not the single tree. And finally, with all of this, and, and I mentioned in a couple of time, but I didn't get into deep in that, uh, in that, uh, concept in particular, all of these has to be supported by tools, by IT tools, IT management tools. So in order to manage the business architecture, in order to manage the business continuity, and in order to manage the IT service management.

So in this case, uh, following the I principle of, uh, optimize and out auto optimize, um, you need to be sure that the process and the, and the value streams is optimized, that the roles are well assigned, that everybody's aware about, uh, what they need to do, and then look for, you know, uh, automation of these, um, individual and, and, and, and combined processes into value streams. Okay? So, uh, I think tying is up.

So, uh, thanks for, uh, having me today. I really want to, to thank, uh, people serve, uh, to, to ask me to, to do this presentation today and, uh, to take, uh, take strong to, you know, make all this thing, uh, possible. Thank you very much.

See you the next time.