ITIL and BPM

ITIL (IT Infrastructure Library) is a best practices methodology for many of the core IT processes (see list below). Traditionally, companies have bought products to handle the different components of ITIL. One of the processes which was never well addressed was change management. Most companies struggle with tracking and documenting change to their existing IT infrastructure.

But, the opportunities for process management in IT are many - tracking software licenses so you can re-use them rather than buy new ones, asset tracking, program management, and now SLA (service level management) is a key one.

If you don’t have these different systems today, using ITIL as a process framework and then building out a custom solution using a BPMS makes a lot of sense. But, in many cases, your company already has several standalone systems. Then BPM has a different value proposition which is to connect the white space around your existing environment. It can either use ITIL as the governing approach or simply connect your multiple processes for efficiency, data quality, and visibility.

The added benefit of using BPM for IT process is that your IT team can become familiar with the concept, learn the technology, and be a better service provider. As we learned long ago on the business side, establishing metrics is one thing but capturing them, reporting on them, and meeting our SLAs is a whole other challenge.

Fortunately, one of the people on our team was a practitioner and subsequently a trainer of ITIL. He has put together a great example of using ITIL in a BPMS using Appian Enterprise. If interested in seeing the demonstration, let us know. E-mail me at gvanantwerp@talisentech.com.