Commercial enterprises all over the world are putting their best foot forward when it comes to complying with ITIL Certification practices. The method used by organizations to improve their IT service management structure. Several factors determine whether this is a cost-reduction initiative or a proven way for organizing department and improving customer service. Initiatives were taken for improvement and correspondingly their implementation can be deemed successful if the results are manifested in the form of a stable and steady working environment.
Coming with its own set of standards the ITIL framework offer room for customization in a way that organizational requirements. You need to understand that there is no one-size-fits-all IT methodology. Organizations that have become part of ITIL standards or best practices serve customers by providing IT services and solutions. In a contemporary stiff competitive setting, all companies are ready to capitalize on every single opportunity to make progress. IT professionals are faced with daily challenges to meet customer urgent needs.
The best way to apply process or practice is important. Hence, you need to find the reason -why is it necessary and what should be done in the end? What challenges and how do you face in the current environment? You need to determine who is responsible and what is being done to solve it. All these questions and many other questions are initially important to understand the problem before finding a solution.
My experience has shown that the best way to apply changes and follow methodological standards is to form a team first. For example, this is called a CoE team. You need to select and define the key stakeholders that will be part of the CoE team. The team members are dedicated to gathering the information needed to list issues and issues. It is also important to assess and identify areas that need improvement and the differences that will be affected if changes are made.
There are always several ways to investigate a problem and how to solve it. The Center of Excellence team must have the ability to distinguish between the two problems: identifying problems and defining action plans to solve them quickly and permanently.
In my recommendation, the implementation of the ITIL framework should function as a step-by-step and step-by-step process. The first step in implementing the optimal support model that meets your needs is to set up a service desk. Roles and responsibilities within the service desk need to be clearly defined; levels of support and customer engagement (internal and external) and escalation processes are required. Communication is key to a successful organization. Therefore, no action should be taken to improve the quality of service within the silo, and it should be advertised in key areas, especially if affected by changes.
A proper service desk model requires three levels of support and should consist of the following teams:
- Basic understanding of Level 1-IT functions
- Level 2 resources-Beginner, Intermediate, Adult
- Level 3-subject matter expert, manager, vendor support
Once levels, roles, and responsibilities are clearly defined, appropriate resources must be placed under each bucket. In addition, the service desk model requires several layers of management that not only help manage team members but also help organize client and support areas.
Responsibilities and Roles
Service Delivery Manager roles are assigned to assist client relationships. This individual is responsible for dealing with the client and managing the SLA. They ensure accurate customer service and ensure that it meets their expectations. Track service shortages and seize every opportunity for improvement.
The role of the incident manager is to have an incident and ensure that it is resolved in a timely manner. The service desk team reports directly to the incident manager who oversees the three key clients responsible for the L1, L2, and L3 support groups.
The service desk’s first level support office is the first perfect contact for customers. Receive issues by ticket, email, or phone, understand the severity of the issue and escalate to the next level. Ideally, the Tier 1 team should also have access to a Knowledge Base (CMDB) that contains a list of known solutions for common incidents. In this way, you can solve the most common problems at the first level without taking time from skilled experts at level 2 and level 3.
The communication level must always match the customer exactly and must be owned by the first level team. You are also responsible for processing the ticket from opening to closing. This ensures that the customer is always informed of the problem status.
The Service Desk Level 2 Support team will handle incidents raised by the Level 1 team and begin working on them immediately until a solution is found. The team consists of intermediate to advanced engineers. The goal is to restore a failed IT service as soon as possible. If no solution is found, Level 2 support goes to an incident to the Level 3 support team.
The Level 3 support team consists of senior management, including other professionals working with hardware or software manufacturers. Their goal is to resolve problems and services as quickly as possible. If necessary, external support is requested from software and hardware manufacturers.
Escalation Process
Escalation must strictly follow two types of escalations in the incident management program. In other words, one is functional escalation and the other is a hierarchical escalation. Job escalation takes place between levels of support, distinguished by knowledge, experience, and expertise. Hierarchical escalation is done by involving different levels of management depending on the severity and priority of the escalation.
Case priority and severity
It is imperative to consider the severity and priority and assess the impact and urgency of the incident. With clear risk and priority levels, Level 1 support teams can be very helpful in deciding how to handle incidents and when to move to the next level of support.
A manual or automatic monitoring system must be established. This helps level 1 teams search for alerts or errors. In some areas of IT, monitoring is implemented by setting up scripts to look for process or functional faults and sending emails and text alerts to mobile phones. Applications such as batch task, ETL function, hardware failure, office space, the memory threshold.
Establishing a good monitoring system is very productive for the Tier 1 support model.
One of the many derivatives of ITIL is that it has a knowledge base. This will help you track and resolve all incidents. This is very helpful for Tier 1 as well as other service desk teams, by searching the past incident history stored in this knowledge base to find decisions.
Implementing and managing changes and processes is never easy. The ITIL V4 Certification Course is no exception and may not be an easy task, but it is not impossible. It’s less complicated if the team responsible for implementation understands the details at all levels and takes rigorous steps to ensure that nothing is overlooked during the implementation lifecycle of the change process. Planning, implementation, implementation, and permanent practice-everyone must be involved in the success of the process from the beginning. It is very important that communication is clear and that key personnel are always in the loop. Changing the organization is not easy, but if done in a systematic way, the complexity is reduced and anyone affected can see it as a positive change that limits resistance.
