Here at Dyrand Systems, we’ve been helping businesses in the Vancouver area and beyond with their IT challenges since 2001. One of the ways we can achieve this is by becoming recognized experts in our field — thought leaders that small and mid-sized business owners can turn to and rely on for long-term IT support. We employ an established, defined set of best practices, referred to as ITIL, to guarantee the delivery of professional, high-quality services to our clients.
What Is ITIL?
There’s never a shortage of baffling acronyms in the world of business technology, so let’s get started with an explanation of what ITIL is and how it works. ITIL stands for Information Technology Infrastructure Library. It’s a standardized framework that governs the selection, planning, delivery and management of IT-related services to businesses. The primary focus of ITIL is to align IT services with business-specific goals.
Enterprise technology is complicated, and with such a diverse range of available services, the need for standardization is neverending. ITIL was invented to ensure consistent practices across the entire IT service lifecycle, from initial service selection to ongoing maintenance.
ITIL 2011, the most recent version, comprises five volumes that cover the core areas of enterprise IT, such as software asset management and service delivery.
Better Alignment between IT and Business Goals
Given the increasing complexities of information technology in the workplace, there’s always a strong possibility of having technology end up working against you. Without the right system in place, your bottom line could be severely affected. For example, if you don’t have the right portfolio of services at your disposal, you’ll end up with lower productivity, more IT support requests, and increased staff training requirements.
There’s no such thing as a one-size-fits-all approach, as all businesses have unique goals and requirements. Aligning business with IT requires a strategic approach that is best delivered through a standardized methodology and continual improvement, such as the one ITIL provides. By providing an organizational roadmap, ITIL helps you build an IT infrastructure tailored to the unique needs of your organization.
Maintain a Stable Service Environment
Modern businesses depend heavily on their IT, so having a stable infrastructure that you can rely on 24/7 is critical for the success of the company. That means you need systems that don’t have any single point of failure and can recover quickly from a disaster. Furthermore, every organization also needs to have a degree of flexibility when implementing an infrastructure so quick changes are possible without causing unnecessary service disruption.
One of the core tenets of the ITIL framework is improved service quality. To that end, there are five core process areas: service strategy, design, transition, operations, and continual improvement. All these processes are iterative and designed to help you integrate support with your business strategies while monitoring and optimizing performance throughout.
ITIL defines the best practices for managing your technology systems to ensure consistency and quality. For example, it provides clearer visibility into all your IT assets which, in turn, helps you identify assets that are reaching the end of their lifecycles or might be having issues keeping up with demand. The framework also helps improve reliability through business performance reviews and ongoing problem management.
Setting Your Business Up for Future Success
Every IT challenge can be met through alignment and stability, and that’s why ITIL keeps your business on track for long-term success. By focusing on business agility and constant improvement, it provides a dynamic framework that will grow and adapt with your business.
ITIL also ensures that your business can react quickly to the constant changes in the technology landscape, keeping your organization one step ahead of the competition. As a result, your employees will be better equipped to do their jobs, your customers will be happier with the improved support, and your business will be able to reduce costs and optimize resource usage.
How to Implement ITIL the Right Way
Many business leaders make the mistake of placing their focus purely on technology itself rather than looking at the bigger picture. ITIL addresses this common problem, but it’s also necessary to implement it at every level of your organization, and that’s not easy unless you are an expert in the field.
However, by partnering with an ITIL-certified service provider, you’ll be able eliminate the challenges of trying to take care of everything in-house. Instead, you’ll be able to get back to your job and let those who know best take care of your IT.
Dyrand is proud to be a certified follower of the industry-leading ITIL framework. If you’d like to learn more about how we can help implement worry-free IT for your company, give us a call today.