Modernizing ITSM with ITIL 4: Service value system
Svetlana Zenkin, senior product marketing manager for IT Service Management at ServiceNow, contributed to this blog.
Demonstrating value is crucial to the success of any business. That's why it’s an important topic for IT service management (ITSM) service providers to consider when evaluating their service operations.
How do IT service operations align with business outcomes and customer needs? How do operational metrics correlate to business value that stakeholders want to see?
Answering these questions can be difficult. The latest release of the Information Technology Infrastructure Library—ITIL 4—puts ITSM service providers one step closer to answers by introducing the service value system. It can bring game-changing value to their services.
A history of process
When the ITIL was established in the 1980s by the Central Computer and Telecommunications Agency, it introduced a standardized approach to ITSM that emphasized efficient and predictable IT services using a set of best practices.
Versions 1 (1989) through 3 (2013) focused on ITSM processes such as incident management, problem management, and change management.
Today, technology fuels every function of an enterprise, not just IT services. Digital trends emerge daily, customer and user expectations evolve on a global scale, and agility is paramount.
The processes that worked yesterday may not work today, demanding swift and efficient adaptations from enterprises of all sizes.
From process-centric to value-driven
The ITIL’s original framework of process over value left ITSM service providers vulnerable to misalignment with real-world business outcomes and customer experiences. This rigid and siloed structure clashed with today's agile, collaborative, and value-driven business environment.
With its ability to adapt to the business world of today, ITIL 4 (2019) emerged as a transformative update to the framework.
Designed to address modern challenges, ITIL 4 champions collaboration, flexibility, and integration with contemporary business practices. Most notably, ITIL 4 looks at ITSM services from a business value perspective—encompassing people, processes, partners, and technology.
What is the service value system?
ITIL 4 includes several changes that empower ITSM service providers to deliver significant business value. Among the most effective is the service value system (SVS). It’s a comprehensive framework for creating, delivering, and continually improving services that yield value for customers and organizations.
The SVS provides a new way for ITSM—and any organization for that matter—to enhance service quality and align with business outcomes. Let’s take a high-level look at the SVS and its seven components:
1. Opportunity/demand – This serves as a catalyst for the SVS. Demand stems from customers' specific needs, such as assistance with an issue or information to complete a task. Opportunity is broader, such as an idea for a service improvement or a new product.
2. Guiding principles – ITIL 4 has seven guiding principles that help service managers rethink how they provide consistent, effective, and measurable services:
a. Focus on value
b. Start where you are
c. Progress iteratively with feedback
d. Collaborate and promote visibility
e. Think and work holistically
f. Keep it simple and practical
g. Optimize and automate
3. Governance – Establishing clear policies, roles, and processes and aligning actions with strategy and objectives help ensure oversight and accountability.
4. Service value chain – This is a set of actions, or a value stream, for a product or service delivery that converts a customer’s opportunities/demands into value. Stages include plan, improve, engage, design and transition, obtain/build, and deliver and support.
5. Practices – Organizational resources and capabilities are used to achieve objectives, categorized into dimensions such as organizations and people, information and technology, partners and suppliers, and value streams and processes.
6. Continual improvement – This emphasizes ongoing enhancement of services, processes, and practices, fostering a culture of learning and adaptation to evolving needs.
7. Value – This SVS output highlights value-based metrics. It depends on business stakeholders' perceptions of value, whether those are increased profits or decreased risks. Although the SVS doesn’t pinpoint specific metrics, it guides ITSM service providers and stakeholders to co-create value.
Activating the service value system
Understanding the SVS is only one step in an organization’s pursuit of an idyllic IT service operation. Selecting the right platform is a significant decision, as it needs to enable your team to implement with ITIL 4 SVS and evolve alongside it.
Look again at the seven components of the SVS, and you’ll notice words like value, collaboration, and adaptation repeated. We built the ServiceNow IT Service Management solution with those words in mind—plus a few more.
Terms like predictive intelligence and generative AI accelerate the service value chain by equipping teams with AI-supported tools for faster and smarter incident resolution.
Digital Portfolio Management consolidates service data from all of an organization’s applications to help reduce costs and boost performance. And Continual Improvement Management breaks down silos by aligning individuals, data, and business objectives across the enterprise, using a well-structured framework that can be scaled to fit any organization's needs.
Reinvent your IT service management
As the digital landscape continues to evolve, ITIL 4 and the SVS emerge as powerful tools to help organizations overcome the challenges of increased service demand, incidents, and system complexity.
Whether your ITSM organization is new or established, applying the SVS to your services can give you versatility to navigate these challenges, adapt to demands, and identify what business stakeholders value the most.
Reinvention doesn’t stop with the SVS. Find out more about the transformative power of ITIL 4 in our ebook: Creating customer value with ITIL 4.