Information Technology has pervaded business at all levels to the extent that businesses and organizations of all shapes and sizes cannot function without it.  And yet it’s more fundamental to an organization's health than other “facilities” such as power…IT is to an organization what the circulatory system is to the body.

Over the years the way in which IT has delivered the Services needed by the business has matured and is explained by such frameworks as ITIL or COBIT under the IT Service Management umbrella.

As you mature and improve, you set your ITIL, COBIT, CMMi frameworks in place.  You survey your customers and the ITSM machine is running nicely, plodding away, making incremental change.  What to do next?  ITSM will help align your process and improve your IT organization's internal capabilities to get work done.  What do you do when it is time to move to the next step?  How do you change the perception of your IT organization so that your business can take full advantage of your IT organization's capabilities?  Enter ITMM (IT Marketing Management), now it's time to "sell" your IT organization's capabilities, its Services and the Service Desk itself to the rest of the organization.  Get ready to learn how to sell tap water.

Overview Download of ITMM

ITMM is brought to you by the Founder of ServiceSphere Chris Dancy and SmITh Consulting.

Even though the IT Service needs of the Business have attempted to be addressed, IT is still too often seen as disconnected from  the Business and something is missing.  It is almost as if both parties are talking different languages.  ITSM has tried to provide some answers, but it is not complete.  Here below are the common Service related elements and how they interact with the business

• Service Management – what IT does to the Business
• Service Requests – what users can get from the business
• Service Levels – Agreement between the business and IT as to service delivery
• Service Catalog – What Services the business can use

The void is that there has been nothing on “HOW” the Service is actually delivered to the person who needs it.  The entire USER experience from start to finish is IT centric, and the people and users involved have changed. Gone are the individuals who sit in awe of IT professionals.  Instead users are now savvy consumers of IT where the products of the consumer market are now easy to reach and use. In their non-work environment they know what is out there and how to use it, but within an organization it’s like going back to the dark ages or a land where prehistoric giants amble about unaware of the impending meteor strike.

But the meteor has struck.  While IT still tries to enforce a locked down desktop strategy, Internet-based collaborative working is transforming how businesses talk to their customers; influencing everything from product design to innovative ways of developing the business.

And businesses need the people within the business. It needs to unlock the potential within its employees…allowing them to participate in problem solving, in the delivery of service as joint collaborators in order to make the business work. It’s like SETI for IT…harnessing the brain power experience of the users doing the job to help solve,  contribute to, and address the problems and the development of IT/business solutions.

People need to be brought into the dialogue and be ‘SOLD’ the potential by providing a Paradigm Shift in how we interact with consumers of information. Communication is the foundation for this alignment and yet is what IT is worst at doing and has never really done. ITMM provides that framework for communication, from the marketing of what is available to bringing the latest social collaboration tools into IT and Service Management in order for new solutions to be built ground up.

Please find an overview set of slides on ITMM via the following link:

• Faster responses and increased ability to compete across expanded markets
• More efficient use of resources addressing the pressures to get more done with less
• Decreased risk by more views from across the organization being taken into account
• Faster response to the constant change internally and externally
• Great potential to get it right with a common vision inside and outside of IT
  
• Faster and more valuable innovation coming from greater alignment

ITMM Fundamentals (1 Day): Workshops for IT staff presenting a foundational introduction of ITMM.  This class is designed to explain the basics of ITMM, providing a base of understanding as to what ITMM is, why it is important, the value that it delivers and how to go about making it work in your environment.  This class will cover everything from the importance of traditional & social media.

ITMM 3 Day Package: ITMM Fundamentals is designed to explain the basics of ITMM providing the oundational understanding as to what ITMM is, why it’s important, the value that it delivers and how to go about making it work, using some basic Service Management areas as the starting point for analysis.

ITMM 5 Day Package: The ITMM 5 day workshop goes into more depth than the Fundamentals workshop which sets the scene for ITMM. This workshop starts putting ITMM into practice and making it work for the organization.

ITMM 10 Day Package: The ITMM 10 day workshop goes into more depth than the 3 day Fundamentals workshop which sets the scene for ITMM or the 5 day workshop around Incident Management. This workshop puts ITMM into practice and making it work for the organization around the core set of ITIL elements.

To find out more specifically how SmITh Consulting can help your organization, please call or email!