Technology Consulting

IT Infrastructure Library (ITIL)

version 3
Driving business growth through IT
Insights into high performance IT

Introduction
As a CIO today, you are under greater pressure than
ever before to produce verifiable business outcomes
that help your organization achieve and sustain
high performance.
This pressure comes from all sides. The CEO is
challenging IT to contribute demonstrably higher
shareholder value. The CFO is seeking real and
differentiated returns on IT investments. The COO
is looking to IT to reduce operating costs and make
the business more effective. And all of them want
IT to help them run a high-performance business.

Zeroing in on the pressure-
points…
The route to fulfilling this multi-
dimensional role begins by identifying
your own pressure-points. Accenture's
research and experience show that the
pressure on IT manifests itself across
three domains:
• Strategic: a requirement to support
and further the corporate strategy
by delivering relevant, innovative,
differentiated services while reducing
cost and complexity
• Operational: constant and growing
pressure to meet operational needs,
industrialize, increase flexibility and
control costs
• Credibility and relevance: the need
to close the credibility gap between
IT and the business, thereby
transforming the perception of IT's
worth and ability to deliver the right
outcomes
…with some searching questions Get the answers wrong, and you risk
All three of these pressure-points becoming marginalized into a technical
present tough challenges for any CIO. support role, and could even lose
Especially when, in the era of offshoring control of the IT service agenda. Get
and outsourcing, you and your them right, and you and your
department are facing competition for department will become a—perhaps
the role of IT provider of choice even the—cohesive driving force across the
within your own organization. As if entire organization, with a direct and
that's not enough, your job is being tangible influence on strategy
formulation and implementation.
made ever tougher by rising business
complexity, and by disconnects between
IT and the business.
Solving this situation begins by asking
yourself some searching questions—
and then finding the right answers.
Questions like:
• How do I offer innovative,
differentiated services while
reducing cost and complexity?
• How do I decide what services to
provide and how to provide them?
• How do I formulate and execute a
service strategy for high performance?

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ITIL: long heritage—growing
relevance
Over the past two decades, ITIL has
established itself as the leading
framework for managing IT in the
public and private sectors worldwide.
Launched in 1988 by the UK
Government, ITIL aimed not just to
manage servers and network equipment,
but to provide technology-related
services in a cost-efficient, reliable
manner. Since then ITIL has continued
IT Infrastructure Library (ITIL) version 3
to expand to reflect ongoing
developments. The latest version—
ITILv3—captures advances in IT
best practice over the past decade,
embedding a focus on customer
outcomes, and encompassing
innovations such as mobile and web
services. As a result, ITIL now
represents an even more relevant and
comprehensive approach for the CIO
than ever before.
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Insights into high performance IT

Moving to a service mindset

At source, all the pressure points and High-performance businesses are
questions highlighted above can be doing this already—progressing from
resolved through one action: correctly a reactive and sporadic stance to
identifying and engineering business one that focuses on outcomes, and
results that the organization wants positioning service management as a
and values. So the key lies in adopting strategic asset (see Figure 1).
and embedding a relentless focus on
outcomes for the customer. People
want access to tools that deliver
solutions to their problems. They see
IT in the same way—as a tool for
delivering the outcomes they want.
So IT needs to put customer service
and dialogue at the heart of everything
it does.

Figure 1: High performers make service management a strategic asset

Sustained,
higher value III. Business Integration
Business
Outcomes
Orientation

II. Business Alignment

Service
Orientation

Value
Creation I. Industrialize Processes

Formal IT
Processes

Business
Value
Sporadic, Creation
lower value
Reactive Predictive
Services Management Maturity

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 Realizing the value of ITIL® v3

A framework for service orientation: ITILv3

It might be possible for a CIO to rebuild
IT from the ground as a relentlessly
customer-focused organization. But
such an initiative would likely be
impractical, not to mention prohibitively
expensive. The good news is that a
ready-made, proven and widely-
applicable template is already available:
ITILv3—a framework that helps address
all three pressure-points by orientating
IT around a customer service mindset.
You may already have come across
ITIL in its version 2 incarnation. ITILv2,
developed in the 1990s, reflects that
decade's fixation on processes.
By providing globally vetted best- across the business. To do this, ITILv3
practices designed to improve quality, both expands and elevates ITIL's focus
lessen operational risks and control from processes to outcomes. To rework
costs, ITILv2 became—and remains the analogy, with version 3 ITIL goes
today—a valid and viable framework 'white-collar', and moves into the
for managing an IT function. Its scope boardroom.
was widely regarded as 'blue-collar',
since it focused primarily on operations.
However, IT operations alone cannot
shoulder the whole burden of putting
IT at the core of the business. What
is also needed—as we highlighted
above—is an approach that addresses
the other pressure points, by building
IT's strategic relevance and credibility

What is also needed is an approach that addresses

the other pressure points, by building IT's strategic
relevance and credibility across the business. To do
this, ITILv3 both expands and elevates ITIL's focus
from processes to outcomes.

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Insights into high performance IT

Towards Service Strategy

Figure 2: The ITILv3 Lifecycle—with ITIL Service Strategy at its core

ntary Publica
leme tion
omp s
C Continual service
improvement

Service D
esi
gn

ce Strag
Se

rvi
rv

Se

ey
i

ITIL
c e O pe

tion
Co impro

em vice
rat
nti ve

ent
rov ser
s i
nua me

i on

an

Tr
imp ual

e
l se nt

Servic
tin
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Con
e

Web es
Su pport Servic

By tackling IT's strategic and business These attributes means ITILv3 presents blueprint to be applied in a mechanistic
integration alongside its operations, the CIO of any major organization with way, it is designed to be a flexible
ITILv3 repositions IT as a true and a powerful framework and practical framework that can be adapted and
responsive service provider to the tools to transform the operational adopted by any organization,
business. And by putting the customer delivery capability, credibility and irrespective of industry, geographical
dialogue at the centre of IT strategy strategic relevance of IT. The structured or cultural characteristics. A key
lifecycle described above can provide success factor for ITIL has always been
and delivery, ITILv3 provides the
the CIO with a framework to turn IT that its self-optimizing capabilities,
cornerstone for bridging the gap
into a strategic asset, and to move and ITILv3 extends this advantage still
between an organization's existing IT
the entire function up the service further, by including mechanisms and
capabilities and its future vision for management continuum shown in
high performance. metrics for tracking and achieving
Figure 1—from industrialization, through
customer and business outcomes.
For the CIO it delivers still more, business alignment, to integration.
providing the crucial lever for improving ITILv3 provides the roadmap for this
service-oriented operations—and thereby journey, through a cohesive set of
ensuring IT's continued relevance to leading practices, roles and relationships
business performance and strategy. spanning the enterprise. These elements
For CIOs who have already invested in are geared to help embed a service
ITILv2, version 3 opens up opportunities mindset, guiding IT people not only in
to leverage the existing investment still their operational roles, but in their
further and expand the impact of ITIL diverse interactions with stakeholders
across all IT domains organization-wide. across the business.
As Figure 2 shows, ITILv3 achieves this However, while ITILv3 is a structured
through an iterative lifecycle of service approach, it is not rigid. Rather than
design, transition and operation. providing a prescriptive process

6

Next steps
As a CIO, you know that today's
combination of rising complexity and
intensifying scrutiny on business
performance mean you face a clear
imperative: to secure and build the
relevance and non-optional status of
IT in general and your own role in
particular. Failure to do this could well
result in a continuing decline in the
influence of IT across the enterprise.
ITILv3 provides the platform for
keeping IT at the core of the business.
Perhaps it's time to rebuild your IT
function on it.
Driving new operational
processes globally using ITILv3
In the financial services industry,
a major global banking and
investment institution, had IT
operations across many different
geographies. Its heritage of global
expansion and strong client focus had
left it with an infrastructure
environment that was highly localized.
So clients in Singapore—for example—
were handled exclusively by the
Singapore hub.
This approach had worked well over
the years, but the company had now
identified two specific problems. One
was that its geographical risk profile
was heavily concentrated at its US
headquarters, creating a need to
spread its risk more evenly across the
world. The other was that it needed to
gain greater global control of its
standard processes and tools, enabling
it to use the same leading-practice
IT Infrastructure Library (ITIL) version 3
For more information about what
ITILv3 could do to enable high
performance for your organization,
or to action an IT diagnostic that will
rate your organization's readiness for
ITILv3, please contact Michael Nieves
at michael.k.nieves@accenture.com.
mechanisms for interacting with responsibilities across the
clients in all its operations. organization. Under the new operating
model, certain components of the
These changes would bring targeted
company's service management were
benefits including economies of scale,
centralized, while others were
higher and more consistent service
decentralized to local hubs—including
quality, lower risk, and tighter control
global responsibility for some domains.
of costs. However, the client also
This approach enabled the client to
wanted to retain the clear advantages
retain its responsive customer
brought by local knowledge and client
capabilities at a local level, while also
relationships. This raised a key
realizing global economies of scale,
question about its future operating
standardized working methods,
model: how centralized should it
integrated tools and governance.
become—and how decentralized
should it stay? This new model, combining local
responsiveness and global
Using ITILv3 as the lever and roadmap
transparency driven by ITILv3, has
for change, Accenture helped the
proved so successful that it is now
client identify and implement the
being rolled out across all the client's
optimal solution. The process began
IT services worldwide.
with the application of ITILv3 to
create a new infrastructure operating
strategy. This drove the redesign
of the operating model, which in turn
drove new organizational design,
operating processes, roles and
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For more information about
what ITILv3 could do to
enable high performance
for your organization,
please contact Michael
Nieves at michael.k.nieves@
accenture.com or visit
www.accenture.com/itilv3.
Copyright © 2007 Accenture
All rights reserved.
Accenture, its logo, and
High Performance Delivered
are trademarks of Accenture.
About Accenture
Accenture is a global management
consulting, technology services and
outsourcing company. Committed to
delivering innovation, Accenture
collaborates with its clients to help
them become high-performance
businesses and governments. With
deep industry and business process
expertise, broad global resources and
a proven track record, Accenture can
mobilize the right people, skills and
technologies to help clients improve
their performance. With approximately
170,000 people in 49 countries, the
company generated net revenues of
US$19.70 billion for the fiscal year
ended Aug. 31, 2007. Its home page
is www.accenture.com.