Assurant Inc.

Information technology (IT) can be defined as the set of all activities and solutions provided by specialized people working over customized computing resources aimed at the production,  storage, transmission, access, security, rearrangement, and use of information. Normally, it is offered as a service whose conceptions as customer, users, warranty, utility, and value should be clearly defined.

The success of those services is directly connected with how they are managed and delivered. It also defines if its outcome should be, or not, integrated with the value that the company is delivering to its customers. This integration can be named 'role,' and understanding the role that IT is playing in the entire organization is crucial to define how much effort, time, and money must be spent on their management.

‘Regardless of whether IT in your organization is operational or not, getting more efficient IT services will result in benefits anyway.’

The business model, as well as the operational model, can help you identify this role; one of the common approaches is recognizing the position that IT has in your organization. The closer to the core business, the more strategic the role will be; on the other hand, the further away, the more operational it will be. If your organization understands that the money they spend on technology is classified as cost, it is a good hint that the IT is operational. Furthermore, talking about organizational structure and relevance, as well as whether your products or services are based on digital technology, are also good tips for talking about digital businesses.

It doesn’t matter what role IT is playing; organizations around the world are looking for operational excellence and/or business enablers for their IT. This efficiency of IT service management can be achieved using a framework as a reference, which can guide on how to save time and money, avoiding several attempts to obtain a set of suitable configurations for different organizational scenarios. Regardless of whether IT in your organization is operational or not, getting more efficient IT services will result in benefits anyway. For example, in operational mode, it will gain user satisfaction; in strategic mode, IT will result in better services that your organization will provide to end customers.

Keeping the focus on the value should be a good approach to eliminate silos, which are one of the issues that prevent success when we are talking about services (because we expect integration between different specialized teams). Teams and Silos are common words, and their conceptions are easy to find. However, the question is about the conception of value and how we can translate efforts into benefits perceived by the consumer.

Using the definition given by some frameworks, value can be defined as ‘The perceived benefits, usefulness, and importance of something.’ Following the subject of this article, the value that we are discussing here is the IT Service, and it must be perceived by its consumers if they are or are not part of the organization. Also, if we are talking about value, another question may come up regarding the difference between value and price. If we compare those two conceptions, the price is what you are paying to get the value. In other words, the price is low if the value is high, and the opposite is also true: the price is high if you do not perceive the value.

Now we can better understand the expression, ‘keeping the focus on the value,’ which means that all activities performed in business or operational processes that are part of the service offering should be evaluated based on the final performance of the service and not only on the output of each step.

Using the correct version of a framework is the key to quick success in IT services management. It doesn’t matter if your IT services are operational or strategic; no one wants to waste time, resources, or money. This is why a framework can help since it is not a model that has to be followed to get an expected result (as a cake recipe) but a best practices library

that works well in different organizations in different countries, cultures, and markets.

In my perception, digital transformation is the direction that some organizations are taking to move their own IT Services from operational to strategic position, and digital technologies are helping them to be more profitable by adding different products or services that were not possible without the use of them. Obviously, there are some projects that will support that transition, but they cannot be classified as digital transformation by themselves. Again,  having a clear understanding of the role IT is playing in your organization is the key to success in the digital era because subjects like information security, business reliability,  privacy, IT service management, and so on, are also addressed by this kind of project and should be part of the agenda of any kind of professionals that are looking for excellence.