Why ITIL is essential for the IT industry

The Information Technology Infrastructure Library (ITIL) offers IT business owners, managers, and professionals with a series of valuable guidelines for helping define, manage, and improve one’s IT operations. As a result, tech businesses often experience streamlined processes and greater levels of efficiency once implementing ITIL practices, making it one of the most sought-after frameworks today.

ITIL also attempts to establish a more harmonic relationship between one’s business and IT systems, aligning both their needs in an effort to deliver better IT services and improved customer experience.

As of now, four different versions of the ITIL®framework have been released. We take a closer look at its most recent certifications (ITIL 3 and ITIL 4) and how it benefits both business systems and individual IT professionals.

The importance of ITIL for IT businesses

Improve service delivery and quality

ITIL aims to standardise and provide structure to one’s IT business operations – including the planning, delivery, and maintenance of their IT products and services. Its aim to is to increase productivity and efficiency by ensuring all processes run as smoothly as possible, leading to better service quality and customer experience.

For example, the fourth version of the ITIL framework (ITIL 4) comprises 34 practices that aim to improve the performance of general management, service management, and technical management. It establishes four important dimensions of service management:

• Organisations and people

• Value streams and processes

• Information and technology

• Partners and suppliers

The framework further provides IT professionals with the tools to incorporate new approaches such as DevOps, automation, the cloud, and microservices into their business. All this helps improve the process of the overall IT service lifecycle, while helping workers understand the needs of their customers better.

Manage risk and minimise disruption

By improving the overall management of one’s IT services, the ITIL framework can also help successfully mitigate risk and disruptions. Its practices also focus on equipping teams with the right incident management tools and techniques, ensuring they’re well prepared in preventing potential disruptions, investigating causes, and restoring services when necessary.

Additionally, ITIL places importance on continual service improvement, helping workers ensure the constant efficiency of their IT operations. This involves the continuous introduction of service improvements and new policies to help boost productivity. Both ITIL 3 and ITIL 4, in particular, offer frameworks that involve a critical look into constant service improvements, monitoring, and incident management.

All this effectively reduces the potential for operational IT risks, saving time and finances wasted on diagnosing and repairing common technological issues. As such, businesses can instead place their efforts on improving both customer and user experience.

Establish more cost control

On top of improving operational efficiency, ITIL also aims to boost financial management. The framework offers you the tools to cut on overhead costs, ensuring you only pay for the software, equipment, and services your business needs. This effectively allows you to “cut the fat” from your organisation, helping you save money while at the same time enhancing your IT operations.

Additionally, the management techniques that ITIL provides equips you with the skill to accurately calculate and budget for your business investments. Its strategies are often metric-based, giving you the hard numbers necessary to provide a clear overview of your company’s financial health, to help you make critical financial (or cost-cutting) decisions, and to help ensure you stay within your business budget.

Having a more transparent view of your IT costs while being able to exercise more control can help you reduce any unnecessary expenses while making better use of the resources you already have available.

Support organisational change

Finally, the popularity of ITIL also lies in its ability to help support organisational change. The ITIL 3 framework specifically holds “Service Transition” as a core concept, exploring the best practices in change management while helping guide IT professionals through environmental disruptions and changes.

ITIL 4 also supports this under their service management practices, which include areas of business analysis; service design and continuity; and change enablement.

By offering proper guidance in navigating business change, organisations can evolve as needed while still maintaining a stable service environment. This allows for more efficient growth, development, and innovation with minimal risk and business downtime.

The benefits of studying ITIL

Acquire standout IT skills for the job market

A knowledge of ITIL is also considered valuable among individual IT professionals, as it equips them with sought-after skills among potential employers. The tools and techniques learnt through ITIL’s frameworks could help transform you into a more efficient, effective, and productive tech worker, able to deliver greater business outcomes and innovative customer experiences.

Additionally, ITIL certifications are considered some of the most valuable qualifications in the IT industry. In fact, they ranked among Robert Half’s 29 most valuable IT certifications in 2022, alongside certifications in data science, cyber security, and cloud computing.

Boost business efficiency

As mentioned, studying ITIL can help you rake in better business results, helping you grow and evolve your company in a shorter span of time.

Positive impacts on business efficiency include the ability to manage change more effectively, reduce unnecessary costs while maximising resources, improved service delivery, enhanced customer experience, and the ability to keep track of performance metrics at a consistent and accurate level. By getting ITIL-certified, you’re sure to establish yourself as a highly valuable, sought-after employee.

According to The Balance, ITIL certification ranked as “best for business needs” with “high average salaries” among its many advantages.

Speak a common language with other IT professionals

Lastly, learning ITIL grants you the convenience of speaking a “common language” among other IT experts, particularly those in the Information Technology Service Management (ITSM) field. This can lead to greater collaboration, flexibility in your role, and a greater overview of internal IT operations.

By being able to easily communicate with other IT professionals, you’ll be able to foster an IT environment of growth, innovation and change with greater ease.

Learn the ropes of ITIL today!

A solid grasp of the ITIL framework can help provide a clearer, more productive approach to managing your IT business to success.

Lumify Learn currently offers an IT Service Management Professional bootcamp course; a brief program designed to arm you with the fundamentals of ITIL. Delve in to the core concepts, principles, and practices of the ITIL 4 Foundation framework, and prepare yourself for globally-recognised certification.

Boost your IT operations today, and enquire with us on the course.