Top 10 ITIL Benefits

ITIL, going further than improving IT service, also solves business issues. By balancing adaptability with thoroughness, a lot of organizations can take a lot of benefits from ITIL. These are 10 of the biggest gains to be made from implementing ITIL.

1. Recognition

ITIL is the world’s most accepted approach to IT service management and delivery. Organizations using ITIL include the IRS, BP, Disney and Microsoft.

ITIL is also globally recognized. A few of the prominent non-US organizations using ITIL include the Bank of Canada, British Airways and Australia Post. ITIL isn’t just well-regarded among employers; it’s well-regarded all over the world.

2. Integrates with Project Management Frameworks

One of the reasons ITIL is widely accepted, is its compatibility. ITIL is a set of best practices rather than a methodology. It also uses common concepts and terms, making it compatible with popular frameworks like PMP and PRINCE2.

3. Aligns IT and Business

ITIL isn’t just compatible with project management frameworks. It’s also compatible with a business’s goals. By running the IT department as a service provider, ITIL turns IT into a core part of the business. While ITIL doesn’t create business strategies, it does support them.

4. Minimizes Disruption

Aligning IT with a business requires IT to be stable and undisruptive. Thankfully, ITIL has a number of processes, like the ITIL incident management and problem management. They allow organizations to quickly restore services and develop effective workarounds.

5. Better Reliability

ITIL incident management and problem management processes also allow organizations to run blameless major incident reviews, eliminate root causes, and prevent incidents from reoccurring. ITIL’s emphasis on continual improvement means organizations keep getting better at reliable IT service.

6. Better Quality of Service and Customer Satisfaction

ITIL’s other processes include business relationship management and service level management. These can help your teams understand and manage customer expectations. Using the ITIL availability management process helps you ensure IT services are always available to the customer.

7. Better Environment for Change

The availability management process also allows you to drive continual service improvement. Change management is another of ITIL’s disciplines. This allows you to respond to changing requirements in an agile manner.

8. Cost Transparency

Without best practices in place, service costs can ramp up unchecked. ITIL helps you with budgeting, accounting and charging requirements. By creating metric-based strategies, the money spent on IT service is properly accounted for. This allows you to make difficult cost-cutting decisions with verifiable numbers on hand.

9. Management of Risk

When using ITIL to optimize costs, you still account for quality and risk factors. In fact, every ITIL book has a section on risk. Risk analysis and management activities appear in many processes. By carrying these out, you can identify, prioritize and manage service improvements.

10. Competitive Advantage

ITIL allows organizations to deliver value to the customer. With its emphasis on continual positive change, it’s no wonder so many organizations are adopting ITIL. After all, an agile environment allows businesses to grow. At the same time, ITIL’s checks and balances keep customer satisfaction high and warn about unnecessary risks.