The literature of the IT Service Management Forum declares that: “Providers of IT services can no longer afford to focus on technology and their internal organization; they now have to consider the quality of the services they provide and focus on the relationship with customers.”
This is something to keep in mind if you have talent and training for a career in IT but don’t have a solid understanding of the business side of the services you will render. You technical expertise may have carried you a ways into your career thus far, but in time you will probably find that being great with technology isn’t enough if you don’t fully understand how that technology will ultimately be used.
There’s a variety of additional training you might consider pursuing in order to make the transition from being a mere provider of IT services to being a provider of IT services that are integrated into the needs and business practices of your organization or that of your clients.
On one hand, there is business analyst training and online IT training courses for a number of more specific fields like quality analyst and business data analyst. These forms of training and certification may help you to acquire a body of knowledge that is separate from but closely related to your existing IT training and expertise. Especially if you’re the sort of person who has strong analytical skills and can discover on your own the tie-ins between one field and another, business analyst training may directly impact your approach to IT service management.
But if you would rather go straight for the sort of training that spells out the connections between IT functions and the needs of business clients, ITIL training might be the way to go. Information Technology Infrastructure Library training is designed specifically in accordance with the needs and expectations of that IT service management industry that is so explicitly focused on “relationships with customers.”
ITIL training may seem particularly worthwhile if you haven’t yet begun the transition from your broader IT career to IT service management, or if you’re not sure where your expertise will be utilized in the coming years. That is, ITIL training provides trainees with knowledge of general best practices for their field with the understanding that those processes and procedures may be integrated into any number of organizations in a number of different ways.
The fact is that there is a learning curve involved, no matter which route you take. If you pursue Information Technology Infrastructure Training and you’re not yet sure of how your specific organization handles IT service management, you’ll have to put some time into learning that, as well. Meanwhile, if you don’t think your organization uses ITIL practices or you prefer to undertake business analyst training and figure out for yourself how to link IT services to business outcomes, then you’ll probably be engaged in some trial and error before you get it just right.
If you have the time and ability to do so, of course the best pathway to success in IT service management is to acquire a broad range of training that includes ITIL as well as other relevant certifications. No matter how well trained you are, there’s also a role for talent, personal analysis, and initiative, but the broader your body of IT and business knowledge is, the more knowledge you’ll be able to draw on in making your IT services as customer-oriented as possible.