ITIL (Information Technology Infrastructure Library) is a public framework for businesses to improve how they plan, deliver, support and enhance IT services.
It is the most widely used framework of its kind in the world ITIL is used by large corporates such as Microsoft and Shell.
But what exactly does ITIL 'do' to benefit your business?
The current version of the ITIL is the third and most streamlined, consisting of five books which each look at different processes within IT service: ITIL Service Strategy, ITIL Service Design, Service Transition, ITIL Service Operation and Continual Service Improvement.
Once they have been improved using ITIL’s methodology, it should effect a significant change in your business.
The ITIL is effective primarily because of its move away from the ‘reactive’ methods of IT service management of the past, which dealt with problems or issues as they occurred and therefore detracted from the amount of time spent actually working as opposed to dealing with problems.
ITIL works by creating clearer and more forward-thinking processes that allows potential issues to be envisaged and the daily operation of the department much smoother.
The advantages of having ITIL best practices and elements of the framework in place in your business are excellent, particularly regarding staff. Staff retention is improved by ITIL which not only reduces the need to recruit new staff members but also decreases the cost of training. Recruitment itself is also simplified as employing ITIL-trained personnel means that they have the standard of capability, competence and productivity that ITIL courses promote.
There can also be financial benefits to your business as a result of using ITIL. The higher staff retention rate introduced by ITIL means less training and recruitment costs, and therefore a saving for the company.
ITIL trained staff (or existing staff educated with ITIL Training courses) often have higher productivity and therefore this can translate to your bottom line savings for your company.
Satisfied customers bring in more business and with ITIL helping you to achieve faster and more efficient IT service delivery, you can ensure your customers are satisfied every time.
The consistency in ITIL training courses are a major benefit; for example, all the processes involved are measurable and therefore their success can be monitored and improved, and the terminology used has set definitions so that communication is simple and easily understood. The courses will enable your IT services to work alongside your business needs and create a more efficient partnership between the two; using ITIL, you can use proven methods to make your business stand out from the competitors.
A recent development over the past three years has seen ITIL Training Courses delivered using online learning management systems such as those provided by ITIL Training Zone. Here people can access accredited online ITIL Training from any location at any time. ITIL Training online is also more cost effective than traditional ITIL classroom based training.