By Maria Vasilas,
Business sustainability and effectivity is the main objective and priority of all companies in the world. Branding, good marketing policy, as well as product and service improvement are some of the main supporting tools to achieve this goal. While the companies that offer products are able to determine better and more sufficiently their strategy and governance, business providing services are facing various and serious organizational problems and obstacles.
The ITIL Service Value System can de considered as the ultimate solution that offers everything that is essential for the value creation in every form of services. Being characterized as a set of guidelines that helps organizations to face their service management and value creation challenges gives a simple and minimal guidance for this achievement. Although this topic is considered as complicated and abstract, the structure of service value management includes inputs, system elements and outputs whose meaning is familiar and understandable.
The key inputs of the system are demand and opportunity, terms that are similar but have a main difference. While opportunities are the perspectives and options for value creation and improvement of the organization and its stakeholders, demand represents the need of services and products for the customers.
Moreover, the SVS is equipped with five major elements that are essential for profit maintenance, an increase in sales and service reliability. The first component can be described as the guiding principle of the company that includes its general directives regardless the change of strategy, goals and marketing. The governance and the business practices are the two other cornerstones that are related to the way that companies are actually directed and controlled directly or indirectly in the second case from their stakeholders. The value service chain is the fourth element of the system that includes all connected activities and practices which are taking place in order to achieve the goal continual improvement which is the fifth main module.
The service value chain is the “heart” of the whole system and should be fully supported with specialized and trusted internal staff. The chain involves six value chain activities (classes of activities). The first one is the “plan” as the opportunity option to create specific directives and standards for use with the organization. The “engage” principle enables the engagement to the stakeholders including customers and users. Design and transition focuses on new and changed services as “obtain and build” centers on the creation of service components. “Deliver and support” targets on meeting the stakeholders perspectives and expectations, while “improve” facilitates creating improvement initiatives and continual improvement plans. Continual improvement demands not only compliance to specific guidelines and rules, but also the members’ individual will to professional improvement.
The efficient, coordinated and well-structured work of all these components as well as the interaction with external factors are able to establish the value creation of the organization for its products and services and after all to keep satisfied its stakeholders. At this point, it is essential to clarify that when referring to the term “stakeholders” we mean not only the customers or the consumers but also the investors of the company, the suppliers, the employees and its members. As I mentioned above, the major outputs of this procedure are the achievement of the goals and the value of the company.
References
- SysAid, ITIL 4 Value System: What‘s the difference. Available here
- Axios Blog, What is the ITIL 4 Service Value System. Available here
- ITSM tools, The ITIL 4 Service Value System Explained. Available here
