Last month, the ILX Group released findings that just over half of U.K. IT departments (51%) believe that having staff qualified in ITIL would give their business a competitive edge, but less than a quarter of IT staff were found to be trained in ITIL Version 2 or 3. Not surprisingly, the primary reasons cited for untrained staff were 1) management’s lack of understanding ITIL’s benefits, and 2) training and budget constraints. We know a lot of our customers on both sides of the pond are facing the same dilemma – they understand the benefits of implementing ITIL, but convincing their boss and securing funding is a whole different story. The added challenge of taking on process changes with limited resources and budget adds to the barriers.

We’ve always taken a “keep it practical” approach to ITIL, helping customers adopt ITIL in a flexible way that is affordable and quickly offers value by addressing their business challenges at hand.  If you’re struggling to figure out how you can build a compelling business case for ITIL, consider this:

• First, paint a clear picture of where your business truly needs to improve processes and identify which will have the most impact on improving business efficiency. What isn’t working? Where are your biggest gaps or recurring issues? With over 20 ITIL service lifecycle processes in version 3, it’s important to assess what your organization really needs to improve service delivery and become more efficient. By first focusing on those fundamental processes that will deliver the biggest impact for your business’s investment, you’ll demonstrate value quickly and have a better chance in securing funding for future ITIL projects.
• Don’t forget that change is often a tough pill for people to swallow. One of the benefits of ITIL is that you can standardize terminology and service and support processes across your organization. It’s important to adopt ITIL and roll-out the resulting process changes in a staged process.  By biting off more than IT can chew or overwhelming business users with new solutions and processes, you can quickly lose support for your initiative.  Many of our customers have overcome this by first starting with incident, problem and change management processes (and sometimes SLA management), then moving to the next stage with IT asset management, configuration management, and so on.  
• You may want to break it down even further and implement each process in stages as well – beginning with the fundamentals that address your business’s specific objectives and then moving on to the rest.  Stakeholders will be more likely to buy-in because you’re directly feeding their top-line goals.  Also, many of our customers have found that by monitoring and measuring successes, failures, and potential adjustments in the first process stage—and making modifications accordingly—the subsequent stages have been much smoother and effective.
• Lastly, you can shorten ramp up time by implementing easy-to-use and practical software that has ITIL-base workflow and templates built-in, which you can customize yourself without programming or deep consulting engagements.  This will allow you to adopt ITIL best practices, while lowering the costs of extensive ITIL training and long consulting engagements or dedicated staff to configure your technology.

Through conversations with our customers, we know there is a lot of apprehension around ITIL because the complexity and high costs can be prohibitive, especially with today’s tight budgets.Whether you’re diving in for the first time or revamping what you started, taking a staged approach, beginning  with the areas that will realize the most value now and using the right tools, can make the benefits of ITIL a reality for any organization.

You tell us. What are your biggest roadblocks to adopting ITIL?  Or, if you’re one of the success stories, what tips can you share?