Improving Service Quality by Implementing

Information Technology Infrastructure Library

(ITIL) Best Practice

Term Paper for BA509 IT Governance

By Prof. Michael Shaw

Ya Tang

Y atang2@uiuc.edu

1

May 2007

Abstract

IT organizations are facing the fundamental issues to justify the value of IT

investment. Adapting a service approach, IT service organizations must manage their

customers’ expectations and perceptions and understand who their customers are and

what their needs are. ITIL framework provides the consistent and comprehensive best

practices for IT service management and delivery. ITIL framework focused on service

support and service delivery, which is believed to be one of the best ways to increase

service quality. This paper reviews service quality gap model and SERVQUAL

methodology to evaluate service quality. Praeg and Schnabel (2006)’s assess criteria

based on SERVQUAL approach for ITIL implementation are also discussed for future

applications.

Keywords: ITIL, Service Quality, SERVQUAL approach

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1. Introduction

During the last twenty years, market-based services expanded rapidly and have been

the main driver of productivity and economic growth. Today more and more attention

is paid to the service sector of the economy. The rapid growth has led it to outstrip the

agriculture and industry sectors (Chesbrough and Spohrer 2006). The business goals

of companies are changed from reducing cost to increasing the revenue by providing

better services to the customers (Rust and Kannan 2003).

IT organizations today face fundamental issue relating to the value of, sustainability

of, and satisfaction with information technology. IT organizations within business

today are under increasing pressure to justify the value of IT and reduce IT costs.

External factors are contributing to changing perceptions of the IT organization and

pressure to demonstrate its value. Internal factors such as poor visibility of IT value in

the past has led to poor understanding of what value IT brings to the business and a

need for justification. Many IT organizations today have a stated emphasis on

customer satisfaction and are seeking to transform themselves by becoming more

customer-focused (IBM Global Services 2001).

Under such circumstances, service quality becomes one of the most important

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problems for IT organizations today. Service quality has been reported to be

significantly related to costs, profitability, customer satisfaction, customer retention,

behavior intention, and positive word-of-mouth communications (Cronin and Taylor

1992). IT organizations face the problems of how to improve service quality and how

to measure the service quality.

The Information Technology Infrastructure Library (ITIL) is a framework of best

practice approaches intended to facilitate the delivery of high quality information

technology services. ITIL outlines an extensive set of management procedures that are

intended to support businesses in achieving the service quality and value in IT

operations. ITIL is believed to be one of the best ways for IT organizations to improve

service quality.

The remainder of the paper is structured as follow. In Section 2, I reviewed the nine

processes in ITIL framework. The focused attentions are paid to the service support

and service delivery processes. Further I reviewed the literature in services and

service quality. A service quality model is also examined in section 3. In section 4, I

examined the SERVQUAL methodology and discussed Praeg and Schnabel (2006)’s

assess criteria to measure service quality of implementing ITIL framework. Finally,

related discussion and suggestions for future research are presented in Section 5.

2. ITIL Framework

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One of the major challenges facing Chief Information Officers (CIOs) is aligning IT

with business strategy and processes. In today’s competitive environment, individual

IT processes must now share knowledge in a systematic and standardized way.

Information Technology Infrastructure Library (ITIL) is helping to drive the

convergence of information management and knowledge management through

processes, databases and organizational structures. Developed by the U.K. Office of

Government Commerce (OGC), the ITIL is an important ingredient in building the

enterprise of the future (Murray and Mohamed 2007). ITIL establishes the best

practice approaches intended to facilitate the delivery of high quality IT services. In

addition, ITIL provides the guidance for companies to build management procedures

to support businesses in achieving both quality and value, in a financial sense, in IT

operations (Wiki ITIL). IT service management is a subsection of ITIL framework.

Service Management is the management of service producing industries, in contrast to

manufacturing and agricultural industries. Since the term Service Management is

most widely used as the component of Operations Support Systems responsible for

service delivery and service support, it is also called as Information Technology

Service Management (ITSM). Contrast to previous technology focused approaches to

IT management and cost reduction, IT service management focused on the customers’

perspective of IT contribution to the business. It is quoted in the IT service

management literature 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

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the services they provide and focus on the relationship with customers” (IT Service

Management Forum 2002) .

Figure 1 ITIL Framework (Source: Office of Government Commerce)

2.1 Service Support

The two major components of IT Service Management in ITIL are service support and

service delivery, which are by far most widely used. The Service Support discipline is

“focused on the User of the ICT services and is primarily concerned with ensuring

that they have access to the appropriate services to support the business functions”

(Wiki ITIL). The discipline consists of the following processes:

Service Desk is focused on incident control and keeping the customer informed of

progress and advising on workarounds. Service desk not only handles incidents,

problems and questions but also provides an interface for other service activities

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(Wiki, ITIL).

Incident Management is to “restore a normal service operation as quickly as possible

and to minimize the impact on business operations, thus ensuring that the best

possible levels of service quality and availability are maintained” (Wiki, ITIL).

Problem Management is to “resolve the root cause of incidents and thus to minimize

the adverse impact of incidents and problems on business that are caused by errors

within the IT infrastructure, and to prevent recurrence of incidents related to these

errors” (Wiki, ITIL).

Configuration Management is a process that “tracks all of the individual

Configuration Items (CI) in an IT system which may be as simple as a single server,

or as complex as the entire IT department” (Wiki, ITIL).

Change Management is to “ensure that standardized methods and procedures are

used for efficient handling of all Changes, in order to minimize the impact of Change-

related incidents and to improve day-to-day operations” (Wiki, ITIL).

Release Management is used for platform-independent and automated distribution of

software and hardware, including license controls across the entire IT infrastructure

(Wiki, ITIL).

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2.2 Service Delivery

The Service Delivery discipline is primarily “concerned with the proactive and

forward-looking services that the business requires of its ICT provider in order to

provide adequate support to the business users. It is focused on the business as the

customer of the ICT services” (Wiki ITIL). The discipline consists of the following

processes:

Service Level Management provides for “continual identification, monitoring and

review of the levels of IT services specified in the Service Level Agreements (SLAs)”

(Wiki, ITIL). Service Level Management ensures that arrangements are in place with

internal IT support providers and external suppliers.

Capacity Management supports the “optimum and cost effective provision of IT

services by helping organizations match their IT resources to the business demands”

(Wiki, ITIL). The high-level activities are Application Sizing, Workload Management,

Demand Management, Modeling, Capacity Planning, Resource Management, and

Performance Management.

IT Service Continuity Management helps to ensure the availability and rapid

restoration of IT services in the event of a disaster (Wiki, ITIL). The high level

activities are Risk Analysis, Contingency Plan Management, Contingency Plan

Testing, and Risk Management.

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Availability Management allows organizations to sustain the IT service availability

in order to support the business at a justifiable cost (Wiki, ITIL). The high-level

activities are Realize Availability Requirements, Compile Availability Plan, Monitor

Availability, and Monitor Maintenance Obligations.

Financial Management is to give accurate and cost effective stewardship of IT assets

and resources used in providing IT Services. It is used to plan, control and recover

costs expended in providing the IT Service negotiated and agreed to in the Service

Level Agreement (Wiki, ITIL).

While the Service Support and Service Delivery are by far the most widely used, ITIL

provides a more comprehensive set of practices as a whole, such as Planning To

Implement Service Management, The Business Perspective, Software Asset

Management, Security Management, ICT Infrastructure Management, and

Application Management.

Planning to Implement Service Management deals explicitly with the question of

where to start with ITIL. It outlines the steps necessary to identify how the

organization would benefit from ITIL. It helps identify current strengths and

weaknesses and gives practical guidance on evaluating current maturity levels of

service management within the organization (Wiki, ITIL).

The Business Perspective is designed to familiarize business management with the

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architecture and components of information and communications technology (ICT) —

infrastructure required to support the business processes. It helps business leaders

better understand the benefits of best practices in IT service management (Wiki,

ITIL).

Software Asset Management encompasses the necessary infrastructure and

processes for effective management, control, and protection of the software assets

within an organization throughout all stages of their life cycle (Wiki, ITIL).

Security Management looks at security from the service provider perspective,

identifying the relationship between security management and the IT security officer,

as well as outlining how ITIL provides the level of security necessary for the entire

organization. It further focuses on the process of implementing security requirements

identified in the IT service-level agreement (Wiki, ITIL).

ICT Infrastructure Management covers all aspects of infrastructure management

from identification of business requirements to acquiring, testing, installing, and

deploying infrastructure components. It includes the design and planning processes,

deployment processes, operations processes, and technical support processes (Wiki,

ITIL).

Application Management addresses the complex subject of managing applications

from initial business requirements through the application management life cycle, up

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to and including retirement. A strong emphasis is placed on ensuring that IT projects

and strategies are tightly aligned with those of the business throughout the

applications’ life cycle. Once an application is approved and funded, it is tracked

throughout its life cycle by the software asset management function of ITIL (Wiki,

ITIL).

3. Services and Service Quality

3.1 Services

Adopting a service approach to IT provide a framework for the IT organizations to

deliver value to its customers. A service is a provider/customer interaction that

generates and captures value. The service provider and customer (i.e., enterprise)

coordinate their work and during the process, both of them are able to reap the benefits

(IBM 2006). Services have four distinguishing characteristics: intangible, inseparable,

variable and perishable.

3.2 Service quality

One that is commonly used defines service quality as the extent to which a service

meets customers’ needs or expectations (Lewis and Mitchell 1990; Wisniewski and

Donnelly 1996). Service quality can thus be defined as the difference between

customer expectations of service and perceived service. If expectations are greater

than performance, then perceived quality is less satisfactory and hence customer

dissatisfaction occurs (Parasuraman et al. 1985; Lewis and Mitchell 1990).

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Service quality is an abstract and elusive construct. An appropriate approach to assess

and define service quality is to measure customers’ perceived quality (Parasuraman et

al. 1988). In the context of services, perceived service quality refers to the gap

between customers’ expectations and their perceptions of service performance. Figure

2 illustrates the well perceived service quality model.

Figure 2 Model of Service Quality Gaps (Parasuraman et al. 1985; Curry 1999; Luk

and Layton 2002)

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The purpose of gap analysis is to help organizations decide who can improve service

quality. The shorter the gap, the better the service quality. There are seven major gaps

in the service quality concept, which are shown in Figure 1. Gap 1 is the

understanding gap between customers’ expectations and management perceptions,

which is as a result of the lack of a marketing research orientation, inadequate upward

communication and too many layers of management. Gap 2 is the design gap between

management perceptions and service specifications, as a result of inadequate

commitment to service quality, a perception of unfeasibility, inadequate task

standardization and an absence of goal setting. Gap 3 is the management gap between

service specifications and service delivery, as a result of role ambiguity and conflict,

poor employee-job fit and poor technology-job fit, inappropriate supervisory control

systems, lack of perceived control and lack of teamwork. Gap 4 is the external

communication gap between service delivery and external communication, as a result

of inadequate horizontal communications and propensity to over-promise. Gap 5 is

the service quality gap between customer expectations and their perceptions of the

service delivered, as a result of the influences exerted from the customer side and the

shortfalls (gaps) on the part of the service provider. In this case, customer

expectations are influenced by the extent of personal needs, word of mouth

recommendation and past service experiences. Gap 6 is the delivery gap between

customer expectations and employees’ perceptions, as a result of the differences in the

understanding of customer expectations by front-line service providers. Gap 7 is the

internal communication gap between employee’s perceptions and management

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perceptions, as a result of the differences in the understanding of customer

expectations between managers and service providers. The understanding gap (Gap

1), service quality gap (Gap 5) and delivery gap (Gap 6) are the three important gaps,

which are more associated with the external customers since they have a direct

relationship with customers. According to Brown and Bond (1995), "the gap model is

one of the best received and most heuristically valuable contributions to the services

literature". The model identifies seven key discrepancies or gaps relating to

managerial perceptions of service quality, and tasks associated with service delivery

to customers. The six gaps-understanding gap, management gap, design gap, service

delivery gap, external communication gap, internal communication gap are identified

as functions of the way in which service is delivered, whereas service quality gap

(Gap 5) pertains to the customer and as such is considered to be the true measure of

service quality. In the following section, the SERVQUAL methodology is

demonstrated to have influence in service quality gap.

4. Using SERVQUAL Methodology to Assess Service Quality under

ITIL Framework

One service quality measurement model that has been extensively applied is the

SERVQUAL model developed by Parasuraman et al. (1985, 1988, 1994; Zeithaml et

al., 1990). SERVQUAL as the most often used approach for measuring service quality

has been to compare customers' expectations before a service encounter and their

perceptions of the actual service delivered (Parasuraman et al., 1985). The

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SERVQUAL instrument has been the predominant method used to measure

consumers’ perceptions of service quality. It has five generic dimensions or factors

and is stated as follows: “Tangibles” describes the physical facilities, equipment and

appearance of personnel. How easy to understand communication materials.

“Reliability” demonstrates the service provider’s ability to perform the promised

service dependably and accurately. “Responsiveness” shows the service provider’s

willingness to help customers and provide prompt service. “Assurance” shows the

knowledge and courtesy of employees and their ability to inspire trust and confidence.

“Empathy” concerns caring and individualized attention that the firm provides to its

customers.

Table 1. Quality dimensions (Praeg and Schnabel 2006)

SERVQUAL dimensions IT-service cachet dimensions1. Tangibles 1. Performance specification 2. Reliability 2. References 3. Responsiveness 3. Comprehensibility 4. Assurance 4. Information to the customer5. Empathy 5. Availability of the service provider

6. Employees 7. Organizational reliability 8. Technical security 9. Economic power 10. Legal aspects

Based on SERVQUAL approach, Praeg and Schnabel (2006) introduces the IT service

quality framework for IT service management and focuses on a cachet to evaluate IT

service quality. They tailored the IT service cachet dimensions from SERVQUAL

approaches to ten dimensions including performance specification, references,

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comprehensibility, information to the customer, availability of the service provider,

employee, organizational reliability, technical security, economic power and legal

aspects (Table 1).

The evaluation catalogue for the IT service cachet contains 48 assessment criteria to

evaluate the quality of IT services. These indicators can be separated into ten

dimensions. They separated these dimensions into three parts. The first part describes

the “thematic and formal requirement of the services”, the second part focuses on the

“communication between service provider and customer” and the third part

concentrate on the characteristics of the “service provider”. In the part “thematic and

formal requirements of the services”, there are three additional dimensions for

assessing the quality measures: performance specification, references and

comprehensibility of the services. In the second part “communication between service

provider and customer”, there are two dimensions: information to the customer and

availability of the service provider. In the third part, “service provider”, there are

following dimensions: employees, organizational reliability, technical reliability,

economic power and legal aspects. Table 2 listed the specific assessment for IT

services under ITIL framework.

Table 2. Assessment criteria for IT services (Praeg and Schnabel 2006)

Part 1: Thematic and formal requirementsDimension Criteria

Performance specification

− Availability of an ITIL conform service catalogue − Availability of a offer-specific performance specification

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− Existence of a price list of the services− Comprehensible pricing − Existence of the SLA contents required in the ITIL

framework− Existence of a management summary− Existence of a Company description of the service provider− Existence of a user adequate statement of the status quo− Existence of reference to possible risk statements from the

service provider− No employee-bound definitions of services in the service

offer

− Framework conditions and prerequisites of the supply are mentioned

− Existence of regulations of dealing with service recipient data

− Availability of a offer validation period− Existence of employee profiles − User specific relevant glossary available

References − Existence of references in the offer

− References match the offered service and the line of business

− Availability of letter of recommendation and/or success stories

− Existence of proof of long- term relations to reference service recipients

Comprehensibil ity

− Uniform terminology within the offer − Use of abbreviations only according to previous explanation

and description in an available list of abbreviations

− All documents in the offer are semantically and linguistically correct

− Required information is up-to- datePart 2: Communication between service provider and customer

Dimension criteriaInformation to the customer

− The service provider indicate time periods for customer requests and clarification

− Enquiries from the service recipient would pass within the service provider as soon as possible

− Existence of regular information of the service recipient about the processing status of enquiries

Availability of service provider

− The service provider offers fixed contact persons with corresponding responsibilities

− Availability of representative regulation

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− Documented fixed times of the availability of the service provider Service provider has a documented escalation matrix

Part 3: Service provider Dimension Criteria

Employees −

Employee profiles contain corresponding experiences with regard to line of business and tasks

− Availability of performance specific, qualified certificates− Proof of further education courses− Fluctuation rate

− Availability of representation of employee profiles of involved third parties

Organizational reliability

− Documented process management for the offer process− Documented process management for service delivery− Documented proof of an effective management system− Implemented business excellence processes at the service

provider− Documentations of regular supplier assessments with the

service provider− Systematic elevation of customer feedbacks− Existence of behaving rules in cooperation with customers

Technical security

− Documentation of availability management related to IT infrastructure

− Documentation of a continuity management process− Documentation of IT-security

Economic power

− Financial situation of the service provider− Profit situation of the service provider

Legal aspects − Documentation and proof of compliance with relevant legal regulations

5. Discussion and Conclusion

IT organizations are facing the fundamental issues to justify the value of IT

investment. Adapting a service approach, IT service organizations must manage their

customers’ expectations and perceptions and understand who their customers are and

what their needs are. ITIL framework provides the consistent and comprehensive best

practices for IT service management and delivery. ITIL framework focused on service

support and service delivery, which is believed to be one of the best ways to increase

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service quality.

ITIL best practices allow IT organizations to deliver the optimal service levels to their

customers by balancing the performance and cost of the services with the business

requirements. Relationships between the provider (internal or external) and customer

are also improved through added customer focus and through SLAs allowing both

parties to have a mutual understanding of the requirements and the delivery (Spectrum

2004). Additionally, implementing ITIL best practices makes IT Service Management

more efficient by focusing on delivering the required business services at the agreed

upon service levels and by having well defined processes for performing the required

management tasks. Using the well defined processes and best practices helps

eliminate problems while increasing service levels. ITIL is the one of the best way for

IT organizations to improve service quality.

Based on SERVQUAL methodology, Praeg and Schnabel (2006)’s assessing criteria

provides a helpful tool for IT service users and service providers to evaluate the

quality of the services and an improved level of process quality. The assessing criteria

combine the user and provider needs. Future research can apply Praeg and Schnabel

(2006)’s assessing criteria to evaluate the IT organizations’ service quality and

validate and refine these criteria.

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