|
Mature ITAM capabilities support proactive management of the entire IT asset base from cost, contractual, support and inventory standpoints. A comprehensive approach facilitates control and cost savings and requires integrating people, process and technology. When these three elements work together, organizations are more likely to achieve integrated asset management and experience greater benefits.
Before embarking on or extending the implementation of an ITAM program, it is important to establish where an organization is today (current state). Understanding an organization’s current capabilities for ITAM is critical to developing strategic and tactical roadmaps that will deliver ITSM improvements. The first step in implementing an ITAM program is to carry out a comprehensive maturity assessment to analyze existing processes, technology and organization, and to identify business goals and IT needs. Based on this analysis, logical steps to help drive efficiency, effectiveness and overall maturity across the organization through increased ITAM capability can be identified, documented and funded to build a program. Targeting ITAM process development initially at areas that will have the most impact on business success will deliver short-term business benefits that will establish a strong business case for expanding an ITAM program. An assessment will identify the ITAM processes that can deliver the most business value and offer a phased project approach for realizing incremental value.
Organizations are challenged with resource constraints and competing priorities, so a phased approach to achieving a comprehensive ITAM program is pragmatic. A phased approach also allows an organization to invest for business value and absorb solution maturity incrementally. This approach delivers documented cost savings and/or process improvements at each level sustaining executive-level commitment to the program. Although it is important to plan strategically, it is equally important to implement tactically.
The following table illustrates the phases of an ITAM program implementation and the business benefits delivered at each level. Regardless of which level an organization is currently in, it is important to prioritize future efforts. Establish a phased approach by targeting areas of the infrastructure that provide the highest business value and enable greater cost control over the IT assets. This strategy delivers business benefits where they are most important to supporting the delivery of IT services.
All stakeholders need to be a part of the assessment, planning and rollout phases. One of the main challenges to establishing a comprehensive ITAM program is educating people in all functional areas that touch the ITAM life cycle to use a common language. A common language helps people understand the complete asset management life cycle and define their roles and responsibilities within the ITAM program. Depending on their function in the organization, people typically have different definitions and perspectives of asset management and its key activities.
Before embarking on the implementation of an ITAM solution, it must be clearly understood by all stakeholders that ITAM is a process, what the ITAM process is and how each business function is related to the ITAM process and to other business functions upstream or downstream from their connection to the asset life cycle. During an assessment phase, the various stakeholders and the nature of their relationship to an ITAM program would be defined.
Achieving a comprehensive ITAM program and delivering comprehensive ITAM processes requires the implementation of technology. A large number of technologies can be integrated with, and contribute to, a comprehensive ITAM program, but there are six main technologies that are essential to ITAM processes supporting the service life cycle. These six technologies are highlighted in the following table and, in turn, each is discussed in detail. Discovery refers to technology that is programmatically used to inventory, track and manage assets that are networked at some time within an organization’s environment. It is important for IT organizations to understand what infrastructure components they have and where they reside. Discovery is one of the six major technologies for enabling an ITAM program and contributes to the ITAM asset repository.
|
