How important is ITIL for Business Analysts? | ITSM
Summary
Businesses are rapidly expanding and facing significant data management challenges. ITIL (IT Infrastructure Library) practices are a valuable solution, combining IT service management best practices with business requirements to ensure consistent and efficient data assimilation, evaluation, and dissemination. ITIL Certification benefits business analysts by enhancing their ability to align IT services with business strategies, evaluate IT performance, and facilitate effective communication. Two key advantages of ITIL include optimized service delivery across the supply chain and increased value creation through agile changes and business transformations. Globally recognized companies have adopted ITIL to achieve success and cost savings.
Table of Content
Forward-thinking companies are expanding at a faster pace than ever today! The objective is business development, increased success, and lesser costs. Naturally, the percentage of data that a business house or a corporation is expected to manage today is also increasing phenomenally, thereby giving rise to various management challenges for IT executives and managers. The ITIL (IT Infrastructure Library) Management practices prove useful in addressing such challenges efficiently. It blends in the IT service management best practices with a thorough understanding of diverse business requirements. It allows the data to be assimilated, evaluated, and disseminated by following a consistent method.
IITL and Business Analysts
Since the ITIL Certification addresses business requirements, it holds significance for the Business Analysts engaged in IT organizations. Today most IT companies have realized the efficiency that an ITIL management or its best practices brings and hence seek to recruit candidates and professionals with an ITIL Certification. Therefore, existing and aspiring Business Analysts equipped with an ITIL Certification have a competitive advantage over others. Business Analysts with ITIL Certification know how to minimize response times, increase product efficiency, offer customer delight and reduce resource costs in an IT organization.
How Does ITIL Certification Help Business Analysts?
There is no direct link between IT services and business strategy or analysis. Simply put, IT services are established to underpin the business procedures that are, in turn, established to cater to diverse business requirements that are generated by business strategy. Indeed, the needs axis and the accountabilities of a Business Analyst are a precondition to the IT’s capability to delineate and offer perfect IT services. Therefore, by undertaking basic ITIL foundation training, the existing Business Analysts in an IT organization will be able to deepen their know-how and understanding of how the IT company functions towards maximizing the alignment of IT and Business on an end-to-end basis. That is not all. Even the Senior Business Analysts, by undertaking this course, can understand how they can contribute to the overall business lifecycle.
Furthermore, Managers and Business Analysts with ITIL know-how and a basic backup can also empower individual organizations by precisely evaluating the performance of the IT services. They can also efficiently simplify the data management techniques in ways that will enhance the overall effectiveness and facilitate smooth communication within the organization as well as the customers. As the data that flows in through the IT channels grows, the demand for skilled Business Analysts also increases. An ITIL certification proves to be instrumental in bagging the best career opportunities.
Two Core Benefits of ITIL
Of the several benefits that an ITIL certification offers an organization, the two core ones are:
- Optimized service delivery across the company’s supply chain
ITIL provides crucial scopes for standardization and streamlining across trading partners. It also offers modules and procedures to assist the service providers in being able to work with their customers, business partners, suppliers and customers in order to arrive at correct decision making and fix investment decisions. It also helps to optimize the cost and manage risks. Some of the visible benefits are:
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A reduction in support expenses by 30%
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Maximized value derived from the service portfolio, with lesser expenses and risks
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A competitive edge through agile changes and value creation
When a company resorts to ITIL service lifecycle practices, the company is able to concentrate on offering the best value to their customers and also adopt alterations for the IT and business. By outlining and monitoring the service and customer portfolios, the company can make some path-breaking business transformations and gain a competitive edge over others. Some tangible benefits comprise are:
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Minimized cycle times for changes and projects by up to 30% to 50%
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Maximized success rates in making crucial business changes
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Minimization of risks from late and unwarranted changes
Keeping all these in mind today, both aspiring and existing Business Analysts upgrade their knowledge level and expertise with an ITIL Certification program. This apart, several global companies have executed ITIL, for instance, Atos, IBM, Microsoft, Shell Oil, Boeing, Caterpillar, and many more. Post-implementation majority of companies have reported witnessing increased success and noticeable savings in functional costs.
