The IT Infrastructure Library (ITIL) is a set of adaptable best practices for delivering information technology as a service. The ITIL framework breaks down the process of IT service management into several phases, including service selection, planning, delivery and maintenance. It also includes detailed guidance for each phase.
Your goal in adopting ITIL practices is to make IT service management (ITSM) within your organization more efficient and predictable. The ITIL framework is also designed to encourage organizations to align their IT service delivery with their overall business goals.
ITIL has been a go-to IT standard since the late 1980s. It was most recently updated to ITIL 4 in 2019. This iteration emphasizes helping organizations maintain flexibility in their IT service management, especially cloud-based practices, without neglecting legacy, on-premises infrastructure.
So, ITIL sounds powerful, but is it suitable for your organization? And is it worth it for you to get ITIL certified? The answer is yes, but there are some things you should know about how ITIL and its certifications work before you dive into the ITIL pool.
ITIL is about organization and best practices
The principles of IT service management were first developed to help businesses harness the power of IT most effectively. The ITIL framework looks to help organizations:
- Better manage risk
- Increase their productivity
- Reduce the costs of service delivery
- Improve customer relations, and
- Create a more agile set of IT services
ITIL looks to do these things by structuring four critical dimensions of your business:
- Organizations and people
- Information and technology
- Partners and suppliers
- Value streams and processes
In the current ITIL 4 framework, the business activities you carry out to structure those dimensions and achieve those outcomes are called the Service Value Chain. This chain has six phases.
Plan
In this phase, the responsible service team ensures they understand the company’s long-term goals and how the IT service management fits into them. They also need to know how the service affects and is affected by the four dimensions of the business—the organization and people, other IT services, partners and suppliers, and the company’s value streams and processes. Once understood, that team plans how to build the service in question.
Engage
With planning underway, the service teams contact vital stakeholders inside and outside the organization. These stakeholders must understand the project’s goals and provide input to modify planning.
Design & transition
Here, the service team designs the new systems and processes they need. They also set requirements they must meet, such as performance metrics, regulatory compliance, or customer satisfaction levels.
Obtain and build
Next, the service team brings together all the people, technology, and other resources needed to complete the design. This could mean purchasing existing technology or developing your own.
Delivery & support
Once built, the systems must deliver value to the organization across the four critical dimensions described above.
Improve
This is the phase where the Service Value Chain loops. Your service team collects data from all previous phases, assesses performance, and lays the groundwork for the next Planning phase.
Getting ITIL certified helps you align your IT and business practices
Getting ITIL certified yourself and shifting your organization towards ITIL methodologies comes with many benefits, including:
Improving your ROI on IT assets
Using an ITIL framework can lead to reliable financial returns. Under ITIL, companies will use their technologies more effectively, maximize the life cycles of that technology, and take advantage of new automated workflows.
Increasing work efficiency
The ITIL framework was designed from the outset to increase organizational performance. Certifying your workforce in ITIL practices and acquiring ITIL-centric management tools will equip them to work together in new, more effective ways. The real benefit will not be in how they use technology but in how they plan and improve how technology is introduced in your workplace.
Gaining access to ITIL-aligned technologies
ITIL-certified individuals will be able to quickly understand the value and capabilities of IT service management software. These powerful tools allow your company to organize how they work in centralized software portals. Manage projects, track service requests, and plan your next ITIL-based improvements, all on a single platform.
Improving your customer experience
ITIL does more than improve internal-facing processes, like project management. ITIL can improve customer-facing activities through its models for service desks and tighter controls over production and development.
The different ITIL certifications
Professionals can pursue ITIL 4 certifications at four different levels.
ITIL Foundation
ITIL 4 Foundation certification is the introductory level certification for all ITIL professionals. It demonstrates that the holder has a solid understanding of the ITIL model and its processes.
The following certifications “streams” represent different ITIL specialties you can pursue.
ITIL Managing Professional
This certification stream is designed for IT professionals who work directly with technology or in other operational capacities. They demonstrate practical knowledge of implementing ITIL best practices focusing on service creation, delivery, and support.
ITIL Strategic Leader
The Strategic Leader stream focuses on the overlap between IT and business strategy. ITIL Strategic Leader certifications demonstrate that the holder has a solid understanding of generating value by aligning IT services to overall business goals.
ITIL Master Level
ITIL Masters certifications are designed for business or IT executives. As part of the certification process, you must demonstrate experience in successfully applying ITIL principles to achieve specific goals.
C2 ITSM is ITIL v4 Certified.
It is important to note that all certifications above are for individual professionals. An organization cannot be directly “ITIL certified” but can demonstrate that its organization or product follows ITIL best practices. IT solutions, on the other hand, can be certified.
For example, C2 is a Pink Elephant ITIL Certified and verified ITIL-supporting application for IT service management.
C2 is an all-in-one web-based service desk software that improves IT support, customer service and service delivery. We’ve demonstrated C2’s support for many ITIL processes, including:
- Request fulfillment
- Service asset and configuration management
- Service catalog management
- Change management
- Incident management
- Problem management
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