Vendor View: Why ITIL is gaining traction in Australia

Australian CIOs who are adopting ITIL in their IT departments are seeing productivity benefits, higher customer satisfaction and better alignment of IT with business objectives.

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Griffith Hack embarks on ITIL journey

Neil Baker, Chief Information Officer at Griffith Hack, points out that if you’re not doing ITIL in your IT shop, then you’re not doing your best to deliver value from your department. “ITIL -- or a variation of it -- is a fundamental requirement for any IT department focused on delivering value to their organisation,” he says.

Griffith Hack is a leading Australian firm of patent and trademark attorneys and intellectual property lawyers with offices in Melbourne, Sydney, Brisbane and Perth, and an active network of associate firms throughout the world. The introduction of ITIL is one of the company’s first steps in a substantial improvement program that is underway to support the Board’s vision for the future.

From past experience as CIO for Daimler Chrysler Australia/New Zealand and the Victorian Government Superannuation Office, Baker found that one of the first benefits ITIL delivered was a common language across his team:

“Once everyone was using the same terminology, we were able to begin the standardisation of processes, which in turn delivered real value to the organisation.”

He advises: “ITIL implementation is not a quick task, but nor is it a hard task. Train your people, take your time and reap the benefits.”

How to derive value from ITIL

Standardisation of infrastructure, policies and processes is the core of ITIL best practice. And the economics of IT management can change dramatically when automation is brought into the equation.

With the right tools at hand, costs per activity are reduced as IT departments handle more tasks with fewer resources. Additionally, new employees get faster up to speed as processes and procedures are well documented and defined. This means IT departments can deploy new services faster, resulting in greater agility for the business and greater customer satisfaction.

Research firm Enterprise Management Associates found automation reduces both time spent managing patches and application deployment by 50 per cent on average, while operating system deployment time is reduced by 68 per cent on average. An even greater time reduction, an average of 83 per cent, was seen for time spent managing virus and spyware systems.