The goal here is to touch upon the need for Information Technology Service Management (ITSM) and then jump right into how it plays into the hands of Knowledge Management (KM).

A large portion of the budgets today (almost 70%) are related to managing IT. Moreover, IT is being challenged with the ever increasing complexity associated with IT systems, the pressure of providing effective services to the business and adapting to the sheer pace of the dynamic business environment. With all these factors in play, it is becoming critical to manage costs and provide IT services efficiently to the business. In other words, there is a need for practices that would help deliver cost effective services to businesses and effectively mask the complexities of IT systems.

Now how does providing these IT services relate to Knowledge Management? Before we get into that we need to define what Knowledge Management really is.

Knowledge Management has been around for a while but is often not defined clearly, primarily because "Knowledge” as a term has almost always been confused with data and information. Therefore, we first need to quickly address what knowledge is. Knowledge, put in the simplest of terms, is information which has been perceived/ interpreted by individuals. Managing this knowledge so that it can be leveraged in the future is the goal of most ongoing KM efforts.

Even though at the first glance it may not seem evident, KM and ITSM are fairly closely linked and in fact symbiotic in their interplay. While KM is needed to share knowledge generated by the different aspects of ITSM, ITSM itself provides the context that is required to define KM in the IT world.

One of the goals of ITSM is to focus IT on providing services to businesses to manage customer service expectations. To achieve this function, ITSM has multiple silos that have knowledge flowing across them. Management of this knowledge is critical. It is in this context that KM can be used. KM would help to effectively leverage this knowledge for more efficient ITSM efforts. In return, ITSM would help in justifying the business case for KM efforts. Since ITSM is targeted at having quantifiable benefits and KM would help support the knowledge transfer and management of Knowledge across the various silos such as configuration management, problem management etc. of ITSM it would offer more tangible ways to analyze the value of derived out of KM efforts. This would also help make the business case for KM efforts which is often a problem in organizations.

To sum it up, both KM and ITSM are closely linked and if used effectively would help facilitate the efficient provision of IT services to the business by enabling free-flow of knowledge through the system.

References:
http://itservicemanagement.techweb.com/
http://www.cio.com/archive/090105/itil_frameworks.html?page=5

Score: 9.3, Votes: 3