Improving IT service management processes: A case study on IT service support

Abstract

IT services and IT service management play a very important role in the today's IT industry. Software as service approach enables IT customers to focus on using the software while IT service providers take care of the installation, configuration, support and maintenance activities. Various process frameworks can be used to improve IT service management processes. The most widely used IT service management framework is the IT Infrastructure Library (ITIL) that provides best practices for IT service providers on how to design, manage and support IT services. Despite the IT service management process frameworks, implementing an effective service support interface between an IT service provider and an IT customer is a big challenge. The research problem in this study is: what types of challenges are related to the service support interface between an IT service provider and IT customers. The main contribution of this paper is present challenges in a service support interface identified during a case study with a large IT service provider company in Finland. © 2010 Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg.