Throughout my career in companies I have worked for or contracted in, Continual Service Improvement (CSI) is hardly ever practiced. Since labor is typically the most expensive resource managed in an organization, it is amazing that every level of management is not held accountable for CSI. Basically, how can I perform work better, faster and cheaper than the last time I performed a process or task. The foundation for CSI is having the data to measure and compare against. In the first time in IT History, Service Now provides the ability to integrate everything that happens within an organization. Regardless, of functional department in an organization, labor hours can be captured for every process/task performed. Thereby, providing the ability to measure and compare level of effort month to month and year to year. Take this one step farther and convert labor hours to the common denominator every executive will relate to “Dollars”. With labor hours converted to dollars, the discussion can be focused on the cost vs just the raw numbers of the processes or tasks performed.

Throughout IT history, we have been managing environments with separate products to manage Assets, Service Management, Projects, Maintenance, Labor Hours, Contracts and Documentation. Service Now provides an ERP view of IT, where all data is integrated into one database, which makes Service Now an optimal foundation for Continual Service Improvement (CSI). One type of view that could be generated is the total cost for managing a Business Service. The graphic attached demonstrates that each Business Service (Purchasing, SAP, Email....etc.) can be broken down into specific labor costs (Break Fix, Requests, Change, Problem, Maintenance, Projects) tied together with the cost of hardware and software, providing a total financial picture. All this data can be captured month to month and year to year. This is the CSI foundation to start with, where the questions to ask are “Why?”, “How ?” and “When ?”.

Why is does it cost the company over $1m for Break Fix?

Why has the cost of SAP nearly doubled over the last three years?

Why does it cost over $375k for Break Fix for Desktop

How do I reduce these costs?

When can we start?