by Sunil Misra, Chief Strategy and Delivery Officer- Emtec
You can’t whistle a symphony — it takes an orchestra. Blending the sounds of various string, brass, woodwind and percussion instruments to produce melodic form requires sophisticated levels of coordination and collaboration. These are the same principles we are harnessing here at Emtec as we launch the first in a series of “Centers of Excellence” designed to bring a sense of harmony to key IT service areas.
As in an orchestra, a Center of Excellence (COE) essentially consists of a team of people working together, sharing their knowledge, skill and experience to produce exceptional results that are both valued and repeatable. Our first COE was developed to address the increasingly important role of IT Service Management (ITSM) in today’s organizational structures.
ITSM and related business service management (BSM) methodologies are designed to give businesses unprecedented control and visibility into critical IT functions. The idea is to dynamically link business-related services to underlying applications, workloads and infrastructure components to deliver greater insight into how technology assets are impacting business and processes. As businesses today face growing competitive and budget pressures, they must be confident that their technology initiatives meet operational and customer demands and drive bottom-line value. They need an IT infrastructure that drives quantifiable business improvements and delivers understandable, actionable information.
Under the guidance of Renee-Claude Lafontaine, a senior member of our ITSM practice, our team of distinguished consultants within the ITSM COE will work with our clients to achieve real IT value through ITSM initiatives and in-turn advance our leadership in ITSM. The ITSM COE team is tasked to bring real value to our clients through:
• Leadership in best practices: ITSM, BSM, VBM (Value-based management) and ITIL (IT Infrastructure Library)
• Demonstrated excellence in applied technology
• Thought leadership
• Driving efficiency and effectiveness in services delivery
• Our ITSM SWAT team can be deployed quickly when specific ITSM expertise required
Emtec’s ITSM COE has a few key initiatives underway including:
• ITSM Methodology and Best Practices. Enhancement of our ITSM and VBM (value-based management) methodologies to increase delivery efficiency.
• Training and Continual Improvement. Training strategy that continually develops and mentors our engineering talent and ensures a best-practices approach to ITSM. As part of this program, we have successfully piloted Web-based delivery of the ITIL (Information Technology Infrastructure Library) certification. This is now a repeatable process that can be delivered to our clients or internal staff for a very low cost.
• Technology. The cornerstone of this program will be a state-of-the-art laboratory at our new West Virginia office where we will be able to provide live demonstrations of our ITSM solutions.
Through our ITSM COE, Emtec is moving beyond the pre-packaged solutions common in the industry and developing an advanced approach to service management defined by best practices and proven results.
Through our continued investment in engineering talent, development platforms, software and process improvement, we will be able to provide faster, better, more cost-effective implementations than previously possible. The end result for our clients is an IT organization that changes its tune from a one-note technology framework to a business-enabling virtuoso.
