The needs for IT services are getting more complex and demanding. According to Okta, a typical 2000+ employee business deploys over 200 apps that all need to be integrated and aligned in business operations to serve the needs of customers.

Increasingly, businesses are adopting a Service Management Office (SMO) organizational structure, where IT services are designed and delivered more effectively across internal and vendor-managed service providers. 

Let’s go through how and why this could be helpful for your business.

What is a Service Management Office?

A Service Management Office (SMO) is an organizational structure that oversees and improves IT service management practices across a company. You can think of it as a Center of Excellence designed specifically to advance the role of ITSM in a business.

A SMO typically designs processes, enforces best practices, manages service quality, and focuses on continual service improvement. Through consolidating Service Management functions, an SMO can improve efficiency while delivering reliable and effective IT support.

Why you need a Service Management Office

The IT landscape is no longer confined to the walls of an organization. Most businesses today rely on a complex ecosystem of internal IT teams, external vendors, cloud service providers, and more to deliver the services essential for their operations. It’s no exaggeration to think of IT services as the circulatory system of a whole supply chain of a business.

This multi-sourced environment presents significant challenges in terms of management and governance of services. With more stakeholders involved, it becomes more challenging to manage service delivery, maintain control over costs, and mitigate risks.

At the same time, it’s important that IT Service Management is recognized as more than just a cost center. A SMO can be a way to empower the ITSM function’s role in delivering value through strategic initiatives, digital transformation, and effective vendor relationships.

So how can you increase the strategic value of Services Management while adapting to today’s complex IT landscape?

Define your SIAM integration strategy

When you’re building out your Service Management Office, it’s smart to start with SIAM best practices. We’ve put together a guide for you to build out your SIAM integration strategy.

Set clear roles and responsibilities  

Before you map out IT systems, processes and integrations it’s important to remember that people form the heart of an effective Service Management function. For this reason, it’s a good idea to establish clear roles and responsibilities for each individual and for the office as a whole.

The ITIL framework is a great reference point for well-defined roles such as Process Owner, Process Manager, Service Level Manager, and Incident Manager.

In addition, you may want to define and communicate the role and responsibilities of the Service Management Office itself widely across different stakeholders and to win buy-in from your leadership function. The clearer you are about the SMO responsibilities, the more likely you are to see long-lasting success.

Find out more about the roles and responsibilities for your SMO.

Adopt ITSM best practice frameworks

Another way you can make the task of building a SMO more manageable is by adapting some well-known IT service management (ITSM) frameworks. As you may know, we’ve got plenty of those to share in the ITSM community.

Integrating well-established frameworks into your SMO can significantly enhance efficiency, improve customer satisfaction, and align your IT services with business goals.
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• Agile
  Agile methodologies, such as Scrum and Kanban, emphasize flexibility, collaboration, and iterative development. By incorporating Agile principles into your SMO, you can foster a culture of adaptability and responsiveness.
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• COBIT
  (Control Objectives for Information and Related Technologies) is a governance and management framework that helps align IT with business objectives. Implementing COBIT within your SMO enables you to establish a structured approach to IT governance, risk management, and compliance.
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• DevOps
  DevOps promotes collaboration and integration between development and operations teams. By adopting DevOps practices in your SMO, you can streamline the software development lifecycle and improve the speed and quality of service delivery.
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• TOGAF
  TOGAF provides a framework for enterprise architecture, helping organizations align their IT infrastructure with business goals. By leveraging TOGAF within your SMO, you can establish a structured approach to designing, planning, and implementing IT services.
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• Lean
  Lean principles focus on maximizing value and minimizing waste. By applying Lean thinking to your SMO, you can identify and eliminate non-value-adding activities, streamline processes, and improve efficiency.

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While these frameworks come naturally for some people, it’s smart to invest in continuous learning and proactive training to make sure everyone in your team is comfortable with the change of work practices.

Tips for integrating frameworks into your SMO

Remember, these frameworks are not mutually exclusive. Integrate them strategically based on your specific needs and context. For example, you could combine Agile and DevOps for rapid service development and deployment, while using COBIT for governance and control.
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Implementation Tips:
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• Start small and scale gradually:
  Begin by piloting framework adoption in a specific service area and then expand based on success and learnings.
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• Invest in training and education:
  Equip your team with the knowledge and skills necessary to understand and implement the chosen frameworks effectively.
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• Champion the change:
  Secure leadership buy-in and actively communicate the benefits of framework adoption to all stakeholders.
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• Measure and adapt:
  Continuously monitor progress, measure results, and adapt your approach as needed to ensure ongoing success.

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Remember, implementing frameworks is not a one-time event but an ongoing journey of continuous improvement. Embrace the principles, adapt them to your organization's context, and foster a culture of excellence in your service management practices.

Tackle integration challenges with a service

My third key tip is not to try to tackle your integration challenges alone. When you’re focused on building out an SMO, the last thing you need is the headache of regularly building and maintaining integrations between your different service management systems.

Why is this such a big deal? 

Let’s look at a very typical ITSM landscape that is built on just four different ITSM tools:

On the surface of it, the above service integration landscape looks manageable. Two instances of ServiceNow supported,  BMC Remedy and Atlassian Jira. 

However, it’s the multi-point integration layer where things start to fall apart. When you attempt to build between the different systems, you realize that you need to deal with many different data models and integration types.

You can’t rely on ITSM platforms for integrations

Relying on ITSM platforms for service integration presents several challenges, mostly due to their inherent limitations in handling complex, heterogeneous IT environments and external service providers.

ITSM platforms are primarily designed to manage internal IT service processes like incident, problem, and change management. However, modern IT ecosystems often consist of diverse IT systems, applications, and technologies operating on different platforms and data models. It’s also typical for different service providers to have their own “standardised set” of ITSM tools and processes.

This diversity leads to obvious compatibility issues, as ITSM platforms can’t seamlessly integrate with all the various external systems and applications in use, specifically with use cases that require bidirectional, always-on dialogue between the systems..

An API is not an integration

Another common mistake is to expect that APIs are enough to integrate across your service ecosystem

You need to keep in mind that APIs are not integrations in themselves. They are simply a technology layer that enables systems to communicate, but you need to build to the an individual “bridge” between different APIs. Those bridges need to be maintained and developed constantly; not to mention error handling, queuing and security and other enterprise–grade requirements you have to take into consideration for each integration you build.  

This becomes a much greater challenge when SMOs on-board external service providers or vendors with unique SLAs and operating guidelines. Many times the APIs offered by ITSM platforms don’t offer seamless bi-directional integration capabilities. They certainly don’t give you support when things fall apart.

A good rule of thumb is that the more integrations you need, the less likely you are to be able to manage your integration needs by simple point-to-point API integrations.

iPaaS is an option

A third common approach for SMOs is to go for an Integration platform as a service. There certainly are plenty to choose from, as Gartner keeps a list of over 120 different iPaaS vendors. 

There are a number of good reasons to go for an iPaaS solution to manage your service ecosystem. Different types of integrations are easier to manage centrally in one place. Many iPaaS solutions offer pre-built connectors between different ITSM tools. It’s easier to manage varying data volumes and security on one platform.

On the other hand, iPaaS solutions require a great deal of expertise to configure and manage. They don’t always adjust well to integrating external services or systems Most often you need to build internal competencies to manage iPaaS within your service management environment. This quickly adds up to a high total cost of ownership.

Let us solve your service integration hassles

Ultimately, the decision you need to make building your SMO is whether your core function is to enable collaboration and cooperation, or whether you are building a service data integration function. In most cases, you’re better off partnering with an integration as a service specialist.

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