Training for Digital Transformation with ITIL

The phenomena of digital transformation rapidly shaped the world around us and has resulted in an eruption of discussions and debates in recent years. As innovative new businesses appear in the market and old business giants, risk falling behind, organizations are understanding the relevance of joining the race to avoid the land of irrelevance. As per a 2019 report of IDC, 40% of all technology spending in 2019 has gone towards digital transformation, with enterprises spending more than $2 trillion.

Digital Transformation brings with itself enormous opportunities for innovation and strategic change in making an organization customer-centric. Despite becoming so mainstream and the new norm of Industry 4.0, organizations face a resilient road to transformation. The cornerstone of Digital Transformation is based on customer value and co-creation. These principles are significantly covered in ITIL 4. This raises an important question – How do ITIL practices help to rewire an organization for Digital change?

Digital transformation introduces new types and levels of risk in organizations and ITSM is essential to managing that risk.

– Margo Leach, chief product officer of AXELOS.

ITIL 4 is recognized globally in IT Service Management (ITSM) and used by millions of IT professionals around the globe, looking to step up their career. With the recent release of ITIL 4, ITIL has taken a big leap in the digital evolution spectrum, especially in emerging technologies and leading business framework. ITIL transformations are imperative to close the gap for your competitors and place yourself and your organization ahead in the game. ITIL acts as a common language between different functionalities of an organization, translating what IT does for the business. Adopting and adapting ITIL principles and processes makes the transformational journey smoother. Any organization’s transforming needs a rock-solid foundation and ITIL practices provides the matching building blocks to create this solid foundation.

The Role of ITIL in Digital Transformation

A 2019 research by AXELOS, published in the ITSM Benchmark Report, highlights the experience of respondents on the contribution of ITIL towards the success of the digital transformation.

As per the publication, organizations that adopted ITIL practices reported:

• 67% improvement in customer satisfaction
• 57% improvement in keeping IT systems up to date through continual improvement
• 43% reduction in overall costs
• 51% improvement in providing better management of business risks, service disruption, or failure

Breaking Down the Silos – Working together for Co-Creation of Value

The introduction of ITIL 4 has bought about a holistic approach to service management because of its agile nature. It is easier to integrate the ITIL working model with DevOps, Agile and Lean. This represents a substantial shift from other versions of ITIL as ITIL 4 presents a flexible approach which necessitates dismantling of silos.

An important factor to remember is a strategic implementation of the process from top to down. It is essential to establish the importance of co-creating value and working as a team, to achieve the collective organizational goal within senior leadership, management and workforce. Apart from establishing a clear strategy top to down, it is also important to create a clear engagement and working end-to-end with all the stakeholders for co-creation of value.

ITIL Relevance and Training for Transformation

ITIL training is extremely relevant in the market today and its popularity is increasing every year. Adopting ITIL to initiate organizational transformation enables automation and also puts a great deal of emphasis on the benefits of ITIL. The complexity and criticality of Digital Transformation and the emergence of new technologies present the challenge of shortage of skilled talent. The growing success of ITIL over the years has a lot to do with ITIL-certified professionals who hugely benefit from the training, the growing skillset and expertise to make value-driven transformations for their organizations. These talented professionals work wonders for their organization and play an important role in the digital evolution of an organization. Therefore, organizations must hire skilled talent and provide regular training to their employees to bridge the skills gap.

Organizational transformation at its very foundation requires personnel and workforce training. This training goes beyond IT as ITIL covers different functionalities of an organization. For instance, digital transformation is required at all levels, right from service desks (IT) to HR. One of the biggest advantages of ITIL 4 is the common language it speaks through multiple levels of an organization. A holistic approach to training is required which covers roles, responsibilities, skills gaps and retraining, if required.

The ITSM Benchmarking Report, 2019, suggested that 89% of respondents who participated in the survey say that ITIL certifications are essential to their continuing career development and 77% reported that ITIL helped them implement organizational transformation. 

Start Your Journey with ITIL 4 

The ITIL V4 Certification scheme provides a modular approach to the ITIL framework and focuses on different aspects of ITIL best practices in depth. The qualification is designed to offer flexibility to the candidates so that they can focus their ability on the key area of interest.

Are you ready to start this journey and advance your career?

Cognixia – world’s leading digital transformation company is offering a fully developed portfolio of AXELOS accredited ITIL training, ranging from the foundation to intermediate and expert levels. Our foundation course offers live, instructor-led training session with round the clock technical support and learning material. This course focuses on helping organizations and individuals understand ITIL 4 best practices and ultimately achieve the ITIL 4 certification. Our ITIL Foundation Certification costs $1595 and does not require any mandatory prerequisites. To know more about our ITIL 4 classes and to get certified in ITIL 4, review our ITIL® 4 Foundation course.

Ultimately, it is important to treat digital transformation as a process of improving what you already have. Successful evolution is primarily dependent on the cultural shift from the organizational mindset. Technology is tough but not the toughest. The switch in mindset from being more enterprise driven to being customer first and empathy-driven is imperative. Employees must have the ability and ambition to engage fully in the organization’s transformation. Leaders are responsible for prioritizing digital workplace initiatives and deploying tools and required to enable them. Achieving this dexterity is exactly where the journey to digital transformation begins. ITIL assists in this shift because the principles of ITIL focus on customer first and co-creation of value. Customers, stakeholders and employees take precedence over the enterprise. An effective application and adoption of ITIL practices and training to the workforce will ensure a streamlined and successful digital evolution for the organization.