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IT Service Management (ITSM) can be defined as a management system of organizational resources and capabilities for providing value to organizational customers through IT services (van Bon et al., 2007). IT Service Management has become a relevant organizational theme for IT areas in large and mid-sized organizations because it is expected that its utilization, jointly with other IT schemes of processes, deliver a more efficient and effective IT management, and ultimately a better organizational value (Johnson et al., 2007; Gallup et al., 2009).
While studies on ITSM impacts are relatively scarce (Hochstein et al., 2005; Cater-Steel & Toleman, 2006; Potgetier et al., 2006; Cater-Steel et al., 2009), the few available studies share evidences of benefits. In Hochstein et al. (2005) the findings of six cases conducted in large European companies (5) and a governmental setting (1) are reported. In all of them, the overall assessment is of positive impacts categorized as follows: a better client/service orientation with positive impacts on the quality of IT services respectively, a better efficiency of IT processes, and a better visibility of IT processes (transparency and comparability documentary issues). Cater-Steel and Toleman (2006) also reports the following positive impacts of ITSM (found in 5 cases of Australian companies): a more consistent and documented service management process (less negative surprises or omissions), less conflictive SLAs negotiations (smoother), more precise predictions of IT infrastructure warranty issues, and a better manager of incidents, changes and testing tasks. Potgetier et al. (2006) also support the notion of ITSM implementation benefits from a single case. In Cater-Steel et al.’s (2009) survey of 65 Australian corporations identified the following key benefits: an improved customer satisfaction, an improved response and resolution time, an improved IT service continuity, a clear identification of roles/responsibilities, a reduction in cost/incident, and an improved IT employee productivity.
However, in order to be realized such benefits, IT practitioners – and organizations- must first select, learn, and deploy correctly an ITSM processes framework (Pollard & Cater-Steel, 2009). At present, the main seven ITMS processes frameworks are: ISO/IEC 20000 (ISO, 2005; 2010), ITIL v2 (van Bon et al., 2005), ITIL v3 (Cartlidge, 2007; van Von et al., 2007), CobIT 4.0 (ITGI, 2005), CMMI-SVC (SEI, 2010), ITUP® (EMA, 2006; Ganek & Kloeckner, 2007; IBM, 2010), and MOF® 4.0 (Microsoft, 2008). However, no single approach has achieved a generalized acceptance, which is not surprising, as there are a multitude of other contextual and situational factors that influence the choice of process and process management decisions (Clarke & O’Connor, 2012). Furthermore there have been attempts to develop a mechanism for relating process decisions and industrial contexts contexts (Jeners et al., 2013).