How To Build Your ITSM Business Case

Getting started with ITSM is a significant project

It requires plenty of thought, effort, and most of all, budget.

Understandably, CEOs and CFOs are usually wary of making significant investments of capital and employees’ time. They want evidence that a major effort to rework IT services will yield at least a proportionate benefit to the organisation.

This is where your ITSM business case comes in.

Building an ITSM Business Case

You need to present a compelling case to get the ITSM technology your organisation needs to survive and thrive. When building an ITSM business case, it’s important to keep these five things in mind.

1. The importance of strong IT capabilities and resilience for business continuity

Many organisations are now completely dependent on IT. During the pandemic, even organisations that historically had not relied heavily on IT were forced into overnight IT expansion and adoption to support remote workforces.

Increased reliance on IT makes the impact of outages or interruptions even greater. Improving the quality and consistency of IT services becomes even more critical from a business perspective—but current geopolitical events naturally create uncertainty and increase the risk of interruptions.  While these issues pose challenges for organisations, they are compelling arguments to include when building an ITSM business case. Organisations with strong IT capabilities and resilience are best positioned to adapt to changing conditions, so be sure to use this to your advantage

2. Demonstrating the potential cost savings of IT service management (ITSM) through efficiency improvements

Many organisations waste money every day due to inefficient IT operations. In your business case, it’s your job to quantify these inefficiencies and use them to demonstrate the potential value of ITSM for your organisation. Common examples of cost reductions include:

• More efficient service desk—cost per ticket goes down
• Fewer outages—reduce downtime, which is costly
• Less human involvement in mundane tasks—cost savings or more time for high-value tasks
• Less maintenance of legacy systems—no need for costly specialist work

Imagine each service desk cost your organisation £20. By implementing a self-service portal, you could reduce this cost to £11 and make a £9 saving per ticket. Multiply that by the number of tickets your helpdesk processes in a year, and you’ve got a line item for your ITSM business case.

3. Maximising revenue opportunities through an ITSM-enabled mature IT service

The opportunity costs of an inefficient IT service aren’t to be underestimated. 

The pandemic showed how important IT could be, even for organisations that hadn’t traditionally relied on it for revenue. Many of these organisations have continued to embrace IT even after the pandemic had largely diminished in severity.

So, where does opportunity cost come in? Organisations in non-IT industries are increasingly turning to IT for additional revenue streams—but this requires a mature IT service. You can’t expect to succeed with a bold new IT initiative if your systems are constantly interrupted or low-performing.

ITSM is the natural “hero” of this story. Try to include some aspirational benefits when you build your ITSM business case, such as highlighting new initiatives that could be possible with a more mature IT service—but aren’t possible without it.

4. Highlighting the intangible benefits of ITSM to support business objectives

Not all ITSM benefits are quantifiable. However, this doesn’t make them unworthy of inclusion. Once you’ve calculated all plausibly measurable cost savings, include a further section for intangible benefits that will support the organisation’s objectives.

Common examples include:

• Less employee time wasted following up tickets.
• Faster access to IT resources
• New users up and running faster – which could mean higher retention
• Greater user satisfaction

5. Demonstrating value through a low-risk ITSM approach with a hosted SaaS solution.

Major capital investments may not be at the top of your CFO’s priority list—even with a solid business case. Capital investments create risk for your organisation, after all.

However, replacing capital expenditure (CAPEX) with operational expenditure (OPEX) can be more appealing. It allows an ITSM project to demonstrate its worth in a low-risk environment. Even if the project were unsuccessful, the organisation wouldn’t be seriously out of pocket.

This is where implementation of a hosted SaaS solution vs traditional on-premise solution may be the most appropriate option for your business.

Choose the Right Partner for Your Needs

At Sunrise, we pride ourselves on providing the highest quality ITSM customer experience available. We’ll help you understand your organisation’s needs, set clear objectives for your implementation project, and get you up and running in record time.

To find out how Sunrise can help your organisation achieve its objectives—and avoid costly ITSM failures—arrange a free demo today.

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