Many organisations depending heavily upon their IT have successfully formulated a service management strategy that defines the quality of IT support and service for the business.  Over time, this can lead to various IT service contracts being supplied by different (and often competing) specialist IT outsourcers. The result is fragmented, non-cohesive IT support for the people who use the services, along with the added burden on management teams of coordinating an end-to-end service for a non-core but business critical area.

Most service delivery strategies are based on the CCTA IT Infrastructure Library (ITIL), which is now recognised as the standard for service management. But that fact comes with a crucial caveat. The interpretations and subsequent development of the guidelines provided by ITIL into support and delivery processes can differ widely between providers, even where the end result – for example a resolved Incident – may be the same.

This situation raises an important question. How can such inconsistent and varied ITIL-based services be jointly applied to meet an organisation’s strategic needs and effectively support genuinely mission-critical IT systems?

Answering this question, through the implementation of practical measures, is particularly complicated when more than one supplier organisation is involved, and where each agreement in place has its own service levels, recording systems, processes, responsibilities and communication methods. Not only may down-time incur significant costs, but can a business be confident that its existing processes are capable of productively engaging with suppliers to resolve Incidents in the right way, and as efficiently as possible, in such a high-pressure environment?

This White Paper looks at the change of approach needed to effectively manage both Incidents and Major Incidents in a shared supplier environment. The Paper uses a real case study to highlight examples of effective end-to-end service management in a shared supplier contract that comprises two competitor IT outsourcers.