IT Service Management Around the World

On Location: Golden Circle Tour – Reykjavik, Iceland

Case Topic: ITIL Guiding Principles – Progress Iteratively with Feedback – Collaborate

Iceland – the ancient land of fire and ice. The land of Vikings, rich with their history of exploration and settlement. A land today that offers amazing natural wonders and UNESCO World Heritage sites.

Tourism is obviously a large and competitive industry in Iceland and every tour company operates and guides their clients to many of the same main attractions.

They get you there, they give you tips but you either get the picture of “Geysir” or you miss it. So can one tour company differentiate itself? Can they use IT to deliver a better experience?

They can’t control the weather or the timing of “Geysir” (yet) but IT is becoming significant for their business models in solving tour issues and enhancing services.

What if one tour company decided to develop an app for their drivers.

The features of the app would be designed to:
1. Solve issues that arise on most tours
2. Promote unique features of their tour
3. Offer special service enhancements

Let’s look at a digital transformation project that is in the final stages of development. The ITIL guiding principles of progress iteratively with feedback and collaborate and promote visibly are well in evidence.

The project manager has worked closely with many individuals across the company. He has interviewed and talked to most of the drivers and he has gone on several ride-along trips to fully witness the delivery of the tour service in many different circumstances.

He has worked with Service Desk staff to improve the classification of calls coming in from drivers while on a tour. Improvements were made in their ability to differentiate calls that were simple Service Requests and calls that were requests for help with issues that were related to a breakdown in service delivery – both IT related and non IT.

Many improvement ideas were directed towards the booking and registration applications even though the focus of his project was the new app for the drivers.

The project team has documented the value stream to describe the activities for moving forward with a final live test and then app deployment.

Value Stream for Live Test

Value: The true value for the tour company will continue to be co-created as the app is used and improved, continually, to deliver service and business improvements. The collaboration and promotion should continue throughout the lifecycle of the service.

About the Author

Jim Jackson is the Managing Director of Blue Sky AFC Associates LLC. Jim holds the ITIL Expert Certificate (V3) and has also completed ITIL 4 Foundations certification. Jim is a service management professional and has been an accredited instructor of ITIL Foundations since 2005. He has shared his open, non-restricted view of the ITIL framework as he has trained and assisted hundreds of candidates to prepare for and pass the ITIL Foundations examinations. Jim has also written accredited courseware for earlier versions of ITIL Foundations and he contributed to ITIL 4 accredited course materials for Thought Rock in 2019.

About the Series – IT Service Management Around the World

These are fictional stories of service management and any similarity, you may find, to your own organization is purely coincidental. The purpose of these service management musings is to introduce service management and ITIL concepts as well as postulate on how ITIL and its components could be at play in any size business located anywhere in the world. The opinion stories are written to motivate customer centric, service oriented thinking and discussions. The content is not intended to constitute advice of any sort. While every eﬀort is made to ensure the accuracy and reliability of the information no liability is accepted for any loss resulting from the use of or reliance on this content.

Acknowledgements

ITIL is a registered trademark of Peoplecert.