Balancing Customer Requirements and IT Service Standardisation - A Procedural Reference Model for Individualised IT Service Agreement Configurations

Abstract

IT service providers are increasingly urged to stringently align their service portfolio with the IT support of their customers’ business processes. Consequently, both IT expenses and its strategic contribution to value creation are expected to become subject to heightened transparency. Yet, in order to allow for standardised on-demand service request processing within the meaning of IT industrialisation, these services appear too adapted to individual customer needs, particularly as they are subject to continuous changes in business requirements. In order to address this issue, a three-phase procedural model of IT service agreement configuration is introduced: IT services thus remain transformable and configurable via predefined complementary services which are selected by configuring a customer’s individual service directory. In addition, the reutilisation of modular commitments in order to compose service specifications aims to maintain standardised IT operations. Serving as a procedural reference model, these configuration phases are introduced in detail regarding activities, roles, techniques and data structure as developed and implemented in Action Research cooperation with two IT providers.