ISO/IEC 20000:2011

This is an international IT service management standard designed for IT organizations. ISO 20000 defines the standards for the service management processes. ISO 20000:2011 make sure that ITSM processes of the IT organizations are aligned both with the needs of the business and with international best practices. The standard helps organizations in benchmarking their services, measure level of services provided and their performance. This does not give advice to companies on how to design their processes. Instead of this, it consists of a set of requirements which must be met in order to qualify for certification. The standard provides guidelines to the IT organizations to provide necessary services to their clients.

ISO/IEC 20000:2011 makes use of process-based approach for continuous improvement in the service management system and is classified into five parts. Moreover, this standard helps in enabling IT service providers to enhance the quality of service they deliver to their customers. ISO 20000 is closely related to ITIL which provides methods for managing information technology as a service. ITIL is introduced to provide advice on best practices in IT service management. Actually, ITIL is an important and most used approach for obtaining an ISO 20000 certificate.

The standard is adopted by the organizations that looking for services from service providers and requires the comfort that their service requirement will be fulfilled. Many service providers make use of this to monitor, measure and review its service management processes. It defines the requirements including design, transition, delivery, and improvement of services to fulfill the requirements and provides high-quality services.

Benefits of ISO 20000:2011

These standard series is beneficial to use for IT organization for improving their services. The organizations adopting the standard must be able to meet customer requirement and to create a framework for independent evolution. Some of the benefits of ISO 20000 Certification for the organizations are as:

• This helps in measuring the competitive difference by showing up reliability and high quality of services.
• Make sure that the services provided to the customer will fulfill their requirements.
• Defines requirements to plan, establish, implement, review, maintain and improve service management system.
• It is beneficial for the service providers with the purpose to demonstrate their capabilities for the design, transition, delivery, and improvement of services.
• This enforces a measurable level of effectiveness and a culture of continual improvement.
• It will help in comparing the ITIL practices to optimize the resources and processes used in an organization.

IT organizations have to fulfill some requirements in order to get ISO 20000 Certification. The organizations need to have service management system requirements in order to complaint with the standard. They require guidance on the application of service management systems. The standard encourages the adoption of an integrated process approach for the quality of services delivered as a matter of fact to meet the business and customer requirements. This is important for the IT organizations in order to prove that processes are documented, actively managed and continuously improved.