SURVEY SHOWS 71% ARE USING ITIL® & EFFICIENCY IS A QUICK WIN, BUT CULTURAL ISSUES ARE STILL AN ONGOING CHALLENGE

SURVEY SHOWS 71% ARE USING ITIL® & EFFICIENCY IS A QUICK WIN, BUT CULTURAL ISSUES ARE STILL AN ONGOING CHALLENGE

Nearly 700 Global IT Practitioners Participate In Pink Elephant/BMC Survey

BURLINGTON, ON – August 14, 2007 – A recent online survey from Pink Elephant and BMC Software examining ITIL in SAP enterprises reveals that a large majority are using ITIL as a strategy; the primary benefits of adopting the best practice framework are process standardization and efficiency; and cultural issues continue to plague implementation efforts.

The survey was conducted in February 2007 with nearly 700 IT executives, directors, managers and consultants worldwide to assess where IT Service Management (ITSM) is headed in terms of global adoption. Most of the results are based on responses from 240 individuals who met specific criteria that included running SAP for enterprise resource planning (ERP) implementations, being responsible for ITIL strategies and holding a senior position in the IT organization.

Key findings of the study, released in the joint Pink Elephant/BMC white paper titled ITIL Best Practices In SAP Environments, include:

* 71 % of respondents are implementing ITIL as a strategy. This includes feedback from the 240 people who met the full qualification criteria, as well as others who responded to the survey
* Process standardization and efficiency are the primary benefits of implementing ITIL
* Most respondents are managing their SAP implementations as part of larger IT enterprise ITIL initiatives
* The most common ITIL process implemented first is Incident Management, followed by Service Desk and Change Management
* The biggest challenges to ITIL implementation are cultural (learning to work across silos and avoiding resistance to change)
* When asked what they would do differently in the future to mitigate these challenges, participants cited that they would:

o Do more up-front planning
o Get early buy-in and involvement
o Increase the socialization of issues to teams outside their regions
o Conduct more training

“The main take-away from this survey is that ITIL best practices are well suited to the ERP marketplace,” says Troy DuMoulin, Pink Elephant’s Director of Product Strategy and the white paper’s co-author. “ERP customers are often large enterprises with complex IT environments and varying degrees of IT process maturity; however, they do understand the benefits of standardized processes and integrated applications, and can therefore recognize how similar benefits apply to IT by implementing ITIL.”

“Efficient management of business processes continue to play a critical role in driving revenue and overall business success,” said Ken Turbitt, global best practices director at BMC. “Using ITIL best practices, combined with a Business Service Management strategy allows customers to support these automated processes across the organization and manage IT operations from a business perspective with truly integrated thinking. The results are clear with BMC customers reaping the benefits of this integrated strategy, delivering increased efficiency and process standardization improvement.”

Read The Full White Paper

Go to www.pinkelephant.com/en-US/ResourceCenter/PinkPapers/ to read ITIL Best Practices In SAP Environments in its entirety. No preliminary sign-up is required. Also, find out how to access The Rise & Re-Integration Of The ERP Empire, Pink Elephant’s bonus PinkPaper that builds on the survey results and examines the business reasons for the rise and separation of the SAP organization from the general IT function over the last 15-20 years.

About Pink Elephant

Pink Elephant is the world leader in IT management best practices, offering conferences, education and consulting services to public and private businesses globally. The company specializes in improving the quality of IT services through the application of recognized frameworks, including the IT Infrastructure Library (ITIL). Pink Elephant has been involved in the ITIL project since its inception in 1987, and was selected as an international expert to contribute to the ITIL V3 project – as authors of V3’s Continual Service Improvement book and through representation on the international exam panel. For more information, please visit www.pinkelephant.com.

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For further information, please contact:

Ann Lamanes
Manager, Public Relations
Pink Elephant
Telephone: 1-888-273-7465 ext. 295
a.lamanes {at} pinkelephant(.)com