While the consensus around the benefits of ITIL is virtually universal, the reality is that organizations’ ITIL initiatives run the gamut—both in terms of costs and benefits. Your service management platform can play a huge role in the degree to which you realize the potential benefits of ITIL in your organization. By combining ITIL-based best practices in a solution that is easy to configure and deploy, CA Nimsoft Service Desk offers a truly pragmatic way to get the most out of ITIL in your organization. For more information, visit: http://www.nimsoft.com.

1. WHITE PAPER
September 2012
pragmatic ITIL
How CA Nimsoft Service Desk makes it easier
than ever to leverage ITIL
agility
made possible™

2. Pragmatic ITIL
table of contents
executive summary 3
Introduction: ITIL’s payoff not guaranteed 3
CA Nimsoft Service Desk: Maximizing 4
the benefits of ITIL
Conclusion 6
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3. Pragmatic ITIL
executive summary
While the consensus around the benefits of ITIL is virtually universal, the reality is that organizations’
ITIL initiatives run the gamut—both in terms of costs and benefits. Your service management platform
can play a huge role in the degree to which you realize the potential benefits of ITIL in your
organization. By combining ITIL-based best practices in a solution that is easy to configure and deploy,
CA Nimsoft Service Desk offers a truly pragmatic way to get the most out of ITIL in your organization.
Introduction: ITIL’s payoff not guaranteed
For anyone who For anyone who has tried to implement ITIL, however, it is clear that there’s a big gulf between
has tried to understanding the theoretical benefits of ITIL and realizing them in practice. Here are a few reasons
implement ITIL, this has traditionally been the case:
however, it is clear • Big up-front commitment. Building ITIL-based workflows and capabilities into your service desk can
that there’s a big take considerable up-front investment, both in staff education and in platform procurement. In many
gulf between organizations, adopting ITIL takes a large process engineering effort as well. Further, organizations
understanding have been required to do extensive customization work in order to adapt the service desk platforms
the theoretical to the new processes. The result is that it is not uncommon for ITIL-based service desk initiatives to
benefits of ITIL take six months or more.
and realizing
them in practice. • Standard open to interpretation. After investing all the time and money required, your organization
still isn’t assured of the benefits you’re seeking. ITIL is not fully prescriptive; it is a broad standard
that leaves a lot of room for interpretation and many different ways to apply to the specifics of your
business. Consequently, the results an organization actually experiences can vary dramatically, with
some enjoying only marginal gains, if any at all, while others realize significant improvements.
• Platform certification no guarantee. It is important to note that, even if your organization deploys
an ITIL-certified platform, strong improvements aren’t by any means assured. In essence, ITIL
certification means that a tool can be implemented in a way that supports ITIL. The degree to which
a given solution enables and streamlines ITIL adoption—and helps your business—can vary
substantially, depending on the platform deployed.
To sum it up: Your results may vary.
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4. Pragmatic ITIL
CA Nimsoft Service Desk: Maximizing the benefits of ITIL
CA Nimsoft Service Desk is an IT service management solution that enables your organization to get
maximum benefit from ITIL—with minimal cost and effort. CA Nimsoft Service Desk equips you with
action-based workflows built on ITIL standards to manage, coordinate, and optimize all aspects of
service delivery. With its leading combination of ITIL-based best practices, pre-packaged workflows,
and easy configuration, CA Nimsoft Service Desk helps you reduce the up-front investment typically
associated with ITIL initiatives—and it boosts the chances of your organization gaining the most
benefit from these endeavors.
Profit from deep ITIL expertise
Compared to many legacy solutions, which have been retrofitted to align with ITIL, CA Nimsoft Service
Desk was built on an ITIL foundation from the outset of development. In addition, the solution was
crafted by ITIL experts who were seasoned service providers in the service management arena. With
years of practical experience in applying ITIL principles in customer environments, the team at
CA Nimsoft understands how to apply ITIL efficiently, cost effectively, and scalably.
Streamline ITIL deployment
CA Nimsoft Service Desk has all the core ITIL best practices embedded in the solution—complete with
CA Nimsoft pre-built workflows that are fully integrated and available for you to use immediately. CA Nimsoft
Service Desk Service Desk offers workflows that cover all core service management processes, including incident
features modules assignment, escalation, SLA tracking, and more. (See sidebar for a complete list of modules.)
for these critical Consequently, rather than having to do a lot of customized process engineering, CA Nimsoft Service
areas in service Desk enables you to leverage automated, pre-configured processes. These processes represent all the
management: core capabilities your organization requires, right out of the gate—effectively jump starting the bulk of
• Incident the work needed to get your ITIL service desk running. Further, as opposed to other solutions that
require labor-intensive custom coding, with CA Nimsoft Service Desk, your team can use an intuitive
• Problem point-and- click interface to do the remaining work required to configure the solution to the specific
• Request needs of your business. As a result, while it’s common for other service desk deployments to take
several months, CA Nimsoft customers can go from kickoff to production in about 4-6 weeks.
• Change
Leverage a central data model
• Service ITIL recommends centralization and cross-referential integration of data, which is key to efficient,
asset and intelligent service management operations. CA Nimsoft Service Desk supports this by having an
configuration integrated, unified data infrastructure. The solution features a configuration management database
• Knowledge (CMDB) that acts as the central repository for data that underpins all capabilities, including incident
management, change management, and more. The CMDB gives your technical team everything they
• Service level need in one place. Whether your staff is responding to incoming incidents or using the CMDB to help
• Event* plan changes, CA Nimsoft Service Desk keeps it all coordinated.
• Availability Gain insights from comprehensive, off-the-shelf reports
management * CA Nimsoft Service Desk offers the comprehensive reporting capabilities that are key to supporting
* Available as part ITIL principles and delivering the information needed to facilitate continual process refinements. The
of CA Nimsoft solution features pre-built, customizable reports that cover such areas as ticket volumes, ticket backlog,
average incident duration, SLA compliance, and more.
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5. Pragmatic ITIL
Harness ITIL throughout the organization
Through its ITIL support and comprehensive, integrated capabilities, CA Nimsoft Service Desk enables
you to fully leverage process efficiencies across your organization. Following are just a couple examples
of how CA Nimsoft Service Desk has been proven to support broader IT and business initiatives:
• IT governance and compliance. The IT team at a retailer needed to support a host of tasks to ensure
compliance with the Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard (PCI DSS). The retailer integrated
CA Nimsoft Service Desk with this effort, automating the standard’s change requirements, for example
initiating password changes and server patches. CA Nimsoft Service Desk helped to streamline
compliance efforts by automating the initiation of ongoing tasks, approvals, and workflows. Further,
by centrally capturing configuration snapshots, logging, and assignments, the solution made
compliance reporting, tracking, and auditing far faster, more accurate, and more efficient.
• HR support. Like many other organizations, a large financial institution used separate systems
for change management and employee on boarding. After deploying CA Nimsoft Service Desk, the
organization was able to centrally manage all the IT functions associated with these various
processes. Now, for example, if an HR manager signs off on a new hire, they can submit a request
directly in the solution’s online interface, which can trigger all associated IT tasks, such as setting
up an Active Directory account, configuring a new PC, and so on.
Conclusion
The potential upsides of ITIL can be significant, but, for many organizations, the up-front commitment
and investment required to adopt ITIL can outweigh the benefits realized. By packaging ITIL-based
workflows in an easy-to-use IT service management platform, CA Nimsoft Service Desk enables support
organizations to practically, efficiently, and cost effectively get the most from their ITIL initiatives.
Learn more at ca.com/nimsoft
CA Technologies (NASDAQ: CA) provides IT management solutions that help
customers manage and secure complex IT environments to support agile
business services. Organizations leverage CA Technologies software and
SaaS solutions to accelerate innovation, transform infrastructure and secure
data and identities, from the data center to the cloud. Learn more about
CA Technologies at ca.com.
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