Information Technology Service Delivery Research Articles

An Information Technology Service Hub for Effective Service Delivery in Nigeria

This paper aims at supporting freelancing and self-employment among information technology service providers, particularly newcomers, by allowing them to use the internet's broad reach to find jobs both inside and outside their location. The ongoing growth in unemployment in Nigeria has impacted every sector of the economy, including the delivery of information technology services. There are many skilled persons in the industry, but possibilities appear to be limited. This is due to the lack of specific platforms for information technology service providers to offer their services, which makes it difficult for potential clients to find a service provider to accomplish their work. This dilemma prompted the construction of a dedicated platform, which would serve as a one-stop shop for both an information technology service provider and a potential client, bridging the gap between them. The object oriented analysis and design methodology (OOADM) was employed in this research, and HTML, CSS, PHP, MySQL, and JavaScript were used to design the application in order to achieve a high level of scalability and platform performance. It is simple to use and allows service providers on the platform to operate freely without being charged a percentage of their earnings. This paper will be of immense benefit to the unemployed, masses and the Government.

Failed Tech Deployment Initiatives: Is Poor IT Governance to Blame?

Information Technology (IT) solutions have become a critical enabling tool in businesses and communities. As a result, organisations invest heavily in technology solutions to transform businesses. Motivated by rapid technological advancements, there have been radical changes in IT infrastructure management, IT applications, and IT services delivery. The recent COVID-19 pandemic also encouraged the rapid adoption of technology solutions. However, despite numerous prescriptive models and ‘best practice frameworks’ available in the field, and an increased uptake of ITG in organisations, achieving key ITG outcomes is consistently ranked as one of the top concerns of management. After establishing a theoretical foundation for effective ITG practices (via literature review), this study begins a pilot examination to determine if tech deployment failure can be attributed to poor ITG.

A proposed cloud-based platform of information technology services delivery management

A proposed cloud-based platform of information technology services delivery management

A review of the latest IT service management solutions

In today's fast-paced business environment, efficient Information Technology (IT) service management is crucial for maintaining a competitive edge. The latest Information Technology Service Management (ITSM) solutions offer a wide range of features and capabilities, including automation, self-service portals, and analytics, to help organizations streamline their IT operations and improve their overall performance. This review will take a closer look at some of the latest IT Service Management (ITSM) solutions on the market and explore their key features and benefits. It will also discuss how these solutions can help organizations improve their IT service delivery and support their digital transformation efforts.

A Study to Analyze the Impact of Knowledge Management (KM) practices in IT Service Delivery Industry in India

Information Technology (IT) Industry in India is growing fast. Organizations across the world are outsourcing the IT services to take advantage of cost and time differences. India plays vital role in supporting the outsourcing services by taking advantage of the language skills and skilled workforce. Knowledge Management (KM) is critical for the continuity of the services and success of the organisations in different domains. This paper analysis the impact of Knowledge Management in Information Technology (IT) Service Delivery Industry in India. The study reveals Knowledge Management improves the performance of the Service Delivery organization. Methodical implementation and continuous improvement of Knowledge Management practices would further accelerate and improve the customer experience.

Problem Solving Tools And Techniques: For IT Services Delivery

Challenges and problems are the part of any business and organizations daily operations and activities. But, the way to deal with those problems and challenges makes difference in delivering good and quality services. In this study, it has been found that problems and challenges are the major obstacles for the IT (Information Technology) Service Delivery to the customers as well as to the end-users. It is vital to manage, address and handle those problems and challenges in a fashion manner. Therefore, in this study the main objective is to understand which techniques and/or tools to be used and where, when to be used as well as how to be used. And we have conclude that, IT Service Delivery plays a major role for the organization performance and/or business operations, in order to provide quality and reliable services as well as to hold a competitiveness market share. However, different techniques, tools and approaches as identified, shall be applied in relation to the nature of the problem and/or challenge, as well as with the time factor. Many techniques and tools can be used, but the most effective and flexible techniques are the Root Cause Analysis, Problem Oriented/Solving Research, Trail And Error, Brainstorming and the Application of RPR (Rapid Problem Resolution) Technique.

Information Technology (IT) Contingency Plan as part of the Business Continuity Plan: Case of IT Services Delivery Industry

It is not a surprising situation to see that, some of the business owners or senior executives of the institutions, for not taking into account the future of their business or institutions, by failing to look at the catastrophic risk factors that may result in their businesses or institutions to fail in fulfilling their obligations to the community. That is why, in this study as an exploratory research, the study managed to explore the importance and benefits of both business continuity and IT contingency plans of having them in place. As well as, how these plans can be established and implemented smoothly. Although, in this study have been found that all these plans has major drawback of both being a very complex processes and very costly during establishment. In this study, it has been found that business continuity and IT contingency plans, have demonstrated significant impact of their importance in safeguarding IT business infrastructure as well as other corporate resources such as human resource, data and information, finance and time. Also to act as an assurance for the business activities and operations restore, if or when a catastrophe event happens. And in summary, this study concluded that business continuity plan through IT contingency planning has proved its importance and positive impact for many businesses which decided to adopt. But however, there still some small and medium enterprises (SME’s) who cannot implement such initiatives as this may result in losses through maintenance cost or during the period of establishment. But, the analysis of the advantages vs. disadvantages shows that the advantages outweigh the disadvantages. And this indicates that, IT Contingency Plan plays a major role in the discipline of the business continuity management within the corporate.

The Effectiveness of Information Technology (IT) Competence in Business Partnerships

The main responsibility of Information Technology (IT) in business is to acquire, implement and maintain technology investments, which belonged within the Information Systems. In order to achieve successful IT planning and implementation, shared knowledge becomes an important enabler of the alignment of business and IT objectives. This research evaluates how cross-functional competence in business and IT people provides the basis for effective partnership to develop. The objective is to conceptually define and empirically measure the variables of IT competence in business managers and of business competence in IT professionals, and test the measurements for validity and reliability. A Simple Percentage Method, chi-square tests, Tables and weighted average were used to get clear picture of analysis with results showing how both IT knowledge and IT experience are instrumental in defining IT competence of business people. The results of these showed that IT service delivery dimensions, IT system dimensions (quality, delivery, trustworthy and management) and IT core characteristics have statistical significant influence on effective IT competences among IT business people and IT cognitive dimensions which included knowledge, skills and experience.

Service-Delivery Modeling and Optimization

Service-delivery modeling and optimization is a complex problem involving multiple service levels, skill sets, request classes, and service times. In this paper, we describe a comprehensive and scalable end-to-end analytical methodology that we developed and implemented at a global information technology service delivery provider. This methodology provides predictive insight and prescriptive solutions to the problem of staffing service-delivery units in this complex environment. Our solution has been deployed globally at more than 640 service-delivery units and has yielded more than $52 million in cost savings and cost avoidance to date.

Robust Service Time Measurement Using Comparison Sequential Test

The sequential comparison test is a tool for evaluation of the operational innovation in information technology service delivery processes. Due to the strong variability of these processes, the evaluation is done in comparison with the parallel running servers taken as reference. We consider the streams of service-completion events. When the time between events (TBE) is exponentially distributed, the binomial sequential probability ratio test (SPRT) can be used for evaluation. The effect of deviations from the exponential distribution on the characteristics of the test is analysed. We suggest a novel criterion that allows analysing robustness of the test. We show that the main factor influencing these characteristics is the coefficients of variation (CV) of the TBEs. Thus just by using CV of the TBEs, we may conclude whether the test is robust or not. We also suggest approach of handling the case when test for pair of single TBEs is not robust (case of CV > 1). Transition from a single server to a group of servers and from a single stream to a superposed stream of events improves robustness, since superposition of event streams brings the TBEs’ distribution closer to the exponential. Superposition makes it possible to deal with the problem for CV > 1. The analytical dependency of the fixed sample size test (FSST) robustness vs. CV permits simple estimation of robustness of the test in question. The advantage of the test is shown vs. the FSST, and illustrated on a real-life case.

Modeling the Ripple Effects of IT‐Based Incidents on Interdependent Economic Systems

ABSTRACTThe information technology (IT) sector is one of the most critically utilized infrastructures within the U.S. economic system. The IT sector is vulnerable to man‐made attacks and it is challenging to assess the consequences of disruptions to the production and delivery of essential IT services to other economic systems. In this paper, we developed a dynamic model based on economic input–output analysis to assess time‐varying disruptions on the IT sector over multiple periods. The model is applied in an ex post analysis of an actual denial‐of‐service (DoS) attack scenario on the IT infrastructure to estimate the consequences propagated to interdependent economic systems. The model uses Bureau of Economic Analysis data to simulate the effects of IT‐based incidents and subsequently identify the critically affected economic sectors. Key results of the case study include assessments of ripple effects to vulnerable sectors in the form of inoperability and economic loss measures. An investigation of the DoS attack in year 2000 using the proposed dynamic model revealed significant losses that are consistent with the magnitude of losses from previous studies. Furthermore, the model is capable of depicting the breakdown of losses across various economic sectors, which is a significant improvement relative to previously published results. This research also extends into a multiyear trend analysis (1999–2009) to aid in developing policies for reducing the effects of IT risks across the interdependent sectors of the U.S. economy.

Improving Productivity in Design and Development of Information Technology (IT) Service Delivery Simulation Models

The unprecedented scale of Information Technology (IT) service delivery requires careful analysis and optimization of service systems. The simulation is an efficient way to handle the complexity of modeling and optimization of real-world service delivery systems. However, typically developed custom simulation models lack standard architectures and limit the reuse of design and implementation artifacts across multiple models. In this work, following the design science research methodology, based on a formal model of service delivery systems and applying an adapted software product line (SPL) approach, we create a design artifact for building product lines of IT service delivery simulation models, which vastly simplify and reduce the cost of simulation model design and development. We evaluate the design artifact by constructing a product line of simulation models for a set of IBM’s IT service delivery systems. We validate the proposed approach by comparing the simulation results obtained using our models with the results from the corresponding custom simulation models. The case study demonstrates that the proposed approach leads to 5–8 times reductions in the time required to design and develop related simulation models. The potential implications of the application of the proposed approach within an organization are quicker responses to changes in the business environment, more information to assist in managerial decisions, and reduced workload on the process reengineering specialists.

Analytical support for predicting cost in complex service delivery environments

Within larger and ever-more complex global service delivery networks, forecasting and managing cost becomes an increasing challenge. While manifold interdependencies and transactions between individual delivery centers can still be captured ex post, forecasting the spending and income and expense (I&E) impacts of management decisions becomes tedious. We propose a business-analytics-based approach—drawing on past spending and accounting patterns—to derive service delivery cost forecasts across virtually all elements of the delivery environment in an automated, consistent, and unbiased fashion. Using a set of time-series analyses, as well as multiple regression models, we predict individual spending lines as well as the cost impact accruing from spending lines based on accounting rules. The approach has been developed for a global IT (information technology) service delivery business and has been tested in simulations across several of its units—producing quality predictions able to beat alternative benchmarks.

A SURVEY ON ENERGY EFFICIENT WITH TASK CONSOLIDATION IN THE VIRTUALIZED CLOUD COMPUTING ENVIRONMENT

Cloud computing is a new model of computing that is widely used in today’s industry, organizations and society in information technology service delivery as a utility. It enables organizations to reduce operational expenditure and capital expenditure. However, cloud computing with underutilized resources still consumes an unacceptable amount of energy than fully utilized resource. Many techniques for optimizing energy consumption in virtualized cloud have been proposed. This paper surveys different energy efficient models with task consolidation in the virtualized cloud computing environment.

Optimal capacity management and planning in services delivery centers

This paper considers human server systems of queues that arise within the information technology services industry. We develop a two-phase stochastic optimization solution approach to effectively and efficiently address the capacity management and planning processes of information technology services delivery centers. A large collection of numerical experiments of real-world human server system environments investigates various issues of both theoretical and practical interest, quantifying the significant benefits of our approach as well as evaluating the financial-performance trade-offs often encountered in practice.

Productivity Analysis in Services Using Timing Studies

We develop a novel empirical approach to analyze workforce productivity in service systems via timing studies – detailed time-stamped data recording relevant activities performed by the employees processing service requests. Our econometric approach, which is based on models from survival analysis, takes advantage of the detailed information provided by timing study data to capture the time-varying factors that affect productivity, such as the workload level, switching among different tasks and temporary work-relief from breaks during the working shift. We apply our framework in an information technology service delivery system and use the estimated results to evaluate alternative designs of the service system in terms of workforce productivity. Specifically, our methodology can inform decisions regarding workload allocation, routing, prioritization, and working schedule design in a service system.

MAPPING INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY INFRASTRUCTURE LIBRARY WITH OTHER INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY STANDARDS AND BEST PRACTICES

Information Technology (IT) has become an important strategic resource that any organization has to manage. It has been recognized that IT services are crucial and strategic organizational assets, therefore, organizations are investing considerable amount of resources into the support and delivery of IT services and the systems that underpins them. Various IT standards and IT best practices are being implemented by the enterprises to support their business and IT services. A number of these standards are different from others but they contain some similarities. This study discusses these IT standards and best practices and maps their processes to ITIL. CobiT, ISO/IEC 27002-2005, Six Sigma, TOGAF, eTOM, CMMI, PCI DSS and Common Security Framework (CSF) processes will be mapped to ITIL processes. This study will show the similarities between several IT standards and ITIL that helps in adopting these standards concurrently with ITIL. ITIL and other standards have many similarities that will benefit enterprises in implementing these standards concurrently.

Using Big Data Analytics in Information Technology (IT) Service Delivery

This paper provides some understandings on what big data analytics are, how they work, some of their applications and how big data analytics can improve the IT service delivery in typical IT organization or IT outsourcing service provider's environment. Both discussion and conclusion are also included. The applications of big data analytics include: recommendation, clustering, classification and frequent pattern matching. Examples for the application of big data analytics are categorized into: a) IT staffing and resourcing, b) IT service level and problem management, and c) IT governance and risk management. Some challenges of adopting big data analytics are also discussed which include: a) Big data analytics are not for everyone, b) Shortage of big data analytical skillset, c) Ethical consideration, and d) Careful planning on what big data to collect.

User Satisfaction with Information Technology Service Delivery: A Social Capital Perspective

Existing research has long considered service quality as a primary determinant of user satisfaction with information technology (IT) service delivery. In response to the knowledge-intensive and collaborative nature of IT service delivery in the contemporary business context, we advance the theoretical understanding of user satisfaction by re-conceptualizing IT service delivery as a bilateral, relational process between the IT staff and users. Based on this reconceptualization, we draw on social capital theory to examine the antecedents of user satisfaction with IT service delivery. Specifically, we posit that two major dimensions of social capital, i.e., cognitive capital and relational capital, not only positively affect user satisfaction but also strengthen the established relationship between service quality and user satisfaction. Furthermore, we propose that the effect of the other dimension of social capital—structural capital—on user satisfaction is fully mediated through cognitive capital and relational capital. A field study of 159 users in four financial companies provides general empirical support for our hypotheses. Theoretical and practical implications of these findings are discussed.

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