This document summarizes an article from the February 2012 issue of itSMF Canada's national newsletter. The article discusses how IT service management tools are evolving to provide broader functionality beyond traditional IT service desks. It provides an example of a German software company, OMNINET, that offers a universal workflow platform that can integrate various business processes like ITSM, projects, sales, and requirements management. The platform helps a large construction company, STRABAG S.E., integrate its IT service, asset, and configuration management processes to provide end-to-end visibility and automation.

1. February 2012 ISSUE #07
IN THIS ISSUE:
• WHAT’S THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN
BUILDING A GOOD CMS AND BUILDING A
GOOD HOUSE?
• SERVICE ASSET & CONFIGURATION
MANAGEMENT (SACM) AT THE
GOVERNMENT OF ONTARIO
• FREE TOOLS & RESOURCES MAKE
MOVING UP TO WINDOWS 7 AND OFFICE
2010 A BREEZE
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• RESULTS FROM A WORK /
REQUIREMENTS KNOWLEDGE MODEL
itSMF Canada is a non-profit organization dedicated to • CHANGE MANAGEMENT LINKED TO
promoting and facilitating the recognition and growth of STRATEGY – A KEY INGREDIENT FOR YOUR
our members in Service Management. We promote the SERVICE STRATEGY
certification, adoption and application of ‘Good Practice’
• MANAGING IT PROCESSES - A MODERN
frameworks and standards, such as ITIL, ISO20000, CoBIT PENTATHLON
and many others.
• THE OTHER KIND OF ALIGNMENT: BUY
www.itsmf.ca IN
OUR SPONSORS
itSMF Canada would like to thank our National Corporate Sponsors for 2012

2. February 2012
Managing IT processes
- a modern pentathlon
The recent announcement of Gartner retiring the Magic distribution stocks. Of course, the classic ITIL service
Quadrant for IT Service Desk must have been a shock for support and transition processes are vital to keep
many tool vendors. The reason for this decision reflects heads up in daily IT business at BRVZ. However those
the change that is currently going on in the Service Desk disciplines can just partly do the job as BRVZ has to
tool market: manage huge amounts of charging data records for
hundreds of thousands of cost centers at the same time.
Service Desk tools are still important for modern IT, STRABAG S.E. consists of more than 60 local companies
but the pure Service Desk functionality will not act as a all over the world. The distributed organization puts
differentiator anymore among the over 75 tool vendors. severe requirements on the development of new or
individual services. This is why tightly integrated Service
Instead Gartner stresses that this kind of functionality Design and Strategy processes were in direct focus at
should be just a component of a larger suite addressing BRVZ. To design STRABAG’s own interpretation of “best
a wider scope. practice” ITIL processes, that span several departments
and companies, was complex, to implement them in the
This reflection brings new vendors in focus. For instance, existing tools was almost impossible.
OMNINET a German ITSM software company has taken a
completely different approach. They provide a universal Oliver Punz, responsible project manager at BRVZ: “We
workflow platform allowing companies to easily integrate have chosen OMNITRACKER® because of its platform
closely related business process applications into a character, flexibility and its guaranteed update release
single environment called ‘OMNITRACKER®’. Integrated compatibility even for highly customized processes.
business process application examples include ITSM, The result is SCOT – Several Companies One Tool – a
Projects, Sales, Requirements, Risks, Tasks, Documents, platform that provides seamless tool automation from
Stock/Order and Systems Engineering with more on the initial customer service request via the purchasing and
way. stock management back to the delivery of a business
service including all sub-components. Now we can
The result: solve incidents and manage purchase orders in our
“OMNITRACKER® helps improve business outcomes OMNITRACKER®-based ITSM tool at the same time.
by simplifying and integrating processes over several When CI’s are delivered we can manage our IT stocks in
departments using a universal, scalable and affordable real-time and track the full configuration management
solution that requires no specialized programming process in one system without entering data manually
skills to implement and maintain.” all the time. Even the booking-in of CI’s works fully tool-
supported by using barcode scanners integrated with
An example of the advantages of the integrated the shipping notes forms and SACM in OMNITRACKER®.
approach to ITSM is delivered by OMNINET’s customer Last but not least, our IT and purchasing department
STRABAG S.E., a multinational and one of the largest have a common 360 degree view on our suppliers and
construction companies worldwide. BRVZ the central our infrastructure and internal IT stocks. Everything is
IT-Service Provider of STRABAG S.E. receives 35,000 transparent and fully documented in OMNITRACKER®.
service requests per year, from 75,000 persons. 15,000 Meanwhile we have extended the scope of this platform
of those service requests include a real demand for to integrate our software development and their projects
new services or IT equipment that needs to be delivered in our processes, too.”
to one of the 2,700 locations/construction sites or IT
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33

3. itSMF CANADA NATIONAL NEWSLETTER
There are many other areas in which ITIL processes American operations. “They end up reducing the amount
extend into non-ITIL disciplines and methodologies and of applications they run and can get rid of numerous
where an integrated approach offers benefits. in-house developed and often unsupported tools. The
result is a reduction in licenses, complexity and risks. The
For example, Project Management tasks can be a approach has proven to be very successful for both small
realistic result of IT-Service Management processes. As companies and big ones. Companies can freely modify
soon as a Request for Change (“RFC”) exceeds a certain existing templates or configure their own Application
threshold of complexity, effort or risk it is essential to Templates, so the scope of the OMNITRACKER® platform
setup a project. Of course, a simple RFC can use the is virtually unlimited. This is done via a configuration
standard ITIL workflow but complex ones need to be environment, not by writing code.
broken down into manageable activities which then
need to be planned and monitored. The strict separation of business logic and core
functionality within OMNITRACKER® has another
The handling of requirements also can get you out of advantage. No matter how complex the implemented
the ITIL area. At a certain stage the standard design and business processes are, how wide their scope, the core
review mechanisms described in ITIL might not be able platform remains unchanged. This is true, even for tailor
to manage the complex service requirements anymore. made application templates or for templates with many
In this case classic Requirements Management complex external interfaces. Because of this, OMNINET
methodologies are a proven way to transform customer is able to guarantee in its license agreements that the
demands into service and system specifications. solution is always release compatible.”
Additionally as soon as software-related IT services are
under construction it becomes essential to perform IT-Service Management, Project Management, Systems
professional test management and implement bug Engineering, Stock and Order Management, Risk
tracking procedures normally being used in the area of Management – it is going to be a modern pentathlon for
software development. most of the IT-Service Management vendors.
German ITSM software vendor OMNINET identified David A. Smith is the President of Micromationinc.
lots of every day scenarios where methodologies like com and specializes in Metrics, TCO, ISO 20K and
Prince2, SCRUM or HOOD perfectly complete the ITIL ITSM implementations.
picture. As for the process coverage in ITIL, OMNINET
believes that it will become even more in future. ITSM
Tools like OMNITRACKER® need to be prepared even for
the unexpected. There will be a new demand, where tools
instead of acting as a single system or system-suite will
have to change into a flexible homogeneous platform.
“The flexible and easy way in which our clients can
add or change processes, almost without any limits, is
without any doubt what appeals most to our clients”,
says Justus Beek, responsible for OMNINET’s North
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