The importance of ITIL

ITIL (IT Infrastructure Library) is the most widely accepted approach to IT service management in the world. ITIL provides a cohesive set of best practice, drawn internationally from the public and private sectors, and is supported by a comprehensive qualifications scheme, accredited training organisations and implementation and assessment tools.

The best practice processes promoted in ITIL support, and are supported by, the British Standards Institution's (BSI) standard for IT Service Management (BS15000).

Lynx was the third UK service provider to achieve this status following a rigorous BSI audit and is currently working towards the ISO 20000 worldwide standard for IT Service Management.

Supporting this commitment to delivering the highest standards of IT Service Management, Lynx is also a Member of the itSMF and individual Lynx personnel have achieved professional qualifications at both Foundation and Manager's Certificate levels.

BT Lynx provides a range of managed support services which can assist any business which is looking to adopt ITIL best practice in its delivery of IT services.

Service Desk - Provision of a single central point of contact for all users of IT within an organisation and which will act as an interface for all other support services.

The Lynx Service Desk is a single point of contact for all customers for any aspect of support provision. The Lynx UNITY customer management system provides an integrated platform from capture of information at first contact, through communicating with resolving teams and the customer, to reporting against service performance.

Incident Management - The management of all incidents from detection through to resolution and ensuring restoration of normal service as soon as possible with minimum impact to business activities.

Every new contact with the Lynx Service Desk is logged as an incident event. Incidents are managed and resolved within a three tier support structure which is underpinned with back-to-back third party contracts where necessary. Lynx Service Desk operations are tailored to ensure that the correct skills are available at the earliest opportunity to resolve an incident with escalation processes established in line with individual customer SLAs.

Problem Management - Minimising the adverse affect of incidents and problems on a business and proactively preventing the occurrence of further problems.

Through a continuous review of all incidents and the use of System Monitoring and Management tools, Lynx works to identify the underlying root cause of problems and takes action to avoid the possibility of them re-occurring. By applying these same principles in a proactive manner, Lynx is able to identify potential problems and take or recommend action to prevent business impact.

Configuration Management - Underpinning all other ITIL disciplines by ensuring that all asset records are recorded and maintained at an appropriate level of granularity and that any relationships which exist are established and maintained.

The Lynx UNITY system provides a flexible customer database environment to manage all configuration elements which is fully integrated to the Service Desk service.

Change Management - Ensuring that all change is recorded, categorised, assessed, authorised, scheduled, tested, implemented and reviewed.

Full change control & approval procedures are incorporated into the practices and disciplines of the Lynx service management function. These include ensuring that customer agreement is obtained prior to implementing service affecting changes and ensuring that a recovery path always exists should back-out of a change be required.

Release Management - Providing a holistic view of change to IT Services and ensuring that all aspects, both technical and non-technical are considered.

Lynx recognises that control in the release of changes to individual or multiple systems is vital to ensure a successful deployment, either to resolve a fault or to deploy an upgrade. Robust release management procedures are in place to ensure minimum disruption of customer operations for all levels of change, from single PC upgrades through to major deployments.

In line with the flexible basis that ITIL offers for the development of high quality service provision, the service offerings presented by Lynx can be tailored to meet the exact needs a business may have. This approach includes any scope of delivery from single service provision through to full outsource, with success demonstrated consistently in an ability to integrate seamlessly alongside other internal and third party support providers.

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