Final Report

BRINGING
IT SERVICE MANAGEMENT
AND INNOVATION TO SMES
IN CENTRAL EUROPE
¦
EUROPEAN UNION
Public final report of the project INNOTRAIN IT
EUROPEAN REGIONAL
DEVELOPMENT FUND
BRINGING
IT SERVICE MANAGEMENT
AND INNOVATION TO SMES
IN CENTRAL EUROPE
Authors
Chiara Ficano, Christian Förster, Mariusz Grabowski,
Dieter Hertweck, Karin Hiebler, Claus Hoffmann,
Dimitris Karagiannis, Philipp Küller, Elena-Teodora Miron,
Klaudius Silhar, Piotr Soja, Anikó Vágner, Beáta Vécsi,
Marcus Vogt, Iva Walterová, Agnieszka Zajac
¦
Graphic Design
Südgrafik, Stuttgart
Print
Druckerei Laubengaier, Leinfelden-Echterdingen
Printed on recycled paper
Stuttgart, March 2013
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
INTRODUCTION
IT SERVICE MANAGEMENT (ITSM):
WHAT IS IT ABOUT?
-
p.02
How INNOTRAIN IT
understands innovation
2.1
1.1
p.04
A look into research: ITSM in
SMEs – summarizing the debate
INNOTRAIN IT – Innovation Training IT Central Europe
Contact
MFG Innovation Agency for ICT and Media
Baden-Württemberg
Christian Förster
Breitscheidstraße 4
70174 Stuttgart
Phone +49 711 90 715 312
Fax
+49 711 90 715 350
Email [email protected]
http:// innovation.mfg.de
1.2 p.07
This project is implemented through the CENTRAL EUROPE
Programme co-financed by the ERDF. This publication reflects
the author’s views. The Managing Authority of the European
Territorial Cooperation Programme CENTRAL EUROPE and the
programme bodies are not liable for any use that may be made
of the information contained in this report.
p.13
An introduction to IT Service Management
2.2 p.15
ITSM frameworks & Co.
2.3 p.17
The status quo: ITSM & innovation
in the Central Europe region
The partner regions:
a brief overview
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
THE INNOTRAIN IT APPROACH
CONCLUSION
3.1
ITSM as an innovation driver
4.1
3.2 p.25
A simplified ITSM method for SMEs:
the cookbook approach
4.2 p.46
A concluding remark: ITSM as another
brick for competitiveness
3.3 p.29
ITSM awareness in SMEs:
interregional training approach
-
Appendix
p.23
Pictures: Private (pp. 38, 40, 42, 44, 45), INNOTRAIN IT (pp. 46, 47).
3.4 p.31
Online media for knowledge
distribution: the INNOTRAIN IT
platform concept
LET’S TALK!
3.5 p.34
A customized ADOit library
¦
3.6 p.38
Jochen Rummel
“IT has become a production factor”
¦
3.7 p.40
Georg Stonawski
“Keep it simple and stupid!”
¦
3.8 p.42
Jerzy Charuza
“Modelling helps us to avoid risks!”
p.44
p.48
Lessons learned – two personal insights
INTRODUCTION
HOW INNOTRAIN IT
UNDERSTANDS INNOVATION
¦
“Innovation” – a fuzzy term and still the dominating
concept of the European Union’s economic world.
Let’s start with some thoughts that explain what INNOTRAIN IT has to do with it.
Innovation – thinking in new ways and realizing
new thoughts in research or on the market – has become the key process of economic activity in the European Union. Being the most competitive and most
dynamic knowledge-based economy in the world!
Growing in a smart, sustainable and inclusive way!
– Those are the ambitious but by far not unrealistic
visions described by the European Council in Lisbon
in the year 2000, which have then been developed
into the Europe 2020 strategy.
Innovation might start with a brilliant idea, but
is much more than that: successful and intelligent
development needs a productive and encouraging
environment. Building such an environment might
start with a strategy: formulating goals and processes on the management level of a business enterprise or describing policy recommendations on high
administrative levels are for sure important cornerstones of such an environment. But becoming more
competitive in the end is a people’s business. There-
02
fore, the bases of a successful knowledge economy
are its knowledge workers: employees who have the
capability of thinking as an entrepreneur, who are
taking the courage to change old ways of thinking
into new ideas in their everyday work.
Innovation needs an organisational structure.
Knowledge workers from the very concrete project
work up to a high management level are the designers
of such a structure. They have various options to start
creating their own innovation environment: they can
select more advanced ways of production, they can
choose the best location for their business, they can
setup most productive teams and departments, they
can try to generate short and fast ways of communication with project partners and so on.
The Information Technology (IT) of a business enterprise is that element of an innovative environment
INNOTRAIN IT deals with. Why is it so important? Because modern IT offers enterprises manifold chances
to enhance their competiveness and their position
on the market. Thanks to IT, business processes can
be designed in an efficient way, new sales channels
can be opened up and, last but by far not least, quality can be enhanced. However, Small and Medium
Sized Enterprises (SME s), that with a
percentage of 99,8 of all enterprises
and more than two third of all employees are the dominant form of
business organisation in the European
Union, often don’t take advantage of
the opportunities IT presents. IT is rather seen as
too complex or too technical and establishing a
management structure to govern IT is in many small
companies often perceived as a bureaucratic burden,
rather than as an opportunity to increase profitability.
Changing this view is the aim of I NNOTRAIN IT ,
project implemented in the EU’s Central Europe Programme. “Innovation Training IT Central Europe”, full
project title, runs from April 2010 to March 2013.
With a co-funding by the European Regional Development Fund of 1,5 € million, twelve project partners in the Central Europe region have conducted
case-studies about the use of IT in European SME s
and developed a “do-it-yourself” modelling tool that
helps SME s to enhance their IT infrastructure. And
since, as we have said earlier, enhancing competitiveness is a people’s business, the project partners
SMES OFTEN DON’T
TAKE ADVANTAGE OF
THE OPPORTUNITIES
IT PRESENTS
of I NNOTRA IN I T approach exactly the ones who can
turn IT from standard operating procedure into a key
to become better. With a series of training sessions
for 1.000 IT users on both strategic and operative
levels of SME s, INNOTRAIN IT teaches ways to handle
IT in a more efficient and effective way – we call it
“IT Service Management” (ITSM).
Changing the innovative environment in European SME s. Establishing IT as a strategic tool. Training IT Service Management on different decision
making levels of SME s. – Those are the cornerstones
of I NNOTR AI N IT . The report at hand gives you an insight of how INNOTRAIN IT has realized this concept
and what are the experiences that both the project
partners and the trainees within SME s made. First,
this report outlines some basic trends around the use
of IT in SME s and gives you as a reader information
about the region the project is active in. You will then
learn what IT Service Management is, how I N N O TR AI N I T has turned it into a concrete concept for
innovation trainings and what those trainings have
actually changed in SME s.
03
A LOOK INTO RESEARCH:
ITSM IN SMES –
SUMMARIZING THE DEBATE
Chapter 1.1
¦
04
difficult issues between IT and SMEs
ITSM IS AN
continue to persist until today. HowOPPORTUNITY FOR
ever, ITSM has the potential to proSMES AS LONG AS
vide an opportunity for SMEs to solve
these problems, as long as the sugMETHODS AND TOOLS
gested methods and tools are simple,
ARE KEPT SIMPLE
clearly applicable and less resource
consuming, otherwise ITSM will fail to produce the
improvements in SMEs performance that are needed
for their continuing success.
A lot of research in the recent years has been
focused on evaluating whether IT service management would be a valuable topic for SMEs or, alternatively, whether it would be an administrative
overhead that makes sense only to align huge IT departments of global companies to the key objectives
of their strategy. In particular, researchers Dibbern
and Heinzl indicate that SMEs are interested in IT
service management methods because they lack resources. The pressure created by compliance issues
in different sectors as well as the pressure initiated
by E-Business opportunities and constraints has
caused serious problems for a lot of SMEs in the
last years regarding the sourcing of their IT function.
The SMEs have tried and are still trying to solve this
dilemma in two ways:
>
They want to increase the efficiency of their
IT function to save existing resources for new
upcoming challenges like compliance issues,
enhancement of IT induced business flexibility
and innovations;
>
They are trying to assess the degree to which
IT function contributes to the company‘s profitability.
Strategic Level
Managing today‘s complexity of IT and business
simultaneously is a tremendously hard job – in particular for SMEs. Proprietors and managers of SMEs
often don’t know how IT contributes to their business
and occupy themselves with managing basic IT functions, which wastes financial and human resources
as well as limits their capacity for process and product innovation.
In a global economy speed and quality of decision-making are one of the crucial factors for success.
Looking at companies like Google or Facebook it becomes clear that SMEs in the information age, especially in the digital products sector, are often not far
away from growing to multinational companies within
only a few years. Based on the hyper growth-effects,
as described by Shapiro and Varian, an increasing
number of SMEs with a medium and higher share of
information in their products are facing a revolution
that can only be managed based on a reliable IT infrastructure. Even SMEs which are working in quite
traditional areas, such as the construction or production sectors, are dependent on reliable IT systems
to provide visibility into the progress of the construction side or of the production processes in their
plants. Additionally, they have to fulfil an increasing
number of compliance issues such as saving financial
or technical data.
In the early 1990’s, the “Organisation for Economic
Co-operation and Development” (OECD) wrote a report about SMEs and their relation to technology and
competitiveness. It was recognised that IT would have
a high influence on SMEs development, but the accompanying specific issues and opportunities were
not clear. “Although IT enabled SMEs were identified
as a driver for our economy”, as indicated by Levy and
Powell, research in this area remained scarce and
Corporate
Governance
ICT Governance
ITSM
ICT Management
Operational Level
– Figure 1 –
Relation of ITSM
to other areas
The following section gives a brief summary of what
has been done in this area until today and how the
I N N OT R A I N I T research has extended this body of
knowledge.
IT Governance and IT Service Management have
inherited much from Corporate Governance and operational IT Management (cf. Figure 1), but have then
developed into a discrete discipline with internationally recognized frameworks and standards such as
Control Objectives for Information and Related Technology (COBIT), Value of IT (VAL-IT), IT Infrastructure
Library (ITIL), ISO20000 and ISO38500. Some researchers, including Peterson and van Grembergen,
suggest therefore that IT Governance should be implemented in a framework of structures, processes,
and relational mechanisms in order to be effective.
According to other researchers, like Luftman and
Kempaiha IT Governance and its related frameworks
and methods are enablers of strategic IT alignment.
Their goal is to enable the transition from a strategic
to an operational level without losing the focus on
business objectives.
Van Grembergen and De Haes also emphasize
that the link between IT and the business is the crucial factor in IT Governance. This is not only applicable
in large organisations but also in SMEs. Even though
small enterprises might not have a designated IT department it is crucial that any person who is in charge
of IT decisions (e.g. the owner of the business) is
aware that every single IT investment and IT service
needs to be aligned to his business strategy even
when the enterprise strategy is rather simple.
According to Porter, any single action in a business needs to add value otherwise the action must
not be taken. Di Renzo and Feltus, as well as Fink,
argue that low value adding or non-value adding activities such as over-expenditure on IT or IT service
shortfalls due to false economies are more important
for an SME’s success or failure since their financial
and human resources are usually very limited. Therefore, in accordance to Duffy, Luftmann, Weill and
Broadbent, the orchestration of IT functions and nonIT functions within an SME should be made clear
to decision makers in order to gain leverages and
free resources for innovation and competitive advantage.
Scientific publications about IT Governance or, in
our words, IT Service Management in relation to
SMEs, are very scarce and hard to find. There is little
evidence that basic IT problems that trouble SMEs
have been resolved, which confirms our contention
that new approaches are needed.
In 1998, Fink wrote a paper about guidelines for
the successful adoption of information technology in
SMEs. Even though he didn’t focus on ITSM, he raised
a number of highly related questions regarding topics
like IT benefits, organisational culture, in-house IT
expertise and resources, IT implementation and selection, availability, cost, etc. However, he focused
rather on adoption issues than IT alignment and operational service management. This might be due to
that fact that in 1998 Information Technology was
‘special’ and ‘new’, nowadays IT has become ubiquitous commodity that is highly accepted and needed
even in SMEs.
Di Renzo and Feltus published a paper in 2003
on how very small enterprises (VSE), which can be
considered as a subset of SMEs, can assess their
processes with the NAOMI approach. The NAOMI
model is business value driven and designed in five
process areas: infrastructure, service support, management, security, and documentation. The processes
themselves are based on a combined approach of
ISO/IEC 15504 and ITIL. Their approach has a strong
focus on process alignment and maturity levels and
05
provided a rather simple method to assess related
processes. However, their reliance on ITIL, which is a
relatively complex framework, often makes NAOMI
too complex for SMEs to manage their operations.
We will come back to that later.
In 2005, a consortium of the Linux Solutions
Group (LiSoG – today known as Open Source Business Alliance), Salzburg University and different
business partners worked on the Open-ITIL project. The project, as described by the consortium,
aimed to provide SMEs with knowledge, processes
and descriptions for the implementation of ITSM
aligned with ITIL and to enable the verification of
open source software based on a reference implementation. A group around Mastrianni has discussed
a flexible architecture to support the delivery of information technology (IT) systems management services in 2007. They developed a method, which is able
to combine different tools and services to create specific, customized IT service solutions. And in 2009,
Ayat and other have published their work on ‘CMDB
Implementation Approaches and Considerations in
SME/SITU's Companies’. Even though we agree that
CMDB is a central part of ITSM, we argue that an ITSM
process can only be implemented with a holistic
methodology. We see CMDB as a tool and commodity,
which is necessary but interchangeable.
The most recent papers related to ITSM in SMEs
have been written in the APA region. The paper of Lin
et al. (2010) about ‘SME Oriented Service Delivery
Mechanism and an Implementation’ picks up an interesting approach to combine ITSM and Service Oriented Architecture (SOA). Weng and Weng address
also in 2010 the growing demand of outsourced IT
services and the resulting hybrid operation of the IT
in SMEs. They propose an implementation model
based on integrated IT services.
As one can see, IT issues in SMEs have been
known for almost 20 years but still remain unsolved.
A holistic approach to implement ITSM in SMEs is yet
missing and needed.
Chapter 1.2
Some sources for further information
Ayat, M., M. Sharifi, S. Ibrahim, and S. Sahibudin: “CMDB Implementation Approaches
and Considerations in SME/SITU’s Companies,” in AMS ’09: Proceedings of the 2009
Third Asia International Conference on Modelling & Simulation, 2009.
Bhattacharjya, J. and V. Chang: “Evolving IT governance practices for IT and business
alignment – A case study in an Australian institution,” in Conference on Information
Science, Technology and Management 2006, Jul 16 2006. Chandigarh, India, 2006.
Brandstätter, M. and T. Peruzzi: “Open-ITIL − ein Ansatz zur Akzeptanz-Verstärkung
für den Einsatz von IT-Service Management nach ITIL in Klein- und Mittelunternehmen.”
4
Di Renzo, B., and C. Feltus: “Process assessment for use in very small enterprises:
the NOEMI assessment methodology,” in Proceedings of European Software Process
Improvement Conference (EuroSPI’2003), 2003, no. 24023.
Dibbern, J. and A. Heinzel: “Selective Outsourcing of Information Systems in Small
and Medium Sized Enterprices,” in Information Systems Outsourcing. Enduring
Themes, New Perspectives and Global Changes, 2nd Editio., J. Dibbern, A. Heinzel,
and R. Hirschheim, Eds. Berlin, Heidelberg: Springer, 2006, pp. 57–82.
6
1
5
2
3
¦
Duffy, J.: “IT / Business alignment: Is it an option or is it mandatory?” IDC, 2002.
Fink, D., “Guidelines for the Successful Adobption of Information Technology in Small
and Medium Enterprises,” International Journal of Information Management, vol. 18,
no. 4, pp. 243–253, 1998.
IT Governance Institute (ITGI): Board Briefing on IT Governance, 2nd Editio. Rolling
Meadows: IT Governance Institute, 2003.
Luftmann, J. and R. Kempaiah: “An Update on Business-IT lignment: “A Line Has Been
Drawn,” MIS Quarterly Executive, vol. 6, no. 3, pp. 165–167, 2007.
Luftmann, J.: Competing in the Information Age: Align in the Sand. USA: Oxford University Press, 2003.
Mastrianni, S. and D. F. Bantz, K. A. Beaty, T. Chefalas, S. Jalan, G. Kar, A. Kochut,
D. J. Lan, L. O’Connell, A. Sailer, G. Wang, Q. B. Wang, and D. G. Shea: “IT Autopilot:
A flexible IT service management and delivery platform for small and medium business,” IBM Systems Journal, vol. 46, no. 3, pp. 609–624, 2007.
Peterson, R.: “Information Strategies and Tactics for Information Technology Governance,” in Strategies for information technology governance, W. Van Grembergen,
Ed. Hershey: Idea Group Publishing, 2003, pp. 37–80.
Porter, M.E.: On Competition. Harvard Business Press, 2008, p. 544.
Schäfer, G., G. Strolz, and D. Hertweck: “IT-Compliance im Mittelstand,” HMD – Praxis
der Wirtschaftsinformatik, no. 263, pp. 69–77, 2008.
Shapiro, C. and H. Varian: Information rules: a strategic guide to the network economy.
Boston: Harvard Business School Press, 1999.
Van Grembergen, W. and S. De Haes: Enterprise governance of information technology:
achieving strategic ... New York: Springer Science & Business Media, 2009.
Van Grembergen, W., S. De Haes, and E. Guldentops: “Structures, Processes and Relation Mechnisms for IT Governance,” in Strategies for information technology governance, W. Van Grembergen, Ed. Hershey: Idea Group Publishing, 2003, pp. 1–36.
Weill, P. and M. Broadbent, Leveraging the New Infrastructure: How Market Leaders
Capitalize on Information Technology. Harvard Business School Press, 1998.
Weng, L. and B. Weng: “Implementation Model for Integrated IT Services Suitable for
Small Enterprises,” in 2010 International Conference on Management and Service
Science, 2010, pp. 1–4.
06
THE PARTNER REGIONS:
A BRIEF OVERVIEW
1
Baden-Württemberg,
Germany (1)
(1) Baden-Württemberg, Germany
(2) Bratislava Region, Slovakia
Baden-Württemberg, founded in 1952, is the thirdlargest of the 16 German federal states – not only in
terms of its surface area of 35.752 square kilometres
but also with its 10,82 million inhabitants. It is characterized by an excellent geographic position bordering France to the west, Switzerland and Austria
to the south and the German states of Rhineland
Palatinate, Hessen and Bavaria. Baden-Württemberg
is divided up into 4 administrative districts, 12 regions, 35 rural and 9 urban districts. There are a total
of 1.101 municipalities, 91 of them district capitals.
The largest cities are Stuttgart, Mannheim, Karlsruhe
and Freiburg.
(3) Észak-Alföld, Hungary
(4) Malopolska Region, Poland
(5) Vienna Region, Austria
(6) Vysocina Region, Czech Republic
07
With a current economic output (GDP) per capita of
around 35.000 € and purchasing power per capita
of more than 20.000 € (national average: 19.000 €),
Baden-Württemberg ranks around 40 % above the average in the European Union. Baden-Württemberg’s
employment rate of 74 % lies around 15 % above the
European Union average.
Global players such as DaimlerChrysler, Bosch,
Porsche, Heidelberger Druckmaschinen and SAP are
based in Baden-Württemberg. Major foreign companies such as IBM, Sony, Hewlett Packard, Alcatel SEL,
ABB and Michelin have set up their German or European headquarters and development divisions in the
state in order to supply European markets.
Many small and medium-sized enterprises in BadenWürttemberg also lay claim to a leading position. The
approximately 420.000 SMEs employ around half of
Baden-Württemberg’s wage earners. With both more
than 200.000 employees the Creative Industries and
the Information and Communication Technologies
(ICT) have become economic strongholds in BadenWürttemberg besides well-known champions in the
automotive industry and engineering.
While poor in natural resources, Baden-Württemberg has grown prosperous through a population rich
in ideas and inventiveness. Baden-Württemberg's
economy is today driven by technology and innovation.
Over 4 % of the total GDP goes into research and
development.
The ICT branch hereby is exemplarily. Not only
within Germany but also in comparison to the other
German states Baden-Württemberg has the highest
number of ICT-related patent applications: It is 111
applications per one million inhabitants. Not surprisingly ICT is a sector with extraordinary growth
in Baden-Württemberg. While average growth between 1995 and 2010 was at 2,1 %, the ICT sector
has grown close to 5 %. While the automotive industries might still be stronger in absolute figures,
ICT’s relative contribution to overall growth in BadenWürttemberg has been on the same level during the
last years.
08
2
3
Bratislava Region,
Slovakia (2)
inate in the branch structure of the economy. The high
concentration of small- and medium-sized businesses
in Bratislava is a characteristic feature of the region
(0 – 19 employees: 40.164 SMEs; 20 – 49 employees:
1.274 SMEs; 50 – 249 employees: 729 SMEs; 250 and
more: 188, undetected: 12.036; total: 54 391).
In recent times the region has become the centre
of the European automotive industry, contributing
30 % of Slovakia’s exports. The current structural
changes within the economy of the Region contribute
to growth of the tertiary sector, mainly trade and services, and the banking and insurance sectors.
In the long run, the Bratislava Region records the
lowest unemployment rate among Slovak regions,
with the average nominal monthly wage exceeding
the overall Slovak average.
Gross domestic product (GDP) at current market
prices in Bratislava region is 28.400 in comparison
with whole Slovakia 11.600. Thanks to an impressive
per-capita Gross Domestic Product rate, the Slovak
capital of Bratislava has officially climbed the ranks
as the fifth richest region in the European Union. The
EU statistical agency Eurostat released data from
2009, which had been adjusted to take national price
levels into account, indicated that Bratislava had now
become the fifth wealthiest EU region. This result
highlighted the economic progress achieved by the
EU’s newer member states, even though Slovakia as
a whole was showing to be substantially poorer, with
the national GDP only at 71 % of the bloc’s average.
Bratislavský kraj (the Bratislava Region) is one of eight
administrative regions of Slovakia. The capital of Slovakia, Bratislava, with its many political, economic
and social functions, is the seat of the Bratislava Region. The Bratislava Region is situated in the westsouthwest part of Slovakia, forming the smallest region of the country with an area of 2.053 km². It has a
population of around 617.000 inhabitants.
Being economically the best performing region
in Slovakia, the Bratislava Region generates approximately 26 % of the country’s GDP. The Bratislava Region exceeds the EU 25 average by 15,9 % in GDP per
capita in purchasing power parity. The region’s economy comprises all sectors that are based on the traditional industrial production of goods; the most important sectors are: the chemical industry, automotive
industry, mechanical engineering, electro-technical
and food processing industry. The Region is marked
by a strong tertiary sector, while the primary sector
has a share of only around 1 % and the secondary
sector around 20 %. Within the tertiary sector, there
are two dominant activities which alone count for almost half of its Gross Added Value. These activities
are wholesale and retail trade and real estate, renting
and business activities. The region's GVA had been
increasing strongly between 1996 and 2002 with a
growth of over 85 % during this period.
The Bratislava region has strongly influenced other
regions with its economic significance. The region's
industry is characterised by the considerable multifunctional nature of the branches, and a significant
(39,3 %) share in the Slovak overall volume of industrial
production. The branch structure is rather balanced
and the chemical industry has primacy. One of the
biggest companies in the chemical industry is Slovnaft
and the company Istrochem also plays an important
role. Also the car industry (Volkswagen Bratislava),
machinery, electro-technical and food industries
(Palma-Tumys Bratislava, Kraft Foods Slovakia) dom-
Észak-Alföld,
Hungary (3)
The Észak-Alföld region is situated in the north-eastern part of Hungary. Its geographical location gives
the area an exceptional transit role, as it is composed
of three counties (Jász-Nagykun-Szolnok, Hajdú-Bihar
and Szabolcs-Szatmár-Bereg), bordered by Romania
and Ukraine from the east, by the River Tisza from the
north and by other Hungarian counties from the south.
Its population (1,51 million inhabitants) takes 15 % of
Hungary’s population, its territory covers nearly half
of the Hungarian Great Plain and roughly 20 % of the
whole country with an area of almost 17.728 km².
Major foreign companies such as Teva Pharmaceutical Industries Ltd.; National Instruments Hungary Ltd.; FAG; Electrolux; Samsung; E.ON, Carrier;
Michelin; Carl Zeiss; IT Services Hungary Ltd.; LEGO
Manufacturing Ltd. and Curver Ltd. have set up their
Hungarian/European headquarters or divisions in the
region to supply their European markets.
In addition to them, also the many small and
medium-sized enterprises (SME) in Észak-Alföld region play an important role in the country. There are
more than 100.000 SMEs employing more than 60 %
of the workforce in the region.
The city of Debrecen has an international airport
and a significant logistics potential.
The region has good potential for increasing the
proportion of renewable energy production, having a
significant surface and subterranean water reserves
mainly used for thermal water.
Hungary’s GDP per capita is 66 % of the EU average and the region’s GDP per capita (6.038,08 €) is
relatively low compared to the rest of the country
(9.711,9 €) and to the EU average (25.740 €). The activity rate is 54,6 %, which is higher than a decade
before. The regional unemployment rate was 14,5 %
in 2011 (national rate: 10,9 %).
Észak-Alföld is highly specialised in the food industry, which represents more than 5 % of the total
employment. The region also has significant research and development capacity that promotes intensive development of innovation-oriented technologies, holds the second position at national level
regarding R&D expenditure and is third in the number of R&D personnel. Hence it provides a solid
R&D base concentrated in Debrecen and in the other
two county seats, Szolnok and Nyíregyháza, which
could be attractive to companies with high quality
requirements.
The Science, Technology and Innovation (STI)
input indicators of the region suggest that it has a
09
4
5
6
relatively strong science base, due to the presence
of public research institutions.
Despite the IT developments that took place the
2007–2013, a strategic program of the Észak-Alföld
region has already revealed the unfavourable position
of the region regarding the penetration of info-communication technologies. Therefore IT became a key
sectorial research and development priority, as with
the development of information technology and computer technology, the performance of the whole economy increases. The multidisciplinary role of the joint
participation of the regional actors of INNOTRAIN IT
means an advantage in terms of the IT projects’ competitiveness.
The number of registered business entities in 2009
was at 314.017, differentiated in:
In 2007 there were 3.240 companies with foreign
capital share registered in Małopolska, employing
930.100 workers.
Malopolska Region,
Poland (4)
Vienna Region,
Austria (5)
Malopolska is one of Poland’s 16 administrative
provinces, with Krakow as the capital city, and comprises 8,3 % of the country’s population. Malopolska
province is placed right in the centre of Europe, in
Poland’s south. The region takes up the upper Vistula
river basin. Malopolska is divided into 19 districts
and 3 municipal districts, each composed of 182 communes. The area’s GDP in 2008 was 94.790 million
PLN (around 23.000 € million) or 7,4 % of the domestic
share. Gross average monthly salary in the corporate
sector in 2010 was 3.135,70 PLN. Małopolska is a region with a strong historical identity and deep-rooted
heritage, but at the same time open to innovations.
(http://malopolskadays.eu/malopolska/)
Main industries in the region are (data from 2009):
The Republic of Austria is a Central European country,
with a population of 8.383 million inhabitants (1st
quarter 2010) and an area of 83.872 km². As a federal
republic, Austria is divided into nine federal provinces
which share legislative, executive and financial tasks
with the federal government.
Austria is among the richest countries in the
world, with a per capita GDP of 42,400 € (2011) and a
high standard of living, being ranked number 19 in
the global Human Development Index 2011. The service sector generates the vast majority of Austria’s
GDP. On a sector level the GPD is divided into 69,1 %
for services, 29,4 % for industry and 1,5% for agriculture. Direct and indirect value creation from the
tourism and leisure industry amounts to 16,1 % of
GDP (2010). Both winter and summer tourism play a
major role in Austria’s economy with 22 million arrivals in 2010 (World Bank Report 2012). Tourism accounts for around 10 % of Austria’s GDP.
While there are some global players in Austria’s
industry, like iron and steel works, chemical plants
and oil corporations employing thousands of people,
most industrial and commercial enterprises in Austria
are relatively small. Among the most well-known Aus-
trian companies are Red Bull, KTM, Bösendorfer,
Voestalpine AG, Swarovski, Wienerberger, Glock,
Magna Steyr, Fischer, AT&S, Semperit, Rosenbauer,
Palfinger, RHI and Mayr-Melnhof.
Trade with other EU countries accounts for almost 66 % of Austrian imports and exports. Expanding
trade and investment in the emerging markets of central and Eastern Europe is a major element of Austrian
economic activity. Trade with these countries accounts for almost 14 % of Austrian imports and exports. Austrian firms have sizable investments in
these countries and continue to move labour-intensive, low-tech production to them.
There are 307.700 SMEs in Austria, representing
99,7 % of all Austrian companies. They employ 67 %
of the Austrian workforce (all data: ÖNACE 2010). Most
of them are companies with 0 or 1 employee. 1080
companies with more than 250 employees represent
0,4 % of the corporate landscape in Austria.
Austria’s capital Vienna is the largest city in the
country with a population of about 1,7 million inhabitants. It was ranked the fifth richest NUTS-2 region
within Europe with a GDP reaching 38.632 € per capita
as well as the number one city in the Mercer’s 2012
Quality of Living ranking. Vienna has grown into a financial and consulting centre and has established
itself as the door to Eastern Europe within the last
decade. Viennese law firms and banks are among the
leading corporations in business with the new EU
member states.
> Commerce and repair: 28,3 %
> Real estate, renting and business activities:
15,4 %
> Construction: 12,7 %
> Manufacturing: 10,6 %
10
> 94,6 % micro businesses (less than 9 employees)
> 4,5 % small businesses (10 – 49 employees)
> 0,8 % medium businesses (50 – 249 employees)
> 0,1 % big businesses (more than 250 employees).
Vysocina Region,
Czech Republic (6)
The Vysocina Region is situated in the centre of the
Czech Republic, neighbouring the Jihocesky, Stredocesky, Pardubicky and Jihomoravsky Regions. Together with the last one, for the purpose of regional
development support, Vysocina forms the NUTS II
area (Jihovychod). It differs from the neighbouring regions for a dissected territory, higher altitude and low
residential density. The region’s disintegrated residential structure has to do with the fact that inhabitants tend to move away from smaller municipalities
and that young and qualified inhabitants leave. With
its area of 6.796 km² (as of 1 January 2007) the region
ranks among those with an above-average size; only
4 regions of the Czech Republic have a larger area.
As for administrative breakdown, the territory of the
Vysocina Region comprises 5 districts, 15 administrative districts of municipalities with extended powers and 26 administrative districts of municipalities
with authorized municipal office. The basic self-governing unit is a municipality; which are 704 in the
region. The average population per municipality
amounts to 725 inhabitants and is the lowest of the
whole Czech Republic. The highest number of municipalities comprises those with population under 500.
There are 34 municipalities with the status of town
in the region, and the number, in relation to the region’s area, falls slightly below the national average.
As of 1 January 2011, the region’s population was
514.569; it is the fourth smallest among all the regions
of the Czech Republic.
In 2011 the Vysocina Region had an annual GDP
of 153.750 million CZK (6.150 € million) and 6 % unemployment, both of these values have grown since
previous years. The number of enterprises has also
been growing coming to 106.315 economic entities
by September 2012; in comparison with other Czech
regions, Vysocina has the smallest number of enterprises per inhabitant.
The majority of the 91.563 enterprises in Vysocina
are categorized as SMEs, with a large majority of microenterprises (with 0 – 9 employees). Besides, most
of them are represented by self-employed people
with no employees.
11
IT SERVICE
MANAGEMENT (ITSM):
WHAT IS
IT ABOUT?
Chapter 2.1
AN INTRODUCTION TO
IT SERVICE MANAGEMENT
¦
In today’s world, information technology has become
a firmly entrenched part of everyday business. It accompanies all business workflows, from simple to
complete processes. Even the smallest one-person
company uses a computer, if only to write up an invoice. In any case, the importance of IT is evident as
soon as the technology malfunctions and the computer will not work. When this happens, the one-person company may fall back on the neighbour's computer and thus has, without even being aware of it,
applied IT management methods successfully and
created a fall-back plan (“business continuity plan”).
This simple example illustrates one possible
meaning of IT management. However, it only scratches the surface of a more complex issue. Those who
own or work for SMEs should ask themselves: what
aspects does IT Service Management include and
what does it mean for me as an employee or owner
of an SME?
ITSM – What is behind it?
IT Service Management (ITSM) is more than just a
management tool. To understand and use it correctly,
it is important to comprehend ITSM as an all-inclusive
12
concept, internalise it and integrate it into everyday
work. We might compare it to the process of learning
how to drive a car: at the beginning, concentrating on
traffic and learning the controls of the vehicle demand a great deal of attention. After a while, the driver
has memorised all of the motion sequences and remembers to look around; he or she carries out these
actions without having to think about it. In practice,
those responsible for IT frequently spend their time
on maintenance and provisioning tasks. That ties up
financial and personnel resources. The objective is
to use ITSM to quickly attain small successes which
together enable reliable, target and cost-effective
provisioning of IT. Resources that are freed up can be
used for new innovations.
Large companies are increasingly learning that
the resource of information is one of the most important strategic goods for setting oneself apart from
competitors. Companies without an information management plan will have difficulties in the market in
the long term. The success of all strategic and operational initiatives stands and falls with having the
right information at the right time. This principle does
not only apply to large companies; SMEs can also
benefit from good information management. The
13
basis for collecting, analysing, producing and distributing relevant information is the quality of information technology and IT services.
The service philosophy is the greatest difference
between ITSM and classic IT management. When talking about ITSM, we do not talk primarily about bits,
bytes, megahertz and gigaflops. Technical jargon confuses the majority of employees. ITSM, on the other
hand, tries to connect business processes with information technology by defining IT-based services
that support the operational business process.
A critical factor for ITSM is that IT services (such
as saving documents or creating invoices) are viewed
as business process-critical and thus require enough
investment to provide optimal support to the business
process without wasting resources (known as IT/business alignment, see below).
The challenge for each SME is to always bring
business processes and IT into alignment and to define IT services that reflect an optimum relationship
between the costs, benefits and risks. In ITSM, this
is attained by user-oriented service definitions.
The foremost goal of ITSM is to align IT services
and the associated technologies (hardware/software)
to the business process and to guarantee the best
possible support of financial processes by the IT organisation. IT Service Management describes the
conversion of the information technology to customer
and service orientation. Conversely, innovative information technologies can affect the business model
and the underlying processes. Therefore, IT should
not be seen as a supporting function, but as a means
for preparing the way that enables the SME to open
up new business areas.
Benefits for Small and
Medium-Sized Enterprises
By introducing simple ITSM principles, an SME can
manage its IT processes and IT services efficiently
and effectively and thus provide users with an optimal
IT landscape that is less susceptible to interruption
and thus also more cost-effective over the long term.
Value Proposition – Make clear how
IT contributes on which value.
In many cases, IT is viewed only as a cost factor; therefore, SMEs often cut costs in the wrong places. However, if the added value of IT is clearly evident, the investment decision can be done on a different basis.
14
IT meets Business – Aligning the
business and IT strategy.
Precisely for SMEs, planning ahead is important.
Therefore, the IT landscape should be structured so
that it can respond flexibly to changing requirements
of the business processes. The objective is to integrate and align IT so that it provides optimum support
to business objectives.
Chapter 2.2
¦
Compliance – Legal assurance
for decision makers.
SMEs are subject to an increasing number of legal
regulations related to data and IT (e.g. Data Protection
act); when granting credit, a company's IT landscape
also plays an increasingly important role (see Basel
II). If SMEs follow the ITSM philosophy, they will be in
conformity with many of these regulations and be
able to recognize the corresponding gaps.
IT Monitoring – You can't manage
what you can't measure.
For SMEs it is important to define corresponding performance indicators and operating figures (known as
Key Performance Indicators – KPI) to verify the quality
of IT services and take appropriate measures.
Continual Service Improvement –
Getting better each day.
Introducing an IT optimisation process (Continual
Service Improvement). Business process changes and
new technologies are reviewed continually. Things
that seem "optimal" today can already be out of date
tomorrow.
ITSM FRAMEWORKS
& CO.
Frameworks and
standards
Today, a variety of frameworks and standards addressing
or related to ITSM are available. The following list contains
some of the most relevant in alphabetic order.
> Australian Standard for Governance of IT (AS8015)
> Business Information Services Library (BiSL)
> Calder-Moir IT Governance Framework
> Capability Maturity Model Integration (CMMI)
> Control Objectives in IT & related Technology (CobiT)
> Enhanced Telecom Operations Map (eTOM)
Improved change management –
Never change a running system!
Truly?
We are all familiar with the situation: soon after a
new computer or software program is purchased, it
no longer works the way it should. ITSM processes
help SMEs identify these kinds of problems before
they occur and eliminate them directly.
> ISO 9000, 20000 & 27001
> IT Balance Scorecard
> IT Infrastructure Library (ITIL)
> IT Service Capability Model (ITS-CMM)
> Microsoft Operations Framework (MOF)
> Project Management Body of Knowledge (PMBoK)
Better sourcing options –
Focus on the core business.
Improved sourcing options based on a transparent IT
enable the concentration on core competencies. An
SME cannot and should not deal with all IT questions
on its own, as comprehensive management ties up
too many.
> Projects in Controlled Environments (Prince2)
> The Open Group Architecture Framework (TOGAF)
> Zachman Framework
> And many others …
Looking at the kitchen team of a star-rated restaurant
surely everyone can imagine excellent cooks. Each
of these chefs mastered the craft perfectly – has
learned to cut vegetables efficiently and to prepare
a beef steak perfectly. Would all the chefs now act as
single player, they would cook, but not a delicious
and cost-covering dish. For a cost-recovery class cuisine, other factors are relevant: a good management
for the coordination of activities within the team and
a set of tools to share the relevant knowledge between chefs like cookbooks, recipes, order list, but
also a common language.
IT organisation of a company indicates many
parallels. Each employee has his own special skills,
knowledge and role (e.g. administrator, developer,
etc.) within the organisation. Without any kind of coordination, everybody would do the ideal activities
for his area, but the overall requirements would be
neglected.
Also in the case of an IT organisation, the chief
information officer must coordinate and align the individual activities of his staff. Similar to the example
before countless tools like architecture guidelines,
specifications, software etc. are used within the IT
department. The various ITSM frameworks can be understood as one of several cookbooks. What cookbook
is used depends on various factors like the industry,
legal requirements or the size of the company. The
final “decision” about the usage and acceptance of a
specific cookbook is made by the staff. However, the
15
existing frameworks as COBIT or ITIL are fairly complex due to the wide variety of aspects they take into
account. Accordingly, it takes a certain amount of
time to adapt them to the requirements of an SME.
The box you can see on page 15 provides a selection of methods, frameworks and standards dealing
with ITSM or being related to the management of IT
services. More details can be found in the “I N N O TRAIN I T Service Management Methods and Frameworks Systematization” or in literature – for example
Jan van Bon and Tieneke Verheijen (2007). In the following paragraphs the most important frameworks,
ITIL and CobiT, will be introduced on high level.
IT Infrastructure Library (ITIL)
ITIL is a public framework that describes Best Practice in IT service management. It provides a framework for the governance of IT, the ‘service wrap’, and
focuses on the continual measurement and improvement of the quality of IT service delivered, from both
a business and a customer perspective. This focus is
a major factor in ITIL’s worldwide success and has
contributed to its prolific usage and to the key benefits obtained by those organisations deploying the
techniques and processes throughout their organisations.
ITIL was published between 1989 and 1995 by
Her Majesty’s Stationery Office (HMSO) in the UK on
behalf of the Central Communications and Telecommunications Agency (CCTA) – now subsumed within
the Office of Government Commerce (OGC). Its early
use was principally confined to the UK and Netherlands. A second version of ITIL was published as a
set of revised books between 2000 and 2004. This
initial version was then revised and replaced by
seven more closely connected and consistent books
(ITIL V2) consolidated within an overall framework.
This second version became universally accepted
and is now used in many countries by thousands of
organisations as the basis for effective IT service
provision.
In 2007, ITIL V2 was superseded by an enhanced
and consolidated third version of ITIL, consisting of
five core books covering the service lifecycle, together
with the official introduction. The five core books
cover each stage of the service lifecycle from the initial definition and analysis of business requirements
in Service Strategy and Service Design, through mi-
16
gration into the live environment within Service Transition, to live operation and improvement in Service
Operation and Continual Service Improvement. Based
on ITIL V3, a 2011 edition of ITIL was published providing an update to the 2007 one. The 2011 edition is
owned by HM Government instead of OGC.
Chapter 2.3
THE STATUS QUO: ITSM & INNOVATION
IN THE CENTRAL EUROPE REGION
¦
Control Objectives for Information
and Related Technology (COBIT)
COBIT is the most holistic internationally recognized
framework aimed at achieving organisational information technology goals and objectives, developed
and maintained since 1996 by the IT Governance
Institute – an organisation tightly cooperating with
Information Systems Audit and Control Association
(ISACA).
Being a model of IT governance and information
systems audit and control, COBIT is designed to provide effectiveness and efficiency while mitigating the
risks connected with the use of IT based solutions.
The framework is fully process-oriented and measurement driven. Its structure provides definition and
measurement tools for assessing IT related organisational control objectives. COBIT evolved as a set of
good practices which confirmed its business applicability. In the current version COBIT 5 (published in
2012) ISACA has merged the topics strategic alignment (previously COBIT 4.1), Risk (RiskIT) and Value
(ValIT). Furthermore, the mapping to the "other"
frameworks like ITIL has been extended.
Despite of the crucial role that SMEs play in the
economy, they have to tackle a number of development barriers that are present in the market. SMEs
have to cope with the difficulties in obtaining credits
and capital, the lack of which reduces their access
to new technologies.
It is also evident that SMEs are neglected as far
as the systematic approach to IT management is
– Table 1 –
SME classification of the
European Union
concerned. For this reason support for SMEs is one
of the European Commission’s priorities for economic growth, job creation and economic and social
cohesion.
There are three categories of enterprises classified as SMEs under EU regulations. The categories
are defined with reference to staff headcount and
either a turnover or a balance:
Category
Employment
Turnover
Balance Sheet Total
Medium sized
< 250
< € 50 Million
_
< € 43 Million
_
Small
< 50
< € 10 Million
_
< € 10 Million
_
Micro
< 10
< € 2 Million
_
< € 2 Million
_
Austria (Vienna), Czech Republic (Jihovychod), Germany (Baden-Württemberg), Hungary (Észak Alföld),
Poland (Malopolskie) and Slovakia (Bratislavský
kraj) and the EU criteria for SMEs. The structure of
the valid survey sample is submitted in Table 2.
IT support in Central European SMEs is considered
to play a major role in their further business success
and strategic development. To find out the way how
SMEs utilize IT in different Central-Europe-Regions,
the I NNOTRAI N IT project conducted a survey in six
different European regions:
– Table 2 –
Structure of
SMEs per region
and class
Category
Austria
Czech Rep.
Germany
Hungary
Poland
Slovakia
Total
Medium
4
10
7
6
11
1
39
Small
6
7
16
15
10
5
59
Micro
12
8
18
10
8
6
62
Total
22
25
41
31
29
12
160
17
The sample’s results are coherent with the overall
tendency in the economy, where the number of
medium-sized companies is outnumbered by small
and micro enterprises within the SMEs category. Such
proportions however, are not reflected in each region.
In Czech Republic and Poland midsize enterprises
account for the highest ratio, while in Hungary small
firms constitute the majority.
Economist Joseph Schumpeter, who contributed
greatly to the study of innovation, argued that industries must incessantly revolutionize the economic
structure from within, that is innovate with better or
more effective processes and products, such as the
shift from the craft shop to factory. He asserted that
“creative destruction is the essential fact about capitalism”. In addition, entrepreneurs continuously look
for better ways to satisfy their consumer base with
improved quality, durability, service, and price which
come to fruition in innovation with advanced technologies and organisational strategies. Therefore it
was interesting to know, how the Central European
SMEs were aware of the innovation potential of Information Technologies.
Accordingly, we included a section in our survey where
SMEs were asked:
>
>
To what degree are technological trends important to IT strategic planning?
59%
13% 11%
As it is indicated in Figure 2 – The importance of technological trends for IT-strategy planning – below, a
majority of SMEs, especially in “old” EU countries
(Austria and Germany), but also in Poland, perceives
technological trends as having a very high or high
impact on their IT strategy.
52%
48%
42%
42%
39%
31%
23%
19%
9%
16%
9%
16%
6%
Virtualization
yes
no
18% 20%
not sure
Cloud Computing
Energy Efficency
unanswered
47%
44%
38%
34% 34%
31% 31%
31%
16%
24%
8%
7%
40%
39%
17%
12%
11%
pliance and future critical sourcing methods they
need (virtualization) the fundamental knowledge and
skills in ITSM are essential. A very high awareness
level of security/compliance, virtualization and ITSM
is confirmed also in the rate of planned projects
(Figure 4).
By asking SMEs how many of them are already
applying ITSM, we could see a big gap between those
who are familiar to the concept of ITSM (61 %) and
those who apply it in day to day business (15,8 %).
45%
32%
18%
13%
8%
Security and
Compliance
However, the response rate differs in the degree of
their recognition. That means: It is not surprising that
the topic of security and compliance reached the
highest ratio due to the fact that security issues are
frequently raised in media and professional press.
Also, for the same reasons (popularity in professional
press), the position of virtualization is also explainable. It is, however, interesting to see that ITSM is a
familiar concept to 61 % companies, as in the case
of both popular areas such as the security and com-
– Figure 4 –
Running, planned
and not planned
projects related to
technological trends
50%
18%
16%
IT Service
Management
When analysing particular trends (Figure 3) in a second step, it is interesting to observe that SMEs are
quite familiar with many important trends, as in
almost all cases the answer “Yes – I know this trend”
accounts for more than 50 % of the respondents and
in one case reaches 70 % of responses.
59%
15%
61%
46%
– Figure 2 –
The importance
of technological
trends for ITstrategy planning
40%
70%
63%
Which are the trends and are there any on-going
or planned projects in the organisations in relationship to them?
78%
18%
– Figure 3 –
Awareness of
the technological
trends
14%
AT
DE
Very high/High
CZ
Neutral
HU
PL
SK
Low/Very low/Unanswered
IT Service
Management
Virtualization
Running projects
18
Security and
Compliance
Planned projects
Cloud Computing
Energy Efficency
No projects planned
19
To get an understanding about the question whether
ITSM is able to innovate the business of SMEs in the
sense of Schumpeter’s definition, we have developed
a 4 levels model of innovations:
>
Methodological innovation level (aka the company already employed ITSM-methods)
>
IT-Services on an infrastructure level (aka the
company did significant infrastructure changes)
>
Business process level (aka the company uses
new IT services to change its business processes)
>
Product level (aka the company uses IT Services
to change the nature of their products)
– Figure 5 –
Application of
ITSM Frameworks
100%
80%
60%
40%
84,62%
What we can see is that there are still two major barriers that have to be overcome by a successful implementation of ITSM methods in SMEs. The first barrier addresses the ITSM methods themselves. If
around 60 % of the SMEs know ITSM methods and
only 15 % already apply them, but 35% of all SMEs
are willing to run an ITSM implementation project,
there seems to be a major barrier for the lock in into
the domain. More concretely, we have identified two
major hurdles that describe this barrier:
20%
15,38 %
no
After analysing our two different samples – the one
who never used ITSM methods and the others who
applied it over a longer time – we came to the following results:
>
>
FIRST: SMEs which introduced ITSM methods
successfully were able to implement them on a
technological and infrastructure near level.
SECOND: SMEs which introduced IT-Infrastructure near Service methods were 58 % more efficient
>
The existing ITSM methods do not offer a step
by step implementation. In other words: No embedded “how to do” procedure is available. The
INNOTRAIN IT innovation method therefore took
a cookbook approach offering SMEs guidance
through the successful implementation of ITSM.
THIRD: SMEs that implemented IT-Service innovations on an infrastructure level didn’t go on
to innovate their business processes
These results strengthen the hypothesis that those
SMEs which are able to save massive IT resources
are not the same ones that invest further to innovate
their business processes or products.
Summing up, below can be found a visual representation of IT-service driven innovations in SMEs
based on our innovation spiral (Figure 6):
The second barrier we realized was on the interface
between IT-Service Management which was designed
for cost savings only, and a second IT-Service-Management approach for the fostering the of process
and product innovation. This barrier mainly is caused
by two different phenomena:
>
SMEs use ITSM as a cost saving method because they see the IT function in general as a
cost and not a profit oriented function.
>
There is a diffuse and low developed knowledge
available about the impact of IT to SME’s business effectiveness.
– Figure 6 –
Innovation barriers
for ITSM in SMEs
Barrier 2
Level 0
ITSM Implementation level
Barrier 1
Visualisation of statistical effects from INNOTRAIN IT survey
20
>
Do you apply ITIL or another ITSM
framework in your company?
I INNOTRAIN
N N O T R A I NITI T
Level 1
Innovation of IT-infrastructure
processes
The already existing methods are too complex.
From this we concluded that the I NNOTR AIN IT
method has to be a simplified ITSM method to
foster the ability of SMEs to implement it.
yes
Level 3
Innovation of business services
and information based products
Level 2
Innovation of
business processes
>
process level, organisational level and IT-system level)
and to think strategically about the interdependencies between these levels. That means, for example,
that we train our trainees how to simulate the breakdown of one or the other business object on different
levels (remember Schumpeter’s creative destruction!)
to get an understanding about the interdependencies
between business strategy, business processes and
IT-services. After realising the consequences, I NNOT R A I N I T guides SMEs to the development of new
business processes supported by IT Services and
shows the trainees how to even change the quality of
products by utilizing new IT-Services.
In empirical reality both points of course can be assumed to be interconnected. While the reasons for
this are explained in the following chapter, we shortly
should stress the interconnectedness For INNOTRAIN
I T this led to the requirement to find a method that
empowers both business and IT-responsible actors
within SMEs to get a common understanding about
the business impact of IT in general and especially of
IT services. In a further step, this insight led to our
modelling method embedded in face to face trainings.
These trainings foster SMEs to model and simulate
their business on different layers (strategic level,
21
© Vankad – Fotolia.com
THE
INNOTRAIN IT
APPROACH
Chapter 3.1
ITSM AS AN
INNOVATION DRIVER
¦
Many unnecessary costs incurring in IT departments
are based on poor coordination and organisation of
processes. With the introduction and consistent implementation of ITSM it is possible to reduce costs in
the medium-term. A way to achieve this would be to
focus on the core tasks of the IT department and to
outsource non business-relevant functions to save
costs, e.g. printer management. However, this is only
possible if the internal service costs are transparent
and can be compared to the real cost of outsourcing.
During the last chapter we have seen that while ITSM
is a standing operating procedure in many large enterprises, there is much more potential for its use in
SMEs. But how exactly could that potential unfold?
The following paragraphs are listing important drivers
for the implementation of ITSM in SMEs:
Cost transparency and
cost reduction
Through the implementation of ITSM, SMEs will get
to know the structure of their IT in depth. They can
move one from allocating a budget on a yearly basis
which must cover all costs arising over the year to
performance and service related budgets.
22
Enhancement of business
service quality and development
of new products
The alignment of IT with the business strategy and
goals is especially important. Thus, business improvement projects could also be an external driver of IT
service management. Companies using IT Service
Management tend to be also characterized as more
innovative and flexible, thus possibly providing more
IT based innovations on process and product- or
service levels.
Also the development of new products might influence the IT department of an SME to focus on ITSM.
23
Workload reduction
Workload Reduction can be achieved by selective outsourcing. Additionally, the standardization and optimization of IT processes reduces the need for
resources. Patterns like a service-desk or a configuration management database can reduce efforts with
operational activities. This driver appeals mainly to
under-staffed IT departments.
Compliance & reduction
of risks
IT has an impact on several value creating business
processes of a company. An IT failure has repercussions on entire departments and ultimately on the
income situation of the company. This can lead in
extreme cases even to bankruptcy. In the strict application of IT Service Management best practices
many managers see a reduction of the risk of a total
IT failure.
Furthermore, through defined processes and procedures as well as a comprehensive documentation
ITSM provides a significantly better transparency
through IT. This has a positive effect on the observance of regulations and laws like Basel II or SOX.
Furthermore, requirements of customers or partners
like financial institutions can be fulfilled and proven.
This may have positive impact on the rating of the
company.
Based on the insights above the INNOTRAIN IT
consortium defined different principles and goals to
address the barriers and to force the drivers.
>
Creation of awareness in the target group CEO
and CIO
>
Simplification – where possible
>
Alignment with existing frameworks
>
Creation of a possible implementation path
ITSM
FRAMEWORKS
Awareness
Free & adequate
Trainings for SME
Chapter 3.2
¦
Within the last decade IT Service Management has
developed into a discipline with internationally recognized frameworks and standards. Yet a thorough
literature study focused on SMEs showed that there
is little evidence to suggest that the basic IT problems
that trouble SMEs have been resolved, which supports our contention that new approaches are
needed. Nonetheless ITSM as a discipline developed
basic principles which can be well applied to SMEs.
As an example of those considered for the INNOTRAIN
I T method the following can be mentioned:
– Figure 7 –
The INNOTRAIN IT
approach
>
>
IT is an enabler for business objectives, thus investments in IT and services need to be aligned
with the business strategy.
IT Service Management enables the provision of
more customer-focused IT; services and agreements about service quality improve transparency and accountability.
>
Definition of e.g. processes, service level catalogues, responsibilities improve the transparency
and communication within the IT organisation.
>
IT Service Management is concerned with delivering and supporting IT services that are appropriate to the business requirements.
>
The definition of a single point of entry, like a
Service Desks, helps to make resources available while keeping the quality standard high.
>
IT Service Management is first and foremost a
management task, thus needs to be anchored
at top management level.
>
The introduction of evaluation methods and
tools improves the performance monitoring and
helps reducing costs.
Val IT
CobiT
eTOM
Introduction of the
Philosophy and Basics
of ITSM
Risk IT
Simplified
ITSM Method for SME
TOGAF
– Figure 8 –
SPICE
INNOTRAIN IT
ISO 20000
research approach
Simplification
A SIMPLIFIED ITSM
METHOD FOR SMES:
THE COOKBOOK APPROACH
MOF
CMMI
etc.
Focus Groups
Existing ADOit MetaModel
Simplified ITSM Method
Custom ADOit Meta-Model
Existing Frameworks
Empirial Research in CE
Case Studies in SME in CE
24
Concept Trainings
25
As part of the development processes, different
sources like the case studies and the survey have
been taken into account during the I N N OT R A I N I T
project. The focus group (IT Leads, ITSM Experts, etc.)
turned out as a most valuable information source.
Iterative discussion and the left over “best practices”
gave us a starting point for our own simplified ITSM
method.
In order to address the drivers and tackle the
barriers (remember the last chapter!) we had to develop an ITSM method that should be simple enough
to be accepted by SMEs, but yet universal enough
to support their business. Since ITIL and COBIT are
proven frameworks in large enterprises we had a
look at their processes and controlled objectives
and chose a “best of breed” approach from the two
frameworks.
The INNOTRAIN IT method does not serve as an additional ITSM framework; it is rather a model that is
upwards compatible to ITIL and COBIT. This approach guarantees flexibility for SMEs to migrate
to a larger framework when their companies grow
and need more rigors to manage their IT services.
Key goals were:
>
Provision of a ‘cookbook’ about ITSM explaining
the different patterns
>
Modularization and simplification of common
patterns of various ITSM frameworks and
methods
Level I: strategic planning
>
>
LEVEL I
Strategic Planning
IT Strategy
IT Service
Agreement /
Definition
IT enabled
Innovation
Management
>
Definition of a possible implementation process
and explanation of the “best of breed” approach
to select, adapt and adopt existing frameworks
Delivery of ITSM training approach tailored
for SMEs
>
The INNOTRAIN IT simplified ITSM method contains
different modules, covering a specific topic and containing methods, processes, patterns and guides as
well as references to the more detailed frameworks.
As part of the IT Service Management Guide (“cookbook”) – online available – each module is described
in detail. To get a better overview the modules are
structured in different levels (see figure). Modules
in the horizontal levels describe the coordination
(strategic and tactical) and the operation of IT. The
vertical areas contain modules which are related to
the IT coordination as well as to IT operation.
>
– Figure 9 –
Simplified IT
Service Management method by
VERTICAL LEVELS
Monitoring, Improvement & Change
Business IT
Alignment
Strategy
INNOTRAIN IT
Control & Audit
>
Cont. Service
Improvement
LEVEL II
Service Operations
26
Service and
Infrastructure
Operation
IT Procurement
Security and
Environment
Compliance
Monitoring &
Evaluation
IT Strategy: follows the alignment strategy and
derives success factors, strategic goals, causeand-effects relationships, operational goals, Key
Performance Indicators (KPIs) and Key Goal Indicators (KGIs) and defines the actions for the
operational implementation of the strategy. Target audience is the middle management as well
as all employees of the internal IT.
IT Service Agreement/Definition: as IT supports
the business activities via services this module
defines the business services necessary as well
as the efforts provided by the IT to reach the
service levels mutually agreed. Thus this module
contains all relevant functions and standards
for the definition and agreement of services. Target audience are all employees who work in the
definition, implementation and provision of services, both on the business and on the IT side.
Service and Infrastructure Operations: this module covers the daily operations of each IT department. Included are patterns like the service
or help desk, incident and problem management
and the management of the configuration
(“knowledge of the landscape”).
>
Systems and outsourced Service Management:
aims to ensure the availability and capacity of
internal systems as well as of outsourced sys-
IT
Projects
>
IT Procurement: many small companies have
“outsourced” their infrastructure. Though, even
then, the service and hardware have to be purchased and contracted. This module describes
the phases of the procurement of IT products
as well as IT services like specifications, searching and selecting of provider and contracting.
>
Security and Environment: the goal of this module is to ensure the security of company’s IT. In
addition to potential attackers, the IT environment should be prevented from physical influences (e.g. heat, water etc.) as well as technical
failures (hardware defect, blackout etc.).
Vertical levels: monitoring,
improvement & change
>
Control and Audit: includes the documentation
of relevant – and not already tracked – information and data (e.g. process descriptions, project documentation, guidelines). The own IT and
its processes should be monitored and evaluated internally. Self-assessment ensures the
quality of IT services. Optionally an external audit or assessment can be performed, e.g. in the
context of an ISO 20000 standardization, to confirm the quality of the services which are provided by the IT.
>
Compliance: means that a company is able to
act according to specific rules of IT-governance, regulations or relevant national laws if
necessary. Compliance is not specifically an IT
concern but an overall company goal. Thus IT
needs on the one side to comply with its own
specific regulations and on the other side support the business compliance goals. The module at hand guides through the assessment of
compliance topics and on how compliance can
be achieved. Target audience are all employees
of the company.
IT enabled Innovation Management: this module
serves as interface between IT service management and innovation management. The later developed innovation method will complement the
IT service management using this module.
>
Change
Management
Change
Management &
Improvement
Business IT Alignment Strategy: describes how
IT goals derived from the company’s business
strategy are supporting business goals. Technological and operational aspects are more or less
excluded as the alignment takes place on the
highest level. Target audience is the top and middle management, as well as the internal IT.
Level II: service operations
IT Project
Management
Systems and outsourced Services
Management
tems and services. Checks are executed on a
regular basis and actions are performed based
on results to ensure system availability. In addition the management of the capacity aims to
guarantee that IT capacity meets current and
future business requirements in a cost-effective
manner.
Following, we list the main elements:
27
>
>
>
Change Management: the goal of Change Management is to ensure that regular approaches
and procedures are used for well-organised and
prompt handling of all changes to controlled IT
infrastructure, in order to decrease the impact
on related services. To make controlled changes
means to evaluate dependencies, plan and
schedule the change and make it public.
Continuous Service Improvement: means on-going systematic checking of all available services
to improve, for example, the service quality and
performance.
Chapter 3.3
ITSM
Implementation
Decision
BUSINESS
Define Business
Strategy
BUSINESS
Document Business
Processes
STRATEGY
DEFINITION
PHASE
IT
BUSINESS & IT
Define IT
Strategy (optional)
Define Business
IT Alignment
Strategy
BASIC MODULES
IMPLEMENTATION
PHASE
IT
Introduce Central
IT Service Desk
IT
IT
BUSINESS & IT
Document IT
Infrastructure
Operate Services
and Infrastructure
Define IT Service
Catalog
IT
Force Continous
Service
Improvement
ADVANCED MODULES
IMPLEMENTATION
PHASE
yes
Further ITSM
modules required?
no
ITSM
Introduced
ITSM AWARENESS
IN SMES: INTERREGIONAL
TRAINING APPROACH
– Figure 10 –
ITSM Implementation Path
(simplified)
PREPARATION
PHASE
IT Project Management: aims to ensure the visibility of project management, as activities in IT
are very much project-based. Within this module
IT projects are coordinated, prioritized, planned,
budgeted, executed and evaluated.
The introduction of ITSM in a company is treated by
most frameworks only marginally. However, this information is essential for SMEs. Therefore, I N N O TRAIN IT addresses this topic explicitly as part of the
ITSM Guide.
IT Service Management can be introduced in
companies in different ways. Depending on the maturity level and experience in the company, different
processes can have the priority. In addition to incident
and problem management, change management is
frequently the first step of an ITSM implementation.
The change management scheme should be developed at the earliest stage possible, as it is the core
of continuous service improvement.
The modular design of the simplified ITSM
method allows introducing relevant modules stepby-step. This approach has been combined with a
prioritising: modules that are mandatory for all companies have been marked as ‘basic modules’ (visualized dark grey) while modules where the need depends on the requirements of the specific company
have been marked as ‘optional’. The mandatory modules provide the basis for a successful use of ITSM.
The optional modules supplement them. To exploit
completely the added value that can be provided by
using ITSM, all modules should be introduced. The
selection of modules depends to a great extent on
the company and its facets, the strategy and requirements. The process shown in our graph shows an
example of a blueprint of an introductory path. As
28
mentioned earlier, the defined steps reflect all basic
modules. These have been arranged into a sequence
according to their dependencies and are expanded
by adding relevant activities.
ITSM implementation is not only a technical, but
primarily an organisational change process, that
sometimes can meet resistance. People in organisations have to change this behaviour, because they are
those who decide whether or not ITSM introduction
is successful.
IT
Implement one or
more advanced
module(s)
¦
To make IT-departments more efficient and innovative, it is necessary to increase the awareness of CEOs
and CIOs about the benefits of ITSM. Therefore the
starting point of the INNOTR AI N IT training sessions
was to address CEOs of small companies and IT-decision makers of medium sized companies based on
their everyday life challenges they want to solve with
IT. Those could be external drivers, like new compliance requirements or the need for cost efficiency of
web based business services (e.g. sales activities via
web shop, new technological trends like cloud computing) as well as internal drivers like risk reduction
by reliable back-up and computer administration routines, cost reduction of printer maintaining costs or
else. The pre-training communication phase in the
project was the focused on gaining SMEs for ITSM by
helping them to solve their special business and technological issues.
The I NNOTRAI N IT training approach was totally
different than existing trainings based on the established frameworks like ITIL or CoBIT. In these trainings
participants are normally trained in the ITIL vocabulary and mostly in service delivery processes.
Thereby however, participants tend in our opinion
to miss the basic and essential ITIL philosophy: the
alignment between business and IT strategy. The
INNOTRAINIT approach addresses these weaknesses.
We not only trained IT staff, but also IT affine CEOs of
SMEs, starting with a solution for their special problems based on a case study that was explored and
documented by the research project partners at the
beginning of the project.
This case study training approach is supported
by a downstripped and less complex ITSM method
for SMEs that includes only the most effective parts
of the three major frameworks (ITIL, CoBit and ValIT).
The solutions which are presented during the trainings in the form of case studies are modelled by using
a web based modelling tool. Thereby, no expenses for
hardware or software were necessary. The trainees
only needed an internet connection and a web
browser. Once they had internalized the ITSM philosophy, they could go on a suggested innovation path
and find other service solutions on their own that
helped them to improve their business.
In case the trainees were implementing innovations in their organisation, I NNOTRAI N I T offered a
second training module at a later phase of their business transformation. The second training delivered
the participants fundamental know-how and social
skills for organisational change. In the state of the
training technology, this component is mostly totally
underestimated and not part of the existing ITSM
framework trainings. But every change of business
and IT services leads to the situation that employees
are confronted with a change of their individual working situation. Therefore, the second training module
was very valuable for the participants to implement
IT service management methods and innovations successfully in their organisation.
The I NNOTRAI N I T training process consisted of
face-to-face trainings and online training modules.
The face-to-face trainings were divided in a basic
ITSM Case Training and a Change Management and
Innovation Training. The training process have been
organised as follows: the training process started
with marketing measures in order to raise interest of
participants for the trainings. Secondly, the participants registered themselves online for the first faceto-face ITSM Case Training. Thirdly, the participants
attended the face-to-face training. Fourthly, after the
seminar the participants got access to the I N N O TR AI N I T Online Training Platform. They could then
run different Online Training Modules and use the
web based modelling tool on the platform for modelling their IT processes. After this phase a special second face-to-face training was offered to teach the
aspects of change and innovation management.
29
– Figure 11 –
Training Process
Quantity
Chapter 3.4
Quality
ONLINE MEDIA FOR KNOWLEDGE
DISTRIBUTION: THE INNOTRAIN
IT PLATFORM CONCEPT
¦
Training
Marketing
Registration
Face2Face
Training
Online
Training
Face2Face
Training
Part II
Certificate
Knowledge needs to be available anytime and everywhere nowadays. Professionals and scholars need
and want to be able to access the answer to specific
questions at any point in time they choose.
Thus, when aiming to train professionals in SMEs
in Central Europe, an online knowledge distribution
platform must provide:
Community
Services
Customer
Relationship
Management
> a single-point of access to the knowledge the
training programme offers;
> easily accessible content, well-structured and
clearly presented;
The trainings were accompanied by community services on the INNOTRAIN IT training platform and customer relationship management activities. The following picture illustrates the INNOTRAIN IT training
process.
The face-to-face ITSM Case trainings had the following topics: provisioning of IT, printer management,
web shop and help desk. They included the phases
welcome, presentation of the case study, ITSM method,
ITSM process modelling, and lessons learned.
The structure of the training was based on four
principles:
> Case study based learning
> Simplified ITSM method
30
> a multi-language display catering to the specific
needs of each of the regions, all united in one
single space;
> an interactive environment, where the professionals can consume knowledge, interact with
others and have a working space to design and
solve their problems.
The I NNOTR AI N I T platform – available at www.innotrain-it.eu – is the online training support for IT
Service Management in SMEs as developed by the
project consortium.
> Exchange of collective experiences in a group situation of similar experts (peer-to-peer approach)
> Usage of an interactive web based learning
platform
– Figure 12 –
The INNOTRAIN IT
platform
The online training comprises the modules “Innovation with ITSM”, “ITSM Introduction and Philosophy”,
“ITS Process Modelling”, “ITSM Implementation”,
“Organisational Implementation and Innovation”.
The Change and Innovation Management training covered the topics Principles of Change, Management
Concepts, Success Factors of Change Processes,
Dealing with Emotions in Change Processes and Communication in Change Processes.
31
It aims to fulfil the criteria described above by providing bundles of services which are:
> Training services
> Information services
> Knowledge-transfer services
The pre-defined training path provides a logical
guideline for understanding ITSM and Change Management.
Train-the-trainer is designed for current and
future ITSM trainers, the contents provided aim to
develop:
> general skills on how to be a trainer for professionals;
> IT Service Management and Innovation services
> Communication services.
> knowledge that should be conveyed for SMEs in
ITSM.
Training services
Information services
Comprise in INNOTRAIN IT three different types of
trainings
Assuming that professionals will keep revisiting an
online platform only if the news and topics delivered
are up-to-date and relevant for their business environment, the INNOTRAIN IT platform provides independent and neutral information on developments of
different topics of interest, like e.g. compliance, supply chains, e-Procurement, and IT-Standards for
SMEs, allowing the access to information either on a
transnational or on a regional level, depending on the
interest group addressed. Upcoming events, conferences and online publications can also be displayed
and disseminated.
> face-to-face trainings
> online trainings
> train-the-trainer trainings.
The face-to-face trainings have been provided as
workshops in each of the 6 participating Central Europe regions. The platform provides a transnational
training calendar, giving visitors an overview of the
events organised, with all details for each event and
the opportunity to register to participate. The trainer
is then able to keep in touch with the trainees via
email and provide them with materials, updates and
relevant information. During the training the platform
is used to acquaint trainees with typical ITSM scenarios and to allow them to access to the modelling
toolkit. After the event itself the trainee can follow
the online trainings and be engaged in experience reports, moderated by the trainers on the platform.
Online trainings strive to support SMEs professionals in their daily IT Service Management pursuits by:
> providing an online training path with multi-media materials, exercises and assessments for
deepening the understanding of the ITSM topic;
giving access to the modelling environment,
> which enables the professionals to design and
solve their individual problems in a do-it-yourself
manner.
32
Knowledge-transfer services
“Knowledge transfer” is defined by the researchers
Argote and Ingram as “the process through which
one unit (e.g. group, department or division) is affected by the experience of another one”. Thus, besides the training services, which represent a separate chapter, the INNOTRAIN IT portal provides these
services, considered especially important as they
help bridge regional knowledge discrepancies in the
uptake and successful implementation of ITSM
in different regions of Central Europe. Thus Best
Practice cases, experience reports on pilot projects,
eBooks, a WIKI, and a Forum are available on the portal. Furthermore handbooks, for the use of the portal
itself as well as the modelling environment, are at
the disposition of the users.
IT Service Management and
innovation service
IT Service Management is a discipline for managing
IT systems, centred on the customer’s perspective of
IT’s contribution to the business. Thus the portal gives
access to:
> a methodology how this method can be implemented;
> a modelling tool customized to the IT Service
Management method’s needs;
Thus they can be also external partners, only responsible for a specific task.
On a technology level the open source CMS-technology LifeRay® was used. As no costs incur for the
usage the partners deemed it especially interesting
when considering sustainability aspects of the project. Using Java and JavaScript the portal is implemented in two programming languages which are
largely available in any of the participating regions.
Thus interested parties can deploy the portal and
its contents in one or more languages and easily customise their offer to the local needs of SMEs.
> reference processes resulting from either the
Best Practice Scenarios or the Experience Reports on the pilot projects.
Communication
services
Another objective of the INNOTRAIN IT project was to
enhance the transnational exchange about methods,
best practices and tools to design and operate IT
Services successfully and to strengthen transnational
and regional innovation capabilities. Therefore the
communication features of the INNOTRAIN IT training
platform were deemed as very important.
The platform was equipped with a transnational
training calendar, technological meeting support
(e.g. NetViewer, Skype etc.) and a mailing list which
features different types of beneficiaries, roles and
regions.
Gearing towards sustainability:
role concept and technology
In preparation for the implementation of the INNOTR AIN I T portal one of the main considerations was
that after the project lifetime deploying the portal
should be easy for anyone who wishes to do so. Thus
the consortium identified two key features sustaining
this goal (a) the portal usability and (b) the technology.
The usability was ensured by an appealing design
and easy to navigate information, but also by the implementation of a thorough role concept, which gives
the region the control over the content displayed in
their language. The overall approval of transnational
contents lies with the project leader. Trainers can
manage their trainings independent of other content.
33
Chapter 3.5
The strategic alignment of IT and Business is a fundamental concept within the I NNOTRAIN IT method.
Therefore, it is useful to choose a perspective through
the whole company – starting with the business and
IT strategy, via business processes and supporting IT
services to the IT itself with applications, systems
and services processes. The following image shows
an overview of the relevant model types, their hierarchical order and relationship within the company.
¦
“Before processes and tools can be designed we must know the requirements.
Before requirements can be expressed we must understand the domain.”
This adapted version of Dines Bjorner’s influential intro-
these descriptions, we come to the domain’s require-
duction to ‘Domain Engineering’ is simple, yet it reflects
ments; and from those we can model the appropriate
the basic idea behind this modelling approach. From our
processes and design the tools to support entities of this
literature and our own surveys we learned that the domain
domain.
of SMEs has special rules and requirements. Things which
Considerations of domains in software development have
work effectively in a multi-national corporation don’t nec-
always been there. Researcher in the 1970s already wrote
essarily need to work in a local carpenter’s shop. We see
about domain specific development. Even though their
domain specific engineering as a method, which could
domain specific engineering approach does focus on soft-
help to adapt existing frameworks towards meeting the
ware development, we think it can also be used to alter
needs and requirements of SMEs. Consequently, we must
existing frameworks, processes and tools towards the re-
first establish precise descriptions of a domain; then, from
quirements of a specific domain.
Strategy
Business + IT
> evaluation: monitoring of indicators or performance;
Business Processes
IT Service Architecture
Applications
IT Service Processes
Furthermore, modelling of the relevant business areas means also different advantages for business
and IT – some examples:
> modelling allows a more structured approach for
documentation purposes;
34
IT Service Processes
> the gained transparency und insights provide the
basis for optimization on different levels (process
level, infrastructure level, etc.);
> Complete models can be used for simulation,
analysis, evaluation, comparison and benchmarking. For example, based on a whole business and
IT model, the dependencies between a hardware
element and business processes can be calculated and visualized;
> The use of a common terminology, which is part
of the modelling, improves the communication
between the involved company members.
> modelling: design and optimization of IT services,
infrastructure, processes etc;
Business Processes
IT Service Process Architecture
> irrelevant redundancies in processes or the infrastructure as well as process loops can be identified and if possible eliminated;
> acquisition: automated capturing and presentation of existing IT infrastructure;
> simulation: execution of worst case/best case
scenarios;
Business Process Architecture
Infrastructure
,Today’s companies – even small ones – are getting
more and more complex and it is hard to understand
their whole structures and relations. Therefore, business and IT models provide a valuable possibility to
create a better understandable abstraction of the
complex reality and a comprehensive overview over
the system. One might compare the idea behind modelling this way: to understand the world as very complex system humans are used to create abstract representations such as a world map, to name only one
example.
tions are the enterprise architecture and IT service
management. The functionality of ADOit® can be
structured in six core competences:
> analysis: identification of interdependencies between processes, infrastructure and architecture
of IT;
Excursus:
domain specific
engineering
Organisation
A CUSTOMIZED
ADOIT LIBRARY
> documentation: automated generation of documentation in different formats.
ADOit can, therefore, be assumed as a visual configuration management database, which can easily be
used by non-IT personnel, but provides – if required
– a lot of additional functionalities.
Customization of ADOit
– Figure 13 –
Business & IT
modelling: from
strategy to infrastructure
The gathering and documentation of processes, IT
services and infrastructure elements is an important
step of the IT service management implementation
path. Unfortunately, SMEs usually do not use modelling solutions to represent their company with
processes and relevant infrastructure elements. Accordingly, the project INNOTR AIN IT tries to reduce
the entry barrier with the provision of customized
tools tailored to the needs of SMEs. The software is a
fundamental part of the concept to increase the
awareness on ITSM in small and medium-sized enterprises. The already existing and established tool
ADOit® from BOC Group has been chosen as starting
point and basis for the customization.
ADOit® is a software tool for the strategic, tactical
and operational management of the entire IT of an
enterprise. It enables the collaboration of IT architects, application owners and IT management as well
as business process owners. The two main applica-
“A study about language
is spoken in language”.
Discussions about language require a further semantic level: a meta-language. The investigation of models
is very similar and requires a meta-model. The metamodel can be assumed as a model of a modelling
language. This behaviour is recursive and accordingly
the subsequent logical level is a meta-meta-model
(and so on). In other words, on the one hand a highlevel model of multiple modelling languages can be
defined. On the other hand, several modelling languages – which all have certain similarities – can be
derived from a meta-model.
The current meta-model of ADOit is specific for
the representation of the IT in the context of the whole
company. The developers have implemented as many
requirements of potential users as possible. In addition, the specific requirements of relevant frame-
35
Data
Software Architecture
Application Architecture
Business Impact Analysis
– Figure 14 –
Initial metamodel of ADOit
(abstracted)
– Figure 16 –
Customized ADOit
meta-model
for INNOTRAIN IT
(abstracted)
Application Architecture
IT Service Business Process Architecture
Impact Analysis
IT Strategy
Requirements / Skills
IT Strategy
IT Project
Business Processes
Organisation
IT Service Architecture
Organisation
Business Process Architecture
IT Service Process
IT Service Process Architecture
ICT Infrastructure
> simplified INNOTRAIN IT ITSM method;
works like COBIT, ITIL and TOFGAF as reference models have been considered and implemented. By covering such a wide range of requirements, the current
meta-model is extremely powerful, but at the same
time very complex – too complex for SMEs!
Based on the results of the previous research the
primary goal was to reduce the complexity of the tool.
However, the requirements from the following sources
were considered necessary for the adaption of the
existing meta-model:
Listing each request and the related adjustment is
beyond the scope of this document. Accordingly, only
the used approaches to adapt the meta-model are
mentioned:
> modelling experience from case studies about
ITSM and innovation in SMEs;
> elimination of complete model types (e.g. projects, software architecture, etc.);
– Figure 15 – Model of an IT infrastructure
36
> a focus group containing IT (service) management
and process experts as well as SMEs.
IT Service Processes
IT Service Process Architecture
> merge of multiple model types to one model type
(e.g. Process Architecture + IT Service Architecture = IT Service Business Process Architecture);
> elimination of objects within a model as well as
the elimination of compulsive relations;
> extension of a complete model type to allow
SMEs to model business processes in detail.
The result of these adjustments is a customized
meta-model for ITSM in SMEs. Since the meta-model
provides now less features, the degree of complexity
IT Infrastructure
has decreased significantly and therefore it is more
suitable for the application in small and mediumsized enterprises.
The resulting customized modelling environment
has been utilized during several stages of our project:
case studies, pilot projects, creation of innovation
scenarios and interregional trainings. The modelling
environment has also been included into the online
portal to provide SMEs with a free tool after they get
in touch with it as part of the trainings. Our experience
show that the simplified ITSM method in combination
with the customized modelling tool provide valuable
methods and tools that can be applied in most SMEs.
– Figure 17/18 – A look into INNOTRAIN IT ’s modelling environment
37
LET’S TALK!
INTERVIEWS
FROM THE BUSINESS
What have I N N O T R A I N I T trainings
actually affected? What experiences
made SMEs within the project’s network? Within three interviews from the
business we give some insights into
the everyday life managing IT Services.
“IT HAS BECOME A
PRODUCTION FACTOR”
¦
Chapter 3.6
An interview with
Jochen Rummel, Bechtle GmbH & Co. KG
IT Systemhaus Neckarsulm
J. RUMMEL: A lot of our customers come from the
& Co. KG – IT Systemhaus Neckarsulm in Baden-Württemberg he is
responsible for the Competence Center Project- and Service Management. Jochen took part in an INNOTRA IN IT training session himself in
September 2012 and started to use INNOTRAIN IT ’s material for his own
work as a consultant afterwards.
38
It is not a must-have. The real must-have is some
kind of strategy, which determines why you are doing
what. Part of the strategy should always be a clearly
defined operator model. And the overarching goal
always has to be usability. Employees who are not IT
experts themselves but have their knowledge in other
fields should get help with IT and not problems. During
the last year I have learned that I NNOTR AIN IT has
helped many SMEs to develop themselves in that
direction. However, there is still a lot of work to be
done in that regard!
Maybe the biggest challenge during INNOTRAIN IT
was to show SMEs at all that IT Service Management
is a field that matters. How do you explain the use of
IT Service Management to your customers?
INNOTRAIN: One key problem that we see in the field
of IT Service Management is that many SMEs do not
identify it as an important component of strategic decisions – as something they can become more competitive with. Quite the contrary, IT infrastructure is
something that often has been developed in the early
stages of an enterprise and now simply has to run and
run and run. Is that an experience you also make during your work?
Jochen Rummel is an expert in IT Service Management. At Bechtle GmbH
Taking external expertise, subcontracting services –
is that part of good IT Service Management?
Baden-Württemberg region, in southwest Germany –
a region where INNOTRAIN IT is also very active in.
SMEs here are a special phenomenon on their own.
They are founded on the basis of do-it-yourself-inventory. This is what made them successful, an economic driving force. But at the same time this philosophy often makes them stick to solutions that
don’t keep pace with their growth. Also, many SMEs
tend to not sub-contract services that could be brilliantly done by external experts. Often enough, IT
Service Management is not innovation but conservation, although those SMEs develop highly innovative
products or offer ground-breaking services.
Well, constant dripping wears away the stone. But
we know that problem! It is a success for us when we
can convince enterprises that IT today has become a
production factor. It doesn’t matter if it is your bakery
around the corner or a middle-sized enterprise – they
all have the need for IT, because a good IT allows them
to react fast and to standardize their processes. The
mobile market with smart phones and other devices
has intensified that pressure for a modern IT infrastructure.
Your company Bechtle AG has entered a lot of markets
successfully. Is there something typical for BadenWürttemberg or for other regions in which INNOTRAIN
IT is active in?
Good question. In general I would say that knowledge
diffusion helps a lot in IT Service Management. If there
is a regional culture of communication between different parts of one and the same enterprise, for example between different production plants in a region,
it makes it a lot easier. But it is not only the exchange
of best practice that helps. Real collaboration makes
sense as well – just think of two different operational
divisions in large companies backing up each other.
Of course I NNOTRAI N I T works on that topic.
Although you are an expert in IT Service Management
yourself you took part in an INNOTRAIN IT training
session. What was your impression?
I liked it a lot! Your approach is to simplify things in a
very structured, clever and efficient way. I NNOTR AIN
I T shows SMEs what the essentials are. By the way,
we even use material that INNOTRAIN IT has produced
in our own consulting! We take your open source templates and show them to our customers because your
work is especially helpful for beginners in IT Service
Management.
Thanks a lot!
Does that mean the need for IT Service Management
is cross-sectoral?
Absolutely!
What about the actual implementation of IT Service
Management? Does the technology-orientation of
companies make a difference?
I think all companies are quite technology-oriented
nowadays. My experience is that the need for IT Service Management is dependent on external standardization. The bigger the role of external norms and external control is in a company, like state regulation or
external audits, the bigger is also the need for IT Service Management. Because good IT Service Management helps to regulate and to document. Whether it
is an engineering company or something completely
different doesn’t matter too much.
39
Chapter 3.7
“KEEP IT SIMPLE
AND STUPID!”
The researchers have a heterogeneous client or work
station world, with linux computers, windows computers with different operating systems as well as
mac computers. That way it’s easier for a normal enterprise which can determine one standard client.
Our products must be transferable to the industry.
The customers set the terms. Researchers also use
special software which runs only under certain operating systems, and besides, some researchers have
very specific preferences which have to be taken into
account, too. A smoothly working ITSM is the basis
to implement all that.
¦
An Interview with
Georg Stonawski,
VRVis Forschungs-GmbH,
Vienna
VRVis is Austria's leading research company in the field of Visual Com-
INNOTRAIN: At the time you founded your company,
puting. Together with the Institute of Computer Graphics and Algorithms
has ITSM already been a topic for you?
at the Vienna University of Technology (TU) and the Visualization Commission of the Austrian Academy of Science VRVis forms one of the
largest computer graphics research groups in Europe. VRVis was also
generously available for an extensive case study conducted within
INNOTRAIN IT . Out interviewee Georg Stonawski is VRVis’ CEO.
40
Are there any particular challenges for this field of
research?
G. STONAWSKI: As we are a spinoff of the University
of Technology in Vienna we were lucky to have a very
experienced system administrator at our side from
the very start. Since its foundation in 2000 VRVis has
grown at a steady annual rate of 10–15 % and that
way it has kept developing its ITSM strategy continuously. By now the company employs a total of 60
people. In the beginning the system administrator
has been employed only part time, now there are two
and a half full time employees.
Concerning ITSM we must discern between two
quite different areas at VRVis: an office area which is
similar to that of most other SMEs and a research
area. The research area is very important because it
takes over the development of the graphic component
for many other IT companies.
To what extent is the setup of new system units standardised?
The processes are standardised. The individual system units, however, must be configured completely
differently. The system administrators set up new
computers but they cannot access standard computers because they usually do not provide the required
graphic functions. So we must assemble the hardware
of the computers ourselves and then the software is
installed according to the requirements of the individual researcher. Usually other companies are not
faced with such problems.
stalling of redundant data backup systems. Without
strict processes you can easily get into trouble when
you need to recover data.
Can you think of some golden rules for the ITSM at
SMEs?
Yes, of course, one would be ‘keep it simple and
stupid’ – like in all management matters. The rules
and things you must structure should be clear and
understandable. IT experts lean towards highly difficult solutions. They aim at 100 % solutions for problems. Actually often a 95 % solution is sufficient in
practice.
Another important issue is that you need well
trained staff. In the IT world it is very difficult to verify
what a staff member can do or not. In SMEs there is
usually only one person responsible for the IT who
can easily hide behind technical shortcomings. For
the manager it is often difficult to verify whether the
problem at hand is an actual IT problem or the system
administrator simply doesn’t know the answer. Managers must be able to rely on their IT staff because
an enterprise cannot be managed without IT.
Thank you very much for the interview!
As you know INNOTRAIN IT has focused especially on
ITSM in small and medium sized enterprises. What
would you consider typical ITSM-problems for them?
It is especially important to have the right data available at the right time and also the respective granularity you need with the access possibilities.
Therefore, you need a very good access management
(authorization management). In our experience the
authorization categories which are provided by the
operating systems are often not sufficient for our
tasks, so we had to develop our own solutions.
Another problem is the storage of data. It is a
topic that is usually not considered in the beginning,
when only few data occur and the size of the memory
is sufficient. It would be very important, however, to
incorporate a strategy for an efficient digital longtime storage including the handling of an appropriate
migration. Even data backup can be a problem for
SMEs if no provisions have been made for the in-
41
“MODELLING HELPS US
TO AVOID RISKS!”
Chapter 3.8
¦
An interview with
Jerzy Charuza, Open Horizon,
Krakow, Poland
Can you describe your personal implementation path
for ITSM?
While implementing the ITSM philosophy in our company, we realised that we were unable to complete
the project on our own. Consequently, we had to collaborate with academic experts on a regular basis in
order to discuss with them our organisational problems. For instance, most likely in about half a year
we will exploit a large number of different subsystems. We think that the proper approach was to introduce the change in an evolutionary manner.
An example of such model of cooperation was a
number of sessions during which our employees
were describing the company related reality and academic experts were applying the modelling tools.
Such cooperation needs to be flexible, as it should
consider significant growth in the number of users.
The I NNOTRAIN IT method allowed us to visualize
company’s structure and complex dependencies
among various organisational positions which, in
turn, helped employees to understand their roles in
the company.
What kind of new insights did you gain at the INNOTRAIN IT training?
Jerzy Charuza is vice president of Open Horizon, a company operating a
INNOTRAIN: What are the main benefits for your com-
web-based educational platform and producing educational films and
pany from the implementation of ITSM?
multimedia materials. Jerzy has broad experience in realization of multimedia projects, film production, and broadcasting of large events and
conferences. He was technical director of RMF FM, the largest private
radio station in Poland. He was president of SCENA FM, a subsidiary of
RMF FM responsible for the organisation of large promotional events.
He was also president of Stage Art, a company producing video material
for major Polish public and private TV channels. Jerzy is a frequent technology consultant and he served as technology expert during the process
of strategy formulation for the Malopolska region.
42
J. CHARUZA: The major benefit of using ITSM method-
ology is an increased awareness of our resources as
well as better fine tuning of the offer directed to our
customers. The elaborated model helped us to understand who we are and to structure our resources,
processes as well as our technological and organisational infrastructure. With respect to strategy definition, we realized that it is necessary to focus more
on corporate customers while maintaining our offer
for individual customers, which is now being proved
by the practice. This direction has been revealed during the modelling and strategy formulation process.
Also, visualization of organisational and competencylike dependencies was an important direct outcome
of the project. As a result, at the moment a new employee may take over organisational functions without
any major obstacles.
I learned that IT is a kind of resource which adapts
really well to the e-learning platform we are running.
For instance, in the past year our IT infrastructure
has grown significantly which forced us to change the
database backup technology. We had to rapidly extend
our hardware by two levels. At the moment our database is replicated in real-time and backup is being
performed after each transaction and not on an
overnight basis as it was done previously. This change
has been enforced in the fall 2012. When diagnosing
this problem and working out the solution we highly
benefited from the organisational documentation created in the ADOit modelling tool which we were introduced to during the I NNOTRAIN IT training.
You worked together with researchers on this project.
What was your experience and can you imagine continuing your cooperation with research institutions in
the future?
Being primarily a practitioner I found it very useful to
learn from the perspective of experts in modelling
and management theory. However, I think that theoreticians also benefited from this cooperation. I believe that the feedback from the practice is very useful
for academia. Such cooperation helps to achieve the
synergy effect, beneficial for both theory and practice.
We all operate in fast changing technology and reality.
Therefore, mutual interactions are necessary. I remember my academic experience 20 years ago when
the distance between academia and business was
enormous. Over the last 20 years the situation
changed for the better.
In general, thinking about the results of the I NNOTRAIN IT project, I experienced the online learning
platform as really valuable because it enables an exchange of experience between academia and business. Such solutions are not frequent in Poland. This
is especially important for Polish SMEs who tend to
run their businesses in an ad-hoc manner and use
neither planning nor modelling. Yet, modelling helps
us to avoid unnecessary risk, such as buying an expensive server which is in fact not needed. Talking
about the academia-business cooperation, I must
admit that the situation is improving in Poland and
there are more and more organisations dealing with
technology transfer. However, such cooperation is
easier for technical universities as they are able to
sell know-how and patents. Nonetheless, I think that
the cooperation should be also fostered in the field
of organisational and management theory and I am
convinced that it will raise interest on the side of
business practice.
Thank you very much for this interview!
So you didn’t use modelling tools before the training?
We have not been using modelling tools beforehand.
Organisational management and project design were
performed intuitively and informally. We were aware
that we had some resources but we focused more on
financial simulation and modelling. In fact, our organisation arose spontaneously.
43
CONCLUSION
LESSONS LEARNED –
TWO PERSONAL INSIGHTS
Chapter 4.1
Anikó Vágner – University of Debrecen,
Észak-Alföld, Hungary – ITSM Trainer
¦
Prof. Dr. Dieter Hertweck – Electronic Business Institute, Heilbronn University
of Applied Science, Baden-Württemberg, Germany – ITSM Researcher
“Making the alignment between business and IT understandable to SMEs is half the way to success. During its training sessions our project tried to train good
service management practices based on the example
of a fast growing car mechanical shop, called Charly’s
Do It Yourself Car Service, where business and IT were
both forced to make IT-Service based business decisions. Thereby, participants learned to estimate the
consequences for alternative IT-Services usage to
different business dimensions, like business continuity, business process costs or even product quality.
During and after the trainings in our region, BadenWürttemberg in Southwest Germany, different training participants were able to reach business success
and innovations on different levels:
During one of our trainings one company, like all
of our participants do, started to model its IT infrastructure and to connect it to existing IT services
and business processes. In doing so, it got obvious
that the main production processes of this company
were running on a single central infrastructure element which was not insured against failure. The
failure of this very element would have caused an
44
existential damage for the company in the form of a
significant loss of production time. As a result of our
training, this company purchased a second communication network element in the same week and mirrored the critical infrastructure to secure business
continuity.
I can remember another company which was inspired by the idea of the I N N OT R A I N I T innovation
scenarios to sell spare parts for its products over the
Internet. Elements of our training made it much easier
for them to realize that idea: the modelling of dependencies between required service levels for electronic
selling, the necessary web shop application architecture and the necessary service support from the IT
were concrete steps to business success in this case.
Empowered by the examples of INNOTRAIN IT , this
company successfully designed and integrated a webshop-service from an external service supplier.
For my colleagues and me at the Electronic Business Institute of Heilbronn University for Applied
Science a major lesson learned of the training is
this: It is a central success factor to train an SME the
necessity to develop a basic understanding for the
interdependencies between IT-Infrastructure (computer, networks, applications), IT-Service Processes
for the use of IT-Infrastructure and business processes or even products in their own business. We
did not expect that so many companies so far didn’t
have experience with modelling IT Infrastructure. The
transparency they gained during the trainings helps
those SMEs to identify business requirements on IT
topics and to separate really useful technologies from
less promising trends, sometimes overstressed in
media.
Based on that, it will make sense to teach training
participants the available modelling tools in a second
step. The tools support them to communicate business critical influences of IT to companies’ colleagues.
To solve this with easily understandable cases like
Charly’s Do It Yourself Car Service could also be seen
as a methodological success story at the end of the
project.
Also, our trainings showed that the implementation of ITSM methods is not a purely technological
activity in the companies. Participants in our training
sessions learned that the success of an ITSM project
is also based on the use of organisational change
management methods that consider human and cultural aspects. A typical ITSM project follows different
change phases. The training participants saw that it
is very useful to develop an individual change and
implementation plan to consider not only technological but also emotional and communicative aspects
of the organisational change.”
“What have we learned from the I NNOTRAIN IT trainings? First of all, that no two trainings are the same.
The background of the participants has been extremely
diverse: from IT experts to company managers, people
attended the training events from various sectors like
the service industry, health care and others. This meant
that we needed to find common ground with everyone,
and this is what is so great about the training materials
developed by I NNOTRAI N IT : everyone can relate to it.
Whether you are a real estate agent or an expert on
ITSM, you can find something new and useful to bring
home with you from the trainings. While the same material was used each time, it was really important to
adapt the training materials to Hungarian reality and
the actual needs of participants.
Also, we learned that it is impossible to fit all the
information on the simplified ITSM method into a single day of training, so we considered this event to be
an introduction to the world of ITSM. In Hungary most
people had never heard of IT Service Management
before, but during the training sessions they could
get acquainted with the basics, and try the modelling
environment. And this is where our online platform
comes in: the online training materials can be accessed any time and any place. Also, the pace of
learning is determined by the individual user, and the
modelling environment can be used freely even after
the trainings.
One thing I did not expect was that one of the
best parts of the trainings would come out during
the breaks. Vivid discussions developed among participants about what the modelling environment
could be useful for, and what ITSM was all about. In
these moments I could really see that the participants understood the training material and had been
enriched by it.
All in all, I am pleased that so many SMEs in Hungary have been able to discover the simplified ITSM
method, and realize how they can use it in their
everyday businesses. I am positive that the trainings
succeeded in changing some managers’ attitudes
about how to run their operations more effectively.
What is more, we have decided to integrate the materials developed by I N N OT R A I N I T into certain
courses at the University of Debrecen, and thus the
employees and managers of the future will already
have some knowledge of ITSM by the time they enter
the labour market.”
45
Chapter 4.2
A CONCLUDING REMARK:
ITSM AS ANOTHER BRICK
FOR COMPETITIVENESS
¦
1
The INNOTRAIN IT project team
at its kickoff-meeting in Stuttgart,
Germany, in 2010.
(1) During a project meeting.
2
(2) From left to right: Philipp Küller (Heilbronn University),
Dr. Claus Hoffmann (Beatrix Lang GmbH) and
Prof. Dr. Dieter Hertweck (Heilbronn University)
(3) Getting to know the tool: The INNOTRAIN IT
project team practicing in ADOit.
The longest training sessions that have been held in
the INNOTRAIN IT project took one day. During one
day of ITSM training, even the best trainer can only
teach basic knowledge. However, this basic knowledge serves SMEs as the necessary foundation to
turn their IT surrounding into an innovation process:
Good IT infrastructure is not static but adapts
itself to the business model!
Proper IT Service Management doesn’t
consist of hardware only – it rather connects
people with hardware in the form of
strategically formulated processes!
Claims like these, which belong to the most important elements of the philosophy behind INNOTRA IN
I T , enabled participants to understand the key of
the sustainable use of information technologies: It’s
an individual challenge, because business IT shouldn’t
fit only the pages of a distributor’s catalogue but also
the goals of a concrete enterprise and, of course, the
individual needs of people working in a company.
In the age of globalization the creation of value
in the European economy is more than ever based on
knowledge. While traditional ways of production seem
to erode, ideas for start-ups as well as successfully
changing business models get more and more individualized. We are convinced that choosing a method
to handle IT which lives up to the individuality of competitive business enterprises is the right track. Since
IT Service Management is such a method we believe
that it will be one brick for the future competitiveness
of the European economy.
But let us leave ITSM as a method aside and, for
one last paragraph, go back to another key determinant of INNOTRAIN IT : with all its heterogeneity the
European Union still is a project of regions. The analysis we have conducted shaded light on the profiles
of six of them. Thereby, our field of work is just an example of course. This differentiation into regional
strongholds of innovation, regionally formulated goals
and last but not least regionally diversified culture
brings along the chance to learn from each other, it
even can serve as an enabler for creativity. Accepting
individuality and at the same time diffusing knowledge about best practices is the challenge in making
use of these possibilities. After 36 month spent dealing with this problem, we can say with all honesty:
what you gain from accepting this challenge is worth
never to stop trying!
(4) Prof. Dr. László Mátyus (University of Debrecen)
presenting the INNOTRAIN IT concept at
the IT Service Management Conference in
Debrecen, Hungary, in 2011.
3
4
46
47
APPENDIX
WP1
WP2
WP3
WP4
WP5
Project management
Communication
Innovation analysis
and method
development
Transnational training
platform and
innovation pilots
Interregional
Innovation Training
RESPONSIBLE PARTNERS
MFG Public Innovation
Agency, DE
INNOVA Észak-Alföld
agency, HU
Heilbronn
University, DE
In the INNOTRAIN IT Central Europe project, co-funded by the
European Regional Development Fund, twelve partners from
six countries have developed a training concept and an online
training platform on IT Service Management as part of an international cooperation. The consortium involves the following
institutions:
>
MFG Public Innovation Agency for ICT and Media, Heilbronn
University of Applied Sciences, Beatrix Lang GmbH from
Germany
>
Chamber of Commerce and Industry, Cracow University of
Economics from Poland
>
European Projects and Management Agency and Westmoravian College Trebic from Czech Republic
>
Austrian Computer Society and University of Vienna from
Austria
>
INNOVA Észak-Alföld Regional Development and Innovation
Agency Nonprofit Ltd. and University of Debrecen from
Hungary
>
Beatrix Lang
GmbH, DE
The project has been co-financed by the European Regional
Development Fund with 1,5 € million and has run for a period of
36 months (April 2010 – March 2013).
Coordinated by MFG Public Innovation Agency the project partners have cooperated within the project to foster ITSM and its
related innovations in SMEs.
The dissemination and communication work package was led
by the Hungarian INNOVA Észak-Alföld, which has ensured the
wide project promotion of outputs and results during the lifetime of the project.
The German Heilbronn University led Work Package 3 where
the main outputs were an innovation maturity analysis with 24
case studies, the development and AdoIT implementation of a
simplified ITSM method for SMEs and the creation of innovation
scenarios.
The University of Vienna developed the innovation training environment, based on web technology.
The platform can be reached by the following link:
www.innotrain-it.eu
die Berater from Slovakia
The idea behind the creation of the consortium was to include
a university and an agency-type institution from the regions in
order to reach the targets of the project (i.e. the SMEs from the
production sector, regional catalysts like chambers of commerce and innovation catalysts like universities and research
institutions).
48
Universität
Wien, AT
Two pilot projects have also been executed at the University of
Cracow and Heilbronn to demonstrate the innovation potential
of the INNOTRAIN IT platform.
In Work Package 5 Beatrix Lang GmbH has developed the content for the training and all the regions have implemented faceto-face innovation trainings.
Organisational
structure of the
project
www.innotrain-it.eu