Synergies between ITIL® and Knowledge-Centered Support (KCSSM)

AXELOS.com

Synergies between ITIL

and Knowledge-Centered

Support (KCS

)

Together, ITIL and KCS can improve IT

service management

Roy Atkinson, John Custy, and

Rick Joslin

White Paper

June 2014

Synergies between ITIL and Knowledge-Centered Support

Contents

1 Executive summary 3

2 Histories of ITIL and KCS 5

3 KCS complements the ITIL lifecycle 6

4 Summary 12

Appendix 13

About the authors 14

About AXELOS and HDI 15

Acknowledgements 16

Trade marks and statements 16

Synergies between ITIL and Knowledge-Centered Support

Executive Summary

ITIL provides guidance to service providers on the provision of quality IT services and on the

processes, functions, and other capabilities needed to support them. ITIL provides a framework

for what needs to be addressed. Knowledge-Centered Support (KCS) provides detailed guidance

for capturing, structuring, reusing, and improving the knowledge articles that enable processes,

functions, and other capabilities that improve a service provider’s efciency and effectiveness.

This contributes to the achievement of the business’s goals and objectives. Thus, KCS

complements the ITIL framework by providing a specic knowledge management methodology.

ITIL is the most recognized framework for the set of practices known as IT service management (ITSM),

which focus on ensuring the alignment of IT services with business needs. KCS is the set of best

practices that focuses on the use of knowledge—especially within support—as a key asset in facilitating

the achievement of business goals. KCS extends the knowledge management description as laid out in

ITIL’s Service Transition, and they share the same core objective: improving the quality of services and

service provisioning to support business processes.

ITIL is intended to foster increased value of the services provided to customers, improved services that

meet business needs, improved customer experience, satisfaction, and loyalty, improved employee

satisfaction and loyalty, improved productivity, and the continued ability to meet the needs of the

business. The practices described in KCS can facilitate and enhance the ways in which knowledge can

be used to accomplish these goals. Both ITIL and KCS continue to evolve to meet the changes faced by

organizations.

Communications and meaningful processes are critical to service providers’ success. With regard to

knowledge management, KCS utilizes a dual-loop process to describe its practices (Figure 1): a solve

loop, including the Capture, Structure, Reuse, and Improve practices, and an evolve loop, including the

Content Health, Process and Integration, Performance Assessment, and Leadership and Communication

practices. ITIL organizes its processes into ve lifecycle phases (Figure 2): Service Strategy, Service

Design, Service Transition, Service Operations, and overarching Continual Service Improvement.

Adopting KCS can augment ITIL processes, adding specic methods for knowledge management

that can assist in the processes themselves, as well as in overall efforts toward Continual Service

Improvement. In order to derive the full benets of KCS, “the organization must shift to a perspective

that sees knowledge as an asset owned and maintained by the team, not by an individual or a small

group of dedicated content creators. The focus of the team is to capture and improve the collective

knowledge—not only to solve individual customer issues, but also to improve organizational learning.”

While both ITIL and KCS are recognized as best practices that can help an organization achieve its goals

and objectives, as well as the business’s, neither ITIL nor KCS are the goals unto themselves.

Whether adopting ITIL or KCS (or both), there are two similar challenges: rst, putting them into

practice; second, integrating these practices with other frameworks and standards. The KCS practices

not only complement ITIL, they’re also synergistic, providing guidance on how to capture, structure,

reuse, and improve knowledge in order to improve the quality of the IT services delivered. KCS is not

something extra that is done in addition to incident, request, event, or problem management; KCS

provides guidance on how the organization should integrate knowledge management with incident,

request, event, problem, change, release and deployment, testing, and validation management.

Consortium for Service Innovation, “KCS Practices Guide v5.3: KCS Benets, Measures, and Phases of Adoption”

(November 8, 2012), http://library.serviceinnovation.org/KCS_Practices_Guide/020/020.

Synergies between ITIL and Knowledge-Centered Support

Figure 1 The KCS double-loop cycle

Figure 2 The ITIL lifecycle

Product

improvement

Customer

experience

Knowledge

reuse

Capture

Structure

Reuse

Improve

Content

health

Process

integration

Performance

assessment

Leadership and

communication

SOLVE

EVOLVE

Service

transition

Service

design

Service

operation

Service

strategy

Continual

service

improvement

Synergies between ITIL and Knowledge-Centered Support

Histories of ITIL and KCS

2.1 THE HISTORY OF ITIL

The histories of ITIL and KCS share many similarities. ITIL was initially developed in the 1980s to

ensure that the UK government’s IT services were providing value and IT resources were being allocated

in a scally responsible manner. The ITIL framework addressed the management of these resources

without addressing any particular technologies. ITIL was subsequently updated in early 2000s,

decreasing the number of books from forty-two to seven.

As organizations began to understand the value of the framework, it was rapidly adopted by other

governments and commercial organizations. However, they soon realized that training and certication

were required for those individuals who would train and consult on ITSM using the ITIL framework

as well as those who would work within organizations adopting ITIL. The Foundation certication,

Practitioner certications, and Manager certicate in ITSM were developed to meet this need.

In 2007, ITIL evolved into the current lifecycle approach and a consistent qualication scheme:

Foundation, Intermediate lifecycle and capabilities, and Expert and Master Certications. The ITIL

framework was again updated in 2011 to clarify the lifecycle approach and evolve the framework based

on the lessons learned by practicing organizations.

2.2 THE HISTORY OF KCS

KCS was developed by the Consortium for Service Innovation, a nonprot alliance of support

organizations, as a methodology for improving both its members’ business operations and the customer

experience overall. The basic premise of KCS is the capture, structure, and reuse of knowledge.

As a methodology and a set of practices, KCS focuses on knowledge as a key asset of the support

organization. It has four basic concepts:

Integrate the creation and maintenance of knowledge into the customer exception process.

Evolve the knowledge based on demand and usage.

Develop a knowledge base of the collective experience of the organization.

Recognize learning, collaboration, sharing, and improvement.

Until 2003, the KCS methodology was primarily available to members of the Consortium, and most

implementations were highly customized. That year, HDI and the Consortium partnered to bring the

KCS methodology to HDI members. KCS has been updated several times since—2003 (v3), 2005 (v4),

2006 (v4.1), 2011(v5, v5.1), and 2013 (v5.3)—each update incorporating the experiences of KCS

practitioners. HDI and the Consortium then shared those experiences with the community.

As with ITIL, as more organizations adopted the KCS methodology, the need for training and certication

became more apparent. The rst KCS certication was introduced by HDI (in conjunction with the

Consortium) in 2007. Similar to the ITIL certication schema, KCS has three levels of certication: a

foundation level, which provides a basic awareness of the methodology and practices; an intermediate

level for those who are developing the KCS practices; and an expert level.

2.3 ITIL + KCS

While ITIL seeks to ensure that IT services are aligned with business goals, KCS focuses specically on

using knowledge to support and realize these organizational goals and objectives. While ITIL’s primary

focus is on IT service providers, the service lifecycle concept applies to all service providers (e.g.,

hospitality, healthcare, human resources, facilities, etc.). The KCS methodology can also apply to and be

used by IT support, customer support, and business unit support in any of these lines of business

Synergies between ITIL and Knowledge-Centered Support

Best practices continue to evolve and change based on the

experiences of the organizations using KCS and ITIL—or,

more specically, the experiences of people, the innovation of

processes, and the adaptation of technology to support changes

in business needs. These adaptations are documented and shared

within the respective (ITIL and KCS) communities. The continued

development of KCS and ITIL practices reects the changing

world.

Neither ITIL nor KCS is based on technology, yet both recognize

that technology enables processes and practices. To effectively

practice ITIL, a service management toolset is required. To

effectively leverage knowledge, it must be easily captured,

structured, searched for, and reused. The same service

management toolset used to record incidents and service

requests, and manage events, changes, and releases, needs to

be integrated with knowledge across the organization. The degree

to which the technology supports ITIL or KCS can impact the effectiveness or maturity of the practices,

but the organization’s success is not dependent on the technology; it is dependent on people and how

they use the technology. Technology can be an enabler or an inhibitor; it cannot ultimately determine

success, but it can enhance or limit an organization’s ability to improve the support it provides for its

customers.

2.4 KEY CHALLENGES FOR ITIL AND KCS

ITIL and KCS also share some fundamental challenges: in particular, changing the beliefs, attitudes, and

behaviours of people who have been in the same job and performing the same tasks for many years. In

order for an organization to realize the benets of either of these best practices, the people doing the

work must change how they work. Best practices—including ITIL and KCS—can be transformational,

resulting in real cultural and organizational changes.

When we change how people do their jobs, we challenge the status quo, changing how organizations

have traditionally worked, how people have performed their tasks and activities, and even how the

organization structures and selects success indicators. People do not necessarily like change, and

changing how people do their jobs, using different indicators of success, and implementing different

success metrics can be very stressful. Successful change requires leaders to have organizational

change management competencies, and the same skills that help organizations adapt to, develop, and

consistently practice the ITIL lifecycle approach are also needed to implement and practice KCS.

KCS complements the ITIL lifecycle

3.1 KCS AND SERVICE OPERATIONS

Whether adopting ITIL or KCS—or both—Service Operations is probably where most organizations

start, initially focusing on incidents and requests at the service desk. This is the easiest place to begin,

as the operational improvements are easy to identify and can have a quick return on investment (ROI).

Although it is the easiest place to begin, it may not be the appropriate place for any given organization.

Each organization should consider where and how improvements produced by adopting ITIL and KCS

can make the most difference.

KCS can improve the service desk’s rst contact resolution, handle time, and restoration time by

providing easily searchable, useable knowledge articles that contain advice, information, and guidance

that reduce downtime for users and improve service restoration time for requests. Knowledge reuse

is even more valuable when it is implemented at levels 2 and 3, where the ROI can be even greater

As ITIL and KCS were developed

independently of each other, some

terms have different denitions.

Customers in KCS are users in ITIL.

In KCS, a customer exception

represents any issue a user has where

assisted service or self-service could

be used to provide a resolution (i.e.,

enable the user to return to their

original task). In ITIL, a customer

exception could be an incident,

request, or an event.

Synergies between ITIL and Knowledge-Centered Support

than that which can be realized at level 1. Fewer interruptions for the level 2 and 3 staff should result

in higher quality strategic projects, completed on time and on budget. KCS also provides guidance on

moving articles closer to the point of demand—from level 3 to level 2, level 2 to level 1, and level 1 to

level 0 (self-service)—resulting in higher productivity for support and reduced downtime for users. KCS

also facilitates the creation of self-service articles in the context of the customer, which improving those

articles’ ndability and usability, and increases the ROI for the KCS investment.

KCS isn’t something extra; it is how an organization does incident management, request management,

and event management. It is how questions are answered, articles are reused, and experiences are

shared. Organizations that practice KCS effectively integrate KCS into their ITSM processes.

But KCS recognizes that not all knowledge articles are equal, and in a typical knowledge engineering

approach (for support), only 20% of articles are reused. If an organization puts equal resources into

reviewing, editing, and publishing each article, then there is signicant waste, as 80% of these articles

will not be reused. KCS is a demand-driven system; resources should only be allocated to improve

knowledge when it is reused, not in case it is reused. Information from the knowledge system can then

support problem, change, release and deployment, testing and validation, as well as business continuity,

and can be a signicant contributor to Continual Service Improvement.

KCS and incident management

One of the key incident management activities is incident matching, or the ability to reuse information in

the service management system to resolve similar issues faster. Incident matching isn’t feasible in most

organizations, as the structure of the incident and request records does not lend itself to matching, and

it would take too long if analysts tried. With KCS, knowledge is captured and made available for reuse

during the resolution process, simplifying the incident documentation process and creating records that

are more searchable, more readable, and more usable. The result is that searches will nd the correct

knowledge articles faster, reducing handle time and thus reducing downtime and improving productivity

for the organization. It will also provide a better foundation for the self-service article; consequently,

more users will be able to nd the article, which will, in turn, increase self-service utilization.

Additionally, KCS recommends a structured problem-solving approach, which, when followed, increases

the probability of nding a match. This results in improved documentation, decreased escalations, and

increased condence in the support organization.

In most organizations, incidents, requests, and events tend to recur. To provide the best service, the

following three steps are integral to improving performance, and they ow directly from KCS practices:

Staff must rst seek to nd and use an existing knowledge article before they seek to solve the issue

and create a new knowledge article. Seeking and nding existing, known articles will increase the

consistency of resolutions and workarounds, decrease downtime for the organization, and decrease

overall support costs.

If the knowledge article is incorrect or could be improved, staff must take ownership for the

improvement. If they have the rights to modify the article, they are responsible to x it (update the

knowledge article). If they do not have the rights to modify the knowledge article, they must ag it.

As part of ag it, they are also responsible for commenting on the article (including the reason why it

was agged). Someone who has the authority to x it completes the knowledge article modication.

If they do not nd an existing knowledge article, then they should continue to follow the steps in the

incident (request, event) process: investigate, diagnose, resolve, and recover. Once the resolution (or

workaround) has been identied, they add the new knowledge article so it is available for others to

reuse.

The key to this improved performance is the adoption of the Use It, Flag It, Fix It, Add It (UFFA) mindset

and the integration of these practices into the incident, request, and event management processes

(Figure 3).

Synergies between ITIL and Knowledge-Centered Support

Figure 3 The UFFA workow

KCS and request management

The highest volume of contacts for most service desks is requests—providing advice or guidance—and

KCS enhances the processes used by the service desk to document, track, and understand the type of

work generated by requests. These requests can be for common, repetitive questions, business process

advice, or questions on standard operating procedures (SOPs). KCS supports request management

processes by making relevant knowledge articles available through self-service, which enables users

to better manage their time and achieve their goals by removing assisted support as a step in the path

toward accomplishing their tasks.

KCS and event management

KCS also provides consistent responses for Event Management. Typically, operations management

receives a large volume of alerts for review, and often each has to be reviewed manually, with

appropriate action then taken based on the specic error message. Consequently, analysts often develop

their own procedures for troubleshooting and verifying various events. KCS can provide a single-source

repository for operations management, with information on handling each type of alert consistently,

following SOPs dened by technical management and operations management. Once this information

has been documented, it can then be analysed by problem management, technical management, and

applications management to identify improvements, resulting in better service quality and increased

productivity.

Create

incident

Research or

escalate

knowledge

base

Solve it

Close incident

Yes

Article found?

Article correct?

ADD IT

USE IT

FLAG IT/

FIX IT

Synergies between ITIL and Knowledge-Centered Support

KCS and problem management

Many organizations struggle with Problem Management, dealing only with major incidents because they

lack data and information about incident/request recurrence and are unable to link recurring incidents/

requests to problems. With KCS practices in place, knowledge articles can be linked to problem records,

or the articles themselves can contain the information Problem Management needs to understand the

scope and impact of problems. Everyone in the support chain, through their use and/or reuse of articles,

can improve the quality of information on problems, increasing the impact of Problem Management and

the quality of the services provided.

In addition to faster resolution (through matching), KCS practices can provide information on articles

reuse, the cost of support, user downtime for each interruption, and the impact of each type of

interruption on the business. This information can then be used to determine which problems should

have change requests (RFCs) and which problems should remain known errors (KEs)—no changes

recommended—due to cost or business priorities. The improved documentation in the incident, request,

and event records, plus the information from the reuse of knowledge articles, can enable better Problem

Management analysis and understanding of the organizational impact, risk, and cost of the recurring

issues.

Problem Management trending and analysis is often constrained by the quality of the incident records.

With KCS, trend analysis shifts from incident classication to the reuse of knowledge articles, as each

article is linked to the incidents that were closed using that article. In a typical enterprise organization

(without KCS), trend analysis involves analysing the classication structure within the incident record,

which often isn’t appropriate for either incident or problem reporting. The result is that analysing

incident records can be a complex task, and too often the classication data is inaccurate or incomplete

for the needs of problem management. Knowledge article reuse can increase the efciency and

effectiveness of trend analysis, allowing Problem Management to spend more time identifying root

causes, developing xes, and preparing changes.

With each release, there should be a KE record for every bug, issue, or anomaly. These records need

to be ndable and usable, so that when someone contacts support with a question related to a KE,

analysts can restore the service, provide the workaround, or add the issue to the list of symptoms

for that problem. Using KCS practices, organizations can stop rediscovering problems and recreating

solutions each time a KE is reported.

KCS and access management

In an era of heightened cyber-security concerns, Access Management and its underlying processes and

procedures should be key areas of focus for organizations. Too often, however, knowledge management

is overlooked when it comes to Access Management. There are numerous policies, compliance

procedures, and work instructions involved in Access Management, and the ability to easily nd the

correct procedure or work instruction—and to know how often these are accessed—can provide security,

access, and compliance management teams with the information they need to better understand these

concerns as well as the costs of access management policies.

3.2 KCS AND SERVICE TRANSITION

One of the processes identied in the Service Transition phase is the Service Knowledge Management

System (SKMS). The SKMS is a comprehensive approach to all of the knowledge needed for any ITIL

process, across all the lifecycle phases. KCS can be an essential component of any SKMS solution,

providing data, information, and knowledge to inform core ITIL processes in Service Operation. As KCS

matures, information that can improve products and services can also be made available to Service

Design and Continual Service Improvement.

Synergies between ITIL and Knowledge-Centered Support

KCS and change management

Change Management is the control point, where the modications that will be made to services,

infrastructure, documentation, etc. are determined. There are often many questions when a change is

being reviewed, specically when the change or x is in response to customer improvement requests.

A change request that is tied to an existing knowledge article can leverage the knowledge article reuse

counter (and links to the incident records) to better understand the organizational cost of not making

the change, or the return on investment if the change is made. The creation and reuse of knowledge

articles related to a change can indicate the quality of the change, and this data should be included in

the post-implementation review. Thus, requirements for knowledge articles, as well as the update and

modication of existing knowledge articles impacted by a change, should be included in the change

approval process.

KCS and release and deployment

As organizations plan releases and test deployments, they typically collect a signicant amount of

information that is never captured for reuse, meaning that each successive iteration requires the

recreation of solutions. Similarly, during the pilot phase of a deployment, release teams make a number

of discoveries about changes and releases; again, most often this information is not captured, resulting

in continuing rediscovery vs. knowledge reuse. KCS practices enable the organization to quickly identify

and resolve recurring issues (as many issues are recurrences of KEs) and assist with the diagnosis and

isolation of new issues by identifying similar issues and resolutions already captured in the knowledge

base.

When KCS is integrated into release and deployment processes, the issues identied during testing

and pilot phases can be documented with knowledge articles. Knowledge articles created during these

phases can then be made available for the release teams and the service desk at the time of general

release. (Training staff are responsible for creating knowledge articles when asked for guidance, advice,

and information on the release.

) This knowledge can also be analysed and used to make appropriate

reporting available on the quality of changes, as well as identify opportunities for improvement within

specic technical and application areas.

KCS and testing and validation

While testing and validation are often modied to meet schedules, there is the potential for signicant

productivity improvement with the use and/or reuse of knowledge articles, particularly with regard to

common testing questions, repetitive set-up issues, etc. Testing and validation can be a signicant

source of articles for reuse; the pilot teams and level 1 and 2 support can capture knowledge for issues

not resolved prior to deployment.

As with the Release and Deployment processes, KCS places the responsibility for capturing knowledge

articles identied in Testing and Validation with that process, minimizing the impact of any KEs and

making this knowledge available for reuse.

3.3 KCS AND CONTINUAL SERVICE IMPROVEMENT

Continual improvement is fundamental to the KCS methodology: knowledge articles are continually

improved through reuse and improve, two of the KCS solve loop practices. Additionally, each person

who reuses an article is responsible for the quality of that article, in addition to quality monitoring

conducted by coaches. KCS embodies the principles of continual improvement as it contributes to the

best utilization of resources, ensuring a positive return on the investment in KCS.

While KCS does not promote the creation of articles in anticipation of a need, organizations sometimes proactively

develop knowledge articles based on their experience with similar releases, to minimize the impact of any issues on

the business.

Synergies between ITIL and Knowledge-Centered Support

Knowledge articles are improved incrementally, as they are used. Doing this enhances the ndability

and usability of the articles, and ensures that resources are allocated only to those articles being used—

which then have an increased likelihood of being reused. Knowledge is never modied in case it might

be used; it is modied based on the actual reuse of knowledge articles.

Continual Service Improvement deals primarily with service improvement plans (SIPs), which are

generated whenever a service does not meet the agreed-upon levels, and ongoing service improvements,

which are evaluated from the improvement register. Knowledge articles can facilitate data analysis

in both areas. For recurring incidents and requests, the analysis of knowledge article reuse can help

Continual Service Improvement understand where there are reoccurring issues that might impact service

availability and user productivity. This analysis should also be an input for product management and

product engineering, as part of a justication for an SIP or as part of an overall continual improvement

plan.

Many knowledge articles will provide advice, guidance, and answers to how-to questions. The reuse of

these knowledge articles, as well as the reuse of knowledge articles linked to problems, should be key

factors in product/service roadmaps, improving products and services based on the issues customers

have experienced and reducing the cost of the downtime to the business. With training staff also

contributing to the articles, better interfaces and online help can be integrated, improving the overall

customer experiences.

3.4 KCS AND SERVICE CONTINUITY MANAGEMENT

The goal of IT Service Continuity Management is to ensure that the required technical and service

facilities (including computer systems, network, applications, data repositories, telecommunications,

environment, technical facilities, and the service desk) can be resumed within required and agreed-upon

business timescales.

Every change has a potential impact on the procedures, work instructions, and

processes that would be used in the event of a failure; this is why continuity plans are required. No one

individual could remember each change and its impact on recovery procedures, so updating knowledge

articles as part of the change, release, and deployment processes and testing continuity plans are

critical for an organization’s ability to respond.

The detailed procedures in a continuity plan will be continually impacted by changes. Consistent with

the KCS methodology, knowledge articles can identify the activities necessary to restore services, which

could—in the case of a failure that invokes continuity management—be different from day-to-day SOPs.

Because continuity testing is typically infrequent, if an event requires the activation of the continuity

plan, quick access to these procedures is necessary. Based on experience, organizations can forecast

potential issues and determine which issues should be mitigated and which should be addressed when

the continuity plan is invoked. Knowledge articles can minimize the business impact and increase the

probability of following the correct procedure to restore the service.

3.5 KCS AND SELF-SERVICE

Self-service is dened as the ability of a user to complete tasks without the assistance of another

person. ITIL recognizes the need for and value of self-help, and how it can improve the performance of

incident, access, and request management. IT self-service sites are typically used for password resets,

software and hardware requests, and responses to simple, repetitive requests for information, advice,

and guidance. Unfortunately, these self-service sites are often frustrating to use, as articles are difcult

to nd or out of date. In such cases, users will opt for assisted support.

One reason that knowledge articles are difcult for users to nd and understand is that they are written

from the perspective of the customer representative or technical analyst, not from the perspective of the

“4.6: IT Service Continuity Management,” ITIL Service Design (TSO, 2011).

Synergies between ITIL and Knowledge-Centered Support

user. One advantage of KCS is that knowledge articles are written in the context of the user, since the

articles are created as part of the support process. Having the correct context in the article will make the

search easier (matching), thus make the article more “ndable” as it can be located quickly using the

user’s search terms, and the user will be able to understand how to apply the knowledge article.

Summary

ITIL and KCS are both recognized as best practices for ITSM, but they are not mutually exclusive. Both

are enabled by technology, not driven by or dened by it.

As revealed in a November 2013 white paper, the leading factors inuencing support spending are

supporting business growth, improving customer service, improving effectiveness, improving efciency,

reducing costs, and expanding services. Typically, these benets are goals and objectives when

organizations implement their ITSM strategies. ITIL adoption can achieve these outcomes by addressing

the processes, practices, people, and cultural aspects needed to be successful; KCS provides specic

additional guidance for the use of knowledge management to expedite these achievements.

If the question is raised, “Do we do ITIL or do we do KCS? Which will help us better achieve our goals?”

the answer can be both: ITIL for the full range of ITSM, KCS for knowledge management within ITSM.

When incident, problem, request, and event managers understand KCS, they quickly become advocates,

as KCS enables a higher level of maturity for each of these of processes, making them more efcient

and effective, reducing costs and increasing the value of each service, and increasing the value to the

organization.

Incident, request, and self-service are the initial focus areas for KCS, as the improvements from these

processes are easy to recognize and easy to measure, and they typically have the quickest return

on investment: a reduction in user downtime, a decrease in restoration times, and a reduction in

escalations to level 2 and 3 (and therefore an increase in productivity for those staffs). Unfortunately,

too many organizations stop here. They don’t spread the use of knowledge to other areas where product

improvements can be realized.

The real value to the organization is in the analysis of knowledge article reuse, and using the result

of those analyses to improve the quality of the business services that support business processes.

Organizations need to maintain focus on the organization’s goals and not inadvertently create goals for

knowledge tools or processes that aren’t aligned with those organizational goals. The goal isn’t to have

the best knowledge system, the most processes documented, or the highest level of process maturity;

the goal is to make improvements based on best practices. ITIL, with the additional guidance provided

by KCS, can help the organization achieve success in this endeavour, providing services that meet the

needs of the organization, its customers, and its employees. All three need to be in balance for success.

ITIL and KCS were both developed by organizations seeking to identify best practices that would

improve service management effectiveness and efciencies and enable them to meet their needs, their

customers’ needs, and their employees’ needs. KCS and ITIL are synergistic, and organizations that

adopt both practices position themselves for increased success.

Roy Atkinson, “Show Me the Value: Support’s Mandate,” white paper (HDI, 2013), http://www.thinkhdi.com/~/

media/HDICorp/Files/Research-Corner/RC_Business_Value_Nov13.pdf.

Synergies between ITIL and Knowledge-Centered Support

Appendix

Research has shown that incident management has historically received the greatest attention from

support organizations. With the adoption of ITSM frameworks, incident management has become a

common process, well understood by most organizations. As more organizations have implemented and

matured their incident management process, they have come to recognize that knowledge management

is needed to improve productivity and increase the value of support.

The 2013 HDI Support Center Practices & Salary Report shows that incident and knowledge

management toolsets are two of the top three must-haves for support centres, regardless of type of

organization or industry (outsourced services providers are the only exception). Although the table below

references technologies, we can extrapolate and draw conclusions about the processes enabled by those

technologies.

Industry #1 #2 #3

Computers – Software Knowledge management Incident management CSAT surveying

Higher Education Incident management Knowledge management CSAT surveying

Financial Services – Banking Knowledge management Incident management Remote control

Government Incident management Remote control Knowledge management

Healthcare Knowledge management Incident management Remote control

Insurance Incident management Knowledge management CSAT surveying

Manufacturing (noncomputer) Incident management Knowledge management Remote control

Outsourced Services Providers Remote control Incident management Reporting/analytics

Retail

(includes Food and Beverage)

Incident management Knowledge management Remote control

Type of support #1 #2 #3

Internal only Incident management Remote control Knowledge management

External only Incident management Knowledge management

Automated call distribution

Blended Incident management Knowledge management Remote control

Number of customers #1 #2 #3

Small (fewer than 2,000) Incident management Remote control Knowledge management

Medium (2,000–10,000) Incident management Knowledge management Remote control

Large (more than 10,000) Incident management Knowledge management Remote control

Synergies between ITIL and Knowledge-Centered Support

About the authors

Roy Atkinson is HDI’s senior writer/analyst, acting as in-house subject matter

expert and chief writer for SupportWorld articles and white papers. In addition

to being a member of the HDI International Certication Standards Committee

and the HDI Desktop Support Advisory Board, Roy is a popular speaker at HDI

conferences and is well known to HDI local chapter audiences. His background

is in both service desk and desktop support as well as small-business consulting.

Roy’s blogs regularly appear on HDIConnect, and he is highly rated on social

media, especially on the topics of IT service management and customer service.

He holds a master’s certicate in advanced management strategy from Tulane

University’s A.B. Freeman School of Business, and he is a certied HDI Support Center Manager (HDI-

SCM).

John Custy is the founder and principal of JPC Group, a professional services

company focused on the three key factors of ITSM: people, process, and

technology. John has more than twenty-ve years of experience working in IT

services and service management, as a practitioner, educator, and consultant,

and he is a well-known speaker and educator at ITSM conferences globally.

He is an HDI Certied Auditor and a member of the HDI Faculty and the HDI

International Certication Standards Committee, and he was a key contributor to

the development of the Support Center Practices (SCP) certication, the Software

Support Certied Consultant (S2C2) program, and the HDI Support Center

Certication program. John received his MA in innovation and technology from Boston University and

his BS from the University of Massachusetts at Lowell. In addition, he has earned his ITIL Foundation,

ITIL Manager, ITIL Expert, ISO/IEC 20000 Consultant, ISO 9000 Internal Auditor, KCS Consultant,

Kepner-Tregoe (KT), HDI Support Center Manager (HDI-SCM), HDI Support Center Team Lead (HDI-

SCTL), HDI Support Center Analyst (HDI-SCA), and Knowledge-Centered Support (KCS) certications.

Rick Joslin is HDI’s executive director of certication and training. Rick is

responsible for the development, sales, and delivery of HDI’s certication and

training offerings. He is also an HDI Certied Instructor, the author of many HDI

publications, a founding member of the HDI Member Advisory Board and HDI

Strategic Advisory Board, and a certied Knowledge-Centered Support (KCS)

instructor, guiding organizations through KCS implementation. In addition, Rick

is an active member of the Consortium for Service Innovation’s KCS Program

Committee, and he serves on the advisory council for Indiana University of

Pennsylvania’s Business College. Prior to joining HDI, Rick was a principal

consultant with IHS Support Solutions and held VP positions at ServiceWare and RightAnswers.com. He

holds numerous certications, including HDI Support Center Director (HDI-SCD), HDI Support Center

Manager (HDI-SCM), HDI Support Center Team Lead (HDI-SCTL), HDI Support Center Analyst (HDI-

SCA), and Knowledge-Centered Support (KCS).

Synergies between ITIL and Knowledge-Centered Support

About AXELOS and HDI

ABOUT AXELOS

AXELOS are a joint venture company, created by the Cabinet Ofce on behalf of Her Majesty’s

Government in the United Kingdom and Capita plc to run the global best practice portfolio, including the

ITIL and PRINCE2

professional standards.

The goals of AXELOS are many and varied, each one aimed at helping businesses and individuals reach

success, empowering them to truly stand out in a competitive market:

We continually promote and advocate quality training.

We strive to encourage growth, development and progress.

We always look for innovative new solutions to improve best practice standards and processes across

the board.

The result is improved skills that are relevant to the industry as a whole, and enhanced employability

for all, beneting the global economy. The benet to you and your business in particular: better trained

employees, streamlined operations, and the peace of mind of knowing that you are working with an

industry-leading organization, which provides products and services with a long-standing reputation for

setting the industry benchmark.

ABOUT HDI

HDI is the professional association and certication body for the technical service and support industry.

Facilitating collaboration and networking, HDI hosts acclaimed conferences and events, produces

renowned publications and research, and certies and trains thousands of professionals each year. HDI

also connects solution providers with practitioners through industry partnerships and marketing services.

Guided by an international panel of industry experts and practitioners, HDI is the premier resource for

best practices and emerging trends.

Synergies between ITIL and Knowledge-Centered Support

Acknowledgements

Sourced and published on www.AXELOS.com.

Our White Paper series should not be taken as constituting advice of any sort and no liability is accepted

for any loss resulting from use of or reliance on its content. While every effort is made to ensure the

accuracy and reliability of the information, AXELOS cannot accept responsibility for errors, omissions

or inaccuracies. Content, diagrams, logos, and jackets are correct at time of going to press but may be

subject to change without notice.

Reuse of this White Paper is permitted solely in accordance with the permission terms at http://www.

AXELOS.com/Knowledge-Centre/White-Papers. A copy of these terms can be provided on application to

AXELOS at [email protected].

AXELOS would like to thank UBM for helping produce this white paper.

Trade marks and statements

The AXELOS logo is a trade mark of AXELOS Limited.

The AXELOS swirl logo is a trade mark of AXELOS Limited.

ITIL

is a registered trade mark of AXELOS Limited.

PRINCE2

is a registered trade mark of AXELOS Limited.

KCS

is a service mark of the Consortium for Service Innovation.