..Independent survey shows less than a quarter of IT staff are ITIL® qualified...

Monday 21st September 2009 - According to ILX Group plc (ILX), the blended training services company, just over half of IT departments (51 per cent) believe that having staff qualified in ITIL® would give their organisation or business a competitive edge.  Despite this, less than a quarter of IT staff were found to be trained in ITIL® Version 2 or ITIL® Version 3.

The study, which questioned 100 senior UK IT managers and directors across organisations from a variety of industries, showed the primary reason cited for not having staff trained in ITIL® remained a management level lack of understanding of the benefits. A number of business sectors including manufacturing, retail, distribution and transport identified budget constraints as another significant factor affecting the uptake of ITIL®. Only one per cent of respondents said that it was due to a lack of information in the market.

The study is the second in a series from ILX looking into the uptake of ITIL® in large enterprises. The previous study, which was released in November 2007, found that while the benefits of ITIL® were widely appreciated with 62 per cent of organisations planning to migrate to ITIL® Version 3, only one per cent of respondents had plans in place to migrate in the six months following the survey.

ILX Group’s most recent survey, conducted by independent research firm Vanson Bourne, shows the majority (72 per cent) of companies have less than 25 per cent of their IT staff ITIL® Version 3 qualified. While in November 2007 the biggest reason for not having plans in place for a migration to ITIL® Version 3 was time constraints. In 2009 respondents now cited budget constraints and the benefits of ITIL® not fully understood by management as the primary barriers to uptake.

Eddie Kilkelly, Chief Operating Officer at ILX Group plc, said: “Project failure due to internal or controllable factors can be significantly reduced if staff are trained to properly manage projects and are provided with the right framework and best practices to avoid common mistakes. Talking to our customers, we have found that the cost of failure exceeds the cost of training. Market conditions for many businesses still remain tough – but getting basic processes wrong can be an incredibly costly exercise if people do not have the right skills.”

ITIL® Version 3 was launched on 30th May 2007 to provide an integrated service lifecycle approach to IT Service Management. Despite this, surveyed companies and organisations reported that the top three reasons for project failure in IT are still poor communications with key stakeholders, missed deadlines and exceeding agreed budgets.

“ITIL creates a common understanding between your IT staff, suppliers, contractors and users within the business by creating a common approach and language towards IT services.  The framework can deliver huge cost savings for an organisation by promoting the optimum use of people, process and technology - while reducing overall costs,” added Kilkelly.

Key findings of the 2009 survey on ITIL® include:
•   51 per cent of senior UK IT managers and directors believed that having staff qualified in ITIL would give their organisation or business a competitive edge
•   31 per cent of IT departments felt that the benefits of ITIL were not fully understood by management
•   49 per cent of senior IT managers and directors claimed that budget constraints was the key barrier to the uptake of ITIL Version 3
•   The top three reasons for project failure were poor communications to key stakeholders (34 per cent); missed deadlines (22 per cent); and exceeding agreed budgets (17 per cent).

ILX agrees that further support is required for board members to grasp the true value of introducing ITIL® within the workplace. It sees raising awareness key to unlocking the uptake of ITIL®.

ILX’s top ten strategic benefits of embedding ITIL® within an organisation include:
1.   Improved customer satisfaction through a more professional approach to service delivery
2.   Improved Return on Investment of IT services through the use of proven best practice processes
3.   Improved delivery of third party services through the specification of ITIL®
4.   Improved morale of service delivery and recipient staff
5.   Increased competence, capability and productivity of IT staff
6.   Reduced hidden costs that traditionally increases substantially the TCO
7.   Better asset utilisation and greater visibility of IT costs and assets
8.   A clear business differentiator from competitors
9.   IT departments will be more closely aligned to commercial business services and products – and furthermore organisations will have a benchmark to measure performance against in IT projects or services
10.   Reduced cost of recruitment and training - hiring ITIL® qualified people is easier and increases staff retention

ILX Group plc provides flexible and affordable training through its e-learning, mobile and classroom learning approach, designed to overcome the barriers many organisations face in training staff.   For further information visit http://www.ilxgroup.com/itil-training.asp