What business services drive company profits? What underlying IT components support each business service? What are the indicators of poor performance? What is the best strategy to monitor the health of the key performance indicators? These are a few questions that must be answered before implementing a BSM solution.

Develop a thorough understanding of the business service and the processes that support it. For example, in the banking industry, loan applications can be initiated through various means including mail, Web, phone and in-person. Each of these methods must be examined to understand how the loans are processed and if there are different technologies that support each type of loan application. Each method should be completely understood to ensure all the underlying IT services and infrastructure are identified.

Second, in risk management, risk managers need to map process dependencies to get at the root cause. In BSM tools, you simply can’t turn off and on those little green, yellow, and red indicators correctly without a good dependency analysis. Thus, good BSM implementation can provide the same dependency information needed by risk management teams, both business and IT.

Of course, you could have poor wool then you get poor information, but the implementation project can at least force an organization to confront the question.

Now, third on value management, good BSM provides data to post-implementation reviews. It also provides it in the business context exactly the way the business case should have been calculated in the first place. Yes, post-implementation reviews are rarely conducted, but this is often due to poor data. A good, and I stress good, BSM implementation can overcome this and provide the data. In short, get out of the operational needs. Use good IT governance discipline. 

A BSM project is really low hanging fruit if you’ve recognized the pitfalls, in advance, addressed the prerequisites, and follow through to enjoy the shade of the benefits when the bright sun of competitive pressure the hottest. Bring it together and you’ll have a great project.