Demand Management is responsible to understand the business demand for IT services in order to influence the business by providing the required services at the right time in an reasonable pricing. It further ensures that the intended services can be delivered by the ITSM provider.
Scope
Therefore the Demand Manager needs to understand the business demands, e.g. through:
- Pattern of Business Activities analysis
- Recent activities
- Creation of a customer profile
The business demand will be influenced by several factors, which must be supervised by Demand management:
- Off-Peak-Pricing
To get the buy-in at a timeslot, where the price is reasonable - Discounts
Larger amounts can reduce the price - Differenciated Service Level
The level must fit the actual demand; most business users go for “more” – hower higher levels are also more expensive - Service Packages
Bundled services to packages for special offers, e.g. discount on the gas price at a gas station if you also wash your car - Advertisement
At the same time Demand Management must ensure that services are delivered. A close collaboration with Capacity Management is therefore required.
Activities
The core-activity is the identification of Pattern of Business Activity (PBA), which are demand-pattern which visualize the dynamic of the business and the collaboaration between customers, service providers and supplier.
Typical input streams for PBAs are:
- Business Calendar
- Business Plans
Those items must be mapped to the Service Catalogue. Further, the impact to the provided services must be evaluated.
Example
- The business roadmap, marketing campaigns or forecasts can be used to determine PBAs, e.g. for critical service times such as the US Super Bowl, which require a higher capacity
- The revenue and performance data in relation to the business forecasts and plans, e.g. for erifying the reliability of business forecasts and plans
Critical Success Factors
The mentioned items are examples:
- CSF: Pattern of Business Activities (PBA) are investigated, maintained and allocated to services
- KPI: Every Service is allocated to one or multiple PBAs
- CSF: Close collaboration between Demand Management and Capacity Management
- KPI: PBA are transformed by Capacity Management into information about utilization
- KPI: PBA are referenced within the Capacity Management plans
- KPI: The Capacity-Monitoring shows an balanced utilization