How to Manage an IT Service Transition?

For any organization, making a switch between IT solution companies can be daunting process. While such a transition can bring a positive change to your organization and help you achieve your business goals, the process is filled with hurdles. The key to successful IT service transition is establishing controls and thoroughly monitoring them. IT service transition involves examining and assessing every aspect of the IT infrastructure from customer and operational viewpoint. 

In this blog, we have highlighted some ways to carry out IT service transition. 

1. Service Validation & Testing

IT service validation testing is essential as it allows one to ensure that the new IT services meet the requirement of the business and are as per the specifications. The ultimate goal of IT services transition should be creating valuable services for your customers and operations. 

The process should clear about how the IT service transition will support all the stakeholders of the organization and if the change will benefit them. The plan should also mention the cost, limitations, and risks involved in making this transition. Ensure that the new IT solutions and managed services provider is willing to establish its creditability in all aspects. 

2. Change Management

When it comes to IT service transition, the change management control lifecycle plays a curial role in aligning the IT services with changing business requirements. With the help of change management control lifecycle, you can ensure your IT service transition is not interfering with any compliance obligations. Besides this, you can also reduce redundancy, enhance productivity, and assess potential risks. 

This control is applicable through testing, documentation, planning, and configuration stages. Your IT consultant should determine the parameters of IT service changes and how it will affect the end-users during and after the process. Doing so will help you minimize disruption in the network and reduce cost and potential risk. 

3. Release & Deployment

The release and deployment controls cover a majority of IT service transition principles. IT team can deliver IT improvements faster if they monitor and verify every element of the transition. 

Releases that are poorly planned can result in costly errors and inflate the IT budget. The best approach to managing cost is effective testing before the IT goes live. 

4. Knowledge Management

Knowledge management involves examining how ideas are communicated and documented into the system. It has been noticed that lack of clear communication channel often comes in the way to achieving the business goal. Gap in communication and uninformed decisions can make the IT transition difficult to manage. 

By keeping resources readily available, one can strengthen the IT team and prevent errors. 

5. Manage Service Asset & Configuration 

Defining the configuration of the IT assets and their relationships will help in effective IT asset management. An effective asset management plan entails identifying the IT resources so that they can be monitored and controlled throughout the transition period. The IT team should be focused on preserve the integrity of the IT configuration and ensure that all changes that occur are authorized.