What is demand management and how does it relate to business activity patterns? For the service to succeed and generate revenue or value for the company, it is essential that the service plan is well thought out. The strategic planning phase has a direct impact on all stages of the ITIL Service Lifecycle: ITIL Service Design and Transition, and finally ITIL Service Operation. Without understanding the expected demand for IT services, it is impossible to plan for their delivery. The ITIL Service Strategy stage includes the demand management phase. This is done in tandem with aligning IT and business strategic goals. Patterns of business activity (PBA), is an important part the demand management process. It allows you to identify and codify the demand in order to establish a basis for capacity. PBA analysis requires careful analysis of customers’ businesses to fully understand the customer demand cycle. ITIL training explains how PBA is part of the demand management process.
This article will discuss the ITIL Demand Management Process and the PBAs that are performed during it.
Here’s how ITIL training in the demand management process balances out the PBA concept
Online ITIL courses explain how business processes affect an organization and help to determine the services that are required. There is a need for service processes. Services are required to meet business demand. The business processes require that the services be delivered to satisfy their demand. This is the Service belt, which shows the relationship between business processes that generate demand and service processes that deliver the services required to satisfy that demand. The ITIL demand management process is used to create the capacity management plan. This plan will allow you to meet the business processes’ demand. This is the overall picture for patterns of business activity.
Demand Management Process: Managing PBA
Patterns of business activities are determined during the demand management process for multiple business activities and multiple users. Planning for business activities must be considered differently to planning for users.
PBA Management for Multiple Business Activities
A pattern of business activity can be described as a combination of several business activities. PBA is a way to identify attributes such as frequency, volume, and allowed delay variation. Let’s look at a sample PBA that covers some business activities. The table shows three activities with their respective frequency, volume, and allowed delay attributes.
User login is the first activity that requires a Demand Management process. This happens so often, its volume is high and its allowed delay level is low.
Customer data backup is the second activity that requires a Demand management process. It happens with medium frequency. It is high in volume and has a high tolerance for delay.
Securing customer confidential data is the third and final activity in the PBA table that requires a Demand management process. This activity is rare in the organization. Its volume and allowed delay attributes respectively are low and medium.
PBA management for multiple users in the demand management process
A user profile is a description of the user’s demand for IT Services. Every user has unique needs, and every user’s expectations of a service provider are different. This affects the demand for services by different user profiles and therefore the demand management process. Every user profile has at least one pattern of business activities. The user profile and the pattern of business activities can be used to help understand the customer’s needs and preferences.
