SIAM: Well-Established Foundations

Karen Armstrong Tucker
9 hours ago
4 min read

Let's take a step back

Open the curtains to understand what may be missing in your SIAM Model

Harp Strategy identify a pattern emerging on a lot of our Best Practice Service Integration & Management (SIAM) Consulting engagements over the last few years.

Many Organisations and Agencies believe they have adopted SIAM, but once we get in there and perform our discovery, their version of SIAM is quite different to what we would expect.

We understand exactly how this can occur, we get it.

And we strongly agree that Organisations and Agencies need to adopt SIAM, so they don’t get left behind.

But rushing in blindly and quickly without guidance to make the right decisions can also keep those curtains shut on what you could truly achieve.

Operating complex end-to-end environments, products, services, and multiple suppliers, needs the focus, collaboration, visibility and governance that SIAM provides. And when designed and implemented well, it enables our Clients to reap the many benefits and value of operating a SIAM Model.

But, if SIAM is not yet fully understood and the Client hasn’t engaged professional assistance to be guided through the SIAM Roadmap, some key areas may get missed, which can have an impact on your value-realisation.

The SIAM Roadmap is an important concept when embarking down the SIAM path, that Harp Strategy highly recommend.

We understand how important it is not to miss this Best Practice recommended approach in a sequential manner, particularly the initial 2 stages of the SIAM Roadmap, so you can make informed, and ‘fit for purpose’ decisions.

This is your planning.

This is where you can clearly understand where you are at, what you need to focus uplift effort on, and make decisions on your SIAM Structure, SIAM Model, IT Sourcing Strategy (current-state & future-state), and Service Integrator Function.

There is a lot to consider and understand when designing a SIAM Model.

This is your gap analysis, your risk management and culture-health check.

The SIAM Roadmap consists of the following phases:

1. Discovery & Strategy

2. Plan & Build

3. Implement

4. Run & Improve

The SIAM Roadmap approach can be moulded to suit your current-state maturity and complexity, however we strongly advise not to completely skip the roadmap approach, and miss important considerations, that could make all the difference to your ongoing success.

Harp Strategy design scalable frameworks, models and practices that are ‘fit for purpose’ and very tailored to the Client. Not a cookie-cutter approach. We perform comprehensive discovery and devise strategies, recommendations & plans to support the Client on their unique journey.

We listen, observe. educate and guide the Client to make good decisions. And during the ‘Discovery & Strategy’ SIAM Roadmap stage, we evaluate current-state ITSM capability and maturity.

SIAM Overarching Umbrella to pull your ITSM capability together across the end-to-end Service Provider ecosystem

"Fully designed, implemented and embedded ITSM Foundational Practices is a prerequisite and dependency for SIAM".

SIAM needs Best Practice ITIL capability, this is your Service Management Foundation.

SIAM sits over your Service Management capability as an umbrella that pulls it all together holistically across the complete end-to-end environment. SIAM and ITIL work very well together to produce high value-outcomes, effective performance management and true service integration.

Those ITSM Foundations need to be strong, they need to be robust, they need to be embedded, adopted, supported, and there needs to be clear ownership and accountability.

Every Service Provider Function (internal & external) within a SIAM ecosystem needs to understand their value contribution, their ITSM Practice responsibilities, aligned performance measures, and how they plug into governance?

How can we successfully govern our Products, Services and Service Providers, without clearly defined ITSM Practices, aligned tech, service levels and underpinning contracts?

‘Discovery & Strategy’, is often the moment when we need to pause, step-back and focus effort on the ITSM Practices, to uplift them to a sufficient level of maturity so we can then continue along the SIAM Roadmap.

Effort to uplift ITSM may also occur in parallel of the SIAM Roadmap, to be ready for the ‘Implement’ stage.

Sometimes our Client SIAM Statements of Work (SOW) are amended to re-align with new ITSM recommendations (after initial Harp Strategy discovery), to allow us to prioritise effort in the right place and sequence, and in doing so will position the Client closer to kick off and successfully embrace SIAM.

Harp Strategy offer SIAM Consulting Services to help guide you

If you are thinking about SIAM or are already on the SIAM path, we recommend to pause, take a breath, check-in and potentially take a brief but productive step back.

That step back, can translate to many giant leaps forward!