Insurance, Finance, Banking, Air travel and Manufacturing all share the attribute that they are totally dependent on IT to deliver services to their customers. Essentially what this means is that the integration of Business and IT is no longer an optional extra.

This was apparent during a recent visit to a supermarket, where I was reminded of the importance of IT and business integration because the local store cannot operate without ongoing connection to technology. When I walked into the store in the early afternoon, there was an announcement that the store was closing due to a technology failure. After I investigated further with the store manager (who happens to be a neighbour) confirmed that without IT they cannot calculate totals, have inventory updated or even process non-cash transactions. 

The growing dependence on IT proves that business process is interwoven into the very fabric of the service delivered. With constrained budgets and resources, the advent of cloud and the implementation of virtualisation, it is critical that IT understands how to deploy their precious resources.

To assist IT, ITIL V3 introduced service management professionals to the Service Portfolio Management (SPM) process.  The purpose of SPM is to allow IT to manage services from inception to retirement or cradle to grave.

Key benefits of organisations who are on the SPM journey include:

• The ability to understand and manage capacity
• Leveraging financial transparency to manage costs
• Managing the limited IT resources available by mapping them to business services that are considered value to your service consumers
• Enhanced forecasting of both operational and strategic demand
• Valid data for prioritization of services

Now, SPM is like other ITIL processes--you don't simply just "get" SPM; it is a journey that requires you to understand the process and where it fits within your environment, and there are many components involved.  Processes including the Service Catalog (the vehicle used within ITIL of services available from the SPM process), IT Asset Management, Financial Management, Demand Management and Portfolio Analysis are all key elements of SPM and to assist you, CA has developed a maturity model for your edification which I would appreciate your comments on, take a look and let me know what you think.