ServiceNow and the SIAM Model

Parik Narain - 23rd March 2016

The use of the SIAM framework has been gathering pace lately, so I thought I would cover exactly what SIAM is and how you can easily get ServiceNow to support this framework.

What is SIAM?

SIAM (Service Integration and Management) is a widely used service integration model within Government entities that is now being quickly adopted in the non-government sector. In essence it is a framework for managing multiple suppliers of IT Services. Similar to ITIL and Prince 2, SIAM was conceived and initially developed by the UK Government as a way for large government IT organisations to better manage and control multi-sourced operations.

SIAM is used to address the following potential pain points:

  • Lack of transparency or understanding of end-to-end service level performance
  • Reluctance of collaboration across suppliers, caused by unclear demarcation of responsibilities
  • Lack of innovation
  • Multiple costly change requests
  • Poor architectural integration
  • Labour-intensive reporting and/or lack of data
  • Cost reduction and simpler integration when suppliers use same system
  • Blame culture between multiple internal and external suppliers
  • Contractual constraints hinder agility

The type of organisations that benefit the most are those with a large number of suppliers to who they send and receive data, such as logistics or manufacturing companies. But there are those organisations whose very products are based on the provision and use of third party data, such as finance, gambling, media & information companies, who can gain huge benefits from the implementation of SIAM.

Benefits of SIAM

SIAM offers the following benefits:

  • A more affordable, competitive, flexible and agile IT supply chain
  • Improved ability to govern, assure and deliver IT services
  • Enhanced IT to Business alignment leading to increased innovation
  • Improved speed of response to business requirements whilst regulating supply and demand
  • Opportunity to broaden the portfolio of services available to the organisation
  • Access to technology specialists with additional resources readily available
  • Greater agility and decreased time to market
  • Cost reduction due to supplier competition
  • Single point of contact for the delivery of integrated services

How does SIAM work?

Figure 1: SIAM Specific Services
Figure 1: SIAM Specific Services

 

How Do You Get The Best From SIAM?

 

To get the most effective SIAM model you need the following:

  • Clearly defined requirements for critical and non-critical services eg non-critical services support could be in-house whereas mission critical services may require a more integrated service model
  • Service integration arrangements, which focus on Service performance, availability and based service arrangements, instead of just a supplier’s commercial perspective
  • Service integration based on complexity of service
  • Focus on interoperability to enable seamless workflow, performance and service management

The Service Integration should look like this:

Figure 2: Integration Model (source:gov.uk)
Figure 2: Integration Model (source:gov.uk)


Core SIAM Services also includes the provision of Integrated ITSM tooling providing interface and data policies and standards that facilitate all Service Provider feeds into a central data hub, with full communications exchange to enable SIAM to manage the end-to-end service in real time.

Based on a department, the service integration design may differ. It can be completely operated in-house (Retained SIAM) or Outsourced where the key service operation is managed by a supplier.

e.g There may be multiple supplier (Service Integrator) Service Desks (Towers) responsible for service operations or a single in-house desk for the same.

How Does ServiceNow Work With SIAM?

As we all know, ServiceNow supports ITILv3 processes compliant out-of-the-box and can comply with SIAM with just a few tweaks.

There are a few key process areas that need to be modified:

  • Task Based Incident Management
  • Incident Interfaces
  • Request Management

So if you are already utilising the ServiceNow platform for your internal ‘suppliers’, minimal effort will allow you to capitalise on the power of ServiceNow to manage your external suppliers as well.