ITSM consultancy services
Marathon provides ITSM consultancy for organisations whose IT services need stabilising, leading or restructuring. There are three core services: service desk rescue, interim or fractional ITSM leadership and IT supplier transitions. I deliver each one myself, aligned to ITIL best practice, and each ends with your own team running the service.
The three core services
Pick the one closest to your problem. If you can't tell which fits, we can work it out on the first call.
IT Service Desk & Operational Team Rescue
Turning underperforming teams into high-performing ones, fast.
For a desk that's missing SLAs, carrying a growing backlog or losing people. I start with a structured health check of people, process and tooling, then rebuild the core processes, such as incident, request and problem management, at a size that suits the team. Team leads get coached along the way, and the desk is handed back stable and documented.
- Typical duration
- 8 to 12 weeks, extendable for stabilisation
- Model
- onsite or hybrid, UK-based
- Start
- within 1 to 2 weeks
Interim & Fractional ITSM Leader
Experienced ITSM leadership from day one, interim or fractional, no ramp-up.
For a sudden gap in ITSM leadership, a transformation that needs someone from outside the organisation to lead it, or senior leadership you need part-time rather than full-time. I take ownership of strategy, operations and people, govern incident, problem, change and request, and report service performance to senior leadership in plain business terms.
- Typical duration
- interim 3 to 12 months, extendable; fractional ongoing
- Model
- hybrid, UK-based
- Start
- within 2 weeks
Supplier Manager
Safe, structured transitions in and out of IT suppliers.
For onboarding or exiting an IT supplier, consolidating a fragmented supplier base or overseeing a new system. I cover due diligence, SLA and contract design, knowledge transfer, exit planning and the ongoing governance that keeps a supplier honest and performing as you need them to.
- Typical duration
- project-based, typically 4 to 16 weeks
- Model
- hybrid, UK-based
- Start
- within 1 to 2 weeks
Where ITSM consultancy fits across the service lifecycle
IT service management covers the whole lifecycle of a service, from design and delivery through to management and refinement. Most problems I'm asked to fix sit at one of four points:
Strategy and design
There's no clear ITSM strategy, or the service management approach doesn't align with business objectives, so the IT team is busy without being effective.
Operations
Incident, request management and problem workflows have drifted, service quality has slipped and analysts spend their time firefighting.
Suppliers
Parts of the service are delivered by third parties with weak contracts or no real performance management.
Improvement
Nobody owns process improvement, so the same issues come back every quarter and the customer experience never gets better.
Good ITSM consulting services connect those four points. Fixing a support workflow without looking at supplier performance, or buying a new ITSM solution without agreeing what the service should deliver, tends to move the problem rather than solve it.
The same goes for automation. There's a lot you can automate in a modern platform, from ticket routing to knowledge suggestions, but automating a broken process just gets you the wrong result faster. I'd always get the process right first and automate afterwards.
How an engagement works
There's no price list or standard package. Every engagement starts with a conversation.
Consultation call
You tell me what's happening and what's at stake. I'll ask a lot of questions and tell you honestly whether I'm the right fit.
Proposal
If it makes sense to go ahead, I send a short proposal setting out the approach, the timescale and the costs.
Agreement
Once you're happy, we agree terms and a start date. Most engagements start within one to two weeks.
The work
Every engagement follows The Marathon Way, moving from Assess and Shape through to Deliver, Embed and Refine.
Strategic mentorship and other ITSM consulting work
Not every problem needs a full engagement, and a smaller, more agile piece of work is sometimes the better answer. Alongside the three core services I take on two pieces of ITSM consulting work on their own. Both sit closer to strategic mentorship than to a rescue:
Coaching team and operational leads
Support for new or struggling leads while they grow into the role.
A future roadmap
A maturity roadmap that sets out where the function goes next, for you to work through or hand to an incoming permanent leader.
Redesigning individual ITSM processes, such as incident management or service request handling, comes as part of the service desk rescue. So do KPI reporting and the health check itself, which is why I don't sell them separately.
What good ITSM looks like when I leave
Service management best practices are only useful if your team can keep them going. By the end of an engagement you should have:
- ITSM practices aligned with ITIL best practice, with process design sized to your business needs rather than copied from the framework
- A support team working one consistent way, with clear roles and scheduling that matches real demand
- Measurable KPIs and an honest dashboard that shows how the service is performing
- Customer satisfaction and service levels you can report to the board with confidence
- Documentation, knowledge management and coached team leads, so the capability stays with you
- A platform that supports how your business works, so you stop manipulating your ways of working to match how the system works
I'm platform agnostic. I've worked with ITSM software including ServiceNow, Zendesk and Freshservice, among others, and I don't resell any of it. Advice on tools, an ITSM implementation or automation is based on what your service needs, as part of a wider digital transformation or on its own.
ITSM consultancy questions
What is ITSM?
ITSM stands for IT service management, sometimes written out as information technology service management. It's how an organisation designs, delivers and supports information technology as a set of services for the people who use them, covering things like support, incident and change management, service levels and suppliers.
Is ITSM the same as ITIL?
No. ITSM is the practice. ITIL, the Information Technology Infrastructure Library, is a framework of best practice for doing it. Others, such as COBIT, focus more on governance. I'm ITIL 4 certified and use the framework as a guide, not a rulebook.
What does an ITSM consultant do?
An ITSM consultant assesses how your IT services are run and improves them. I'm hands-on: I lead the change myself and coach your team through it, rather than leaving a report behind.
Who do you work with?
I work with corporate and mid-market organisations that run their own ITSM function or subcontract it out. If the function is outsourced and the contract or the supplier's performance is the problem, I can help with that through IT supplier management. The services are aimed at CIOs, heads of IT, IT operations leads and service delivery managers, and sometimes HR partners supporting a leadership change. I'm a specialist in IT service delivery and ITSM leadership. I'm not a managed service provider, and I don't sell outsourced support.
Do you work onsite?
Yes. I'm UK-based and work onsite or hybrid, depending on the engagement.
Why don't you publish prices?
Every engagement is scoped to the problem, so a price list wouldn't be accurate. You'll get costs in writing in the proposal after our first call.
Not sure which service you need?
Most people aren't, at the start. Book a call, tell me what's going on and we'll work out together where to begin.
Book a consultation call