Use of IT Best Practices for Non-IT Services

The ever growing importance of information technology (IT) in business necessitates the development of methods and concepts that enable effective, efficient, and value oriented usage of the resource IT. For a number of years, the scientific literature has been discussing the trend towards the industrialization of IT. This means to transfer industrial methods to the IT domain. In this context, the term IT service is gaining in importance. Treating the IT activities as IT services means more transparency, efficiency, and effectiveness both for the customer and the enterprise. Besides the widespread application of industrial practices, the so-called best practices are increasingly used in the IT domain. Could other service areas benefit from these IT best practices, just as IT is profiting from industrial methods and concepts? This question is addressed in this paper, using the example of the ITIL framework.