IT Service Management Report: Lonely Planet Australia

This report examines the implementation of IT Service Management (ITSM) for Lonely Planet Australia, a travel website. It outlines a business development strategy leveraging IT solutions to enhance the organization's structure. The report details the business background, customer needs, and challenges, highlighting the role of IT in addressing these issues. It explores the organizational structure and the IT service provider, Interactive, including their service catalog and organizational structure. The core of the report focuses on the stages of ITIL (Plan, Design, Deliver, Operate, and Control) and ITSM implementation, detailing processes such as website implementation, cloud storage, and data center management. Each stage includes objectives, key activities, metrics, and business cases, with an emphasis on the Deming Cycle for continuous improvement. The report concludes with an assessment of the ITSM model's effectiveness, potential improvements, and references to relevant literature.

Running Head: IT SERVICE MANAGEMENT FOR LONELY PLANET AUSTRALIA
IT Service Management for Lonely Planet Australia

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Abstract
The purpose of this report is to create a business development strategy using information
technology solutions to improve overall working structure in an organization. Lonely Planet is a
travel website catering to client needs and demands for providing facilities ranging from travel
catalogue, booking facilities, car rental and other facilities. The business processes involved with
the entire procedure is complemented with the implication of information technology policies
and help of software to improve client handling, data storing facilities, data protection and
development of mobile applications and tools for booking facilities, which are necessary for
customers planning on travelling. The report is made to analyze the processes involved in
devising strategies for businesses in relation to information technology to improve the overall
working structure of the company. The phases of ITIL implemented include plan, design,
deliver, operate and control different aspects related to business process management.
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Table of Contents
1.0 Introduction................................................................................................................................3
1.1 Business Background.............................................................................................................3
1.2 Customers and Customer Demands.......................................................................................3
1.3 Business Challenges..............................................................................................................3
1.4 Role of IT in Minimizing Challenges....................................................................................3
1.5 Organization Structure...........................................................................................................4
2.0 IT Service Provider....................................................................................................................4
2.1 IT Service Details..................................................................................................................4
2.2 Service Catalogue..................................................................................................................4
2.3 Organization Structure...........................................................................................................4
3.0 Stages of ITIL and ITSM Implementation................................................................................5
3.1 Plan........................................................................................................................................5
3.2 Design....................................................................................................................................6
3.3 Deliver...................................................................................................................................8
3.4 Operate...................................................................................................................................9
3.5 Control.................................................................................................................................11
4.0 Conclusion...............................................................................................................................12
4.1 Effectiveness of ITSM Model.............................................................................................12
4.2 Improvement of ITSM by Similar Organizations................................................................12
4.3 Improvement of Proposed ITSM Model..............................................................................13
5.0 References................................................................................................................................14
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1.0 Introduction
1.1 Business Background
Lonely Planet, Australia is an online travel guidance portal used by people who are
planning on travelling in different parts of the world (Planet, 2019). This was founded by Tony
Wheeler and Maureen Wheeler, who published a guidebook after a travelling spree across
various places in Asia (Almeida et al., 2018). The business is directly related to catering
demands of travelers providing them an overall idea about different destinations devising
customized travel guide catalogue in print and digital medium through website and mobile
application (Rosemann & vom Brocke, 2015).
1.2 Customers and Customer Demands
Lonely Planet is a customer service oriented mobile as well as website application.
Customers are travelers who are planning on having an unparalleled experience while visiting a
new location (Batabyal, Srivastava & Kurien, 2016). Customer demands are directly related to
famous places in a destination, restaurants with good quality food, lodging facilities as well as
booking of tickets for flights. This demands are addressed by dedicated experts who created the
mobile application for meeting various customer demands (Ho et al., 2017).
1.3 Business Challenges
Business challenges of the organization is related to increasing ease of travelling
procedures while providing best quality service to the customers (Interactive, 2019). The rise in
modern day technology has increased demand for personalized user experience with varied
demands from different customers. However, most of the challenges are basically opportunities,
which the organization can work upon (Khan, CIS & PMP, 2017).
1.4 Role of IT in Minimizing Challenges
Infrastructural facilities provided by information technology (IT) in addressing the
challenges are very crucial for success of these businesses (Limanto et al.,2017). IT helps in
maintaining website, designing of customized tools and personalized user experience where
users can log in to the website for looking into travel guides, hotels, visiting locations, booking
tickets and make payments from the user account through online transactional procedures
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integrated into the website (Bingham, Fletcher & Choudhary, 2019). Modern interactive website
designs with provided maps of different locations help users to travel around hassle freely.
1.5 Organization Structure
Company is owned by Tony and Maureen Wheeler. There are other people associated
with the company that includes content writers, software developers, programmers, local guides.
Other people include social media managers, territory managers as well as editors (Brisebois et
al., 2017). Offices are situated around different parts of the world starting from Australia, United
Kingdom, and Russia amongst other places (García-Holgado et al., 2015). Organizational
structure is flexible, due to which there is a positive work culture promoting best services within
the industry (Schmidt, 2019).
Figure 1: Organizational Structure of Lonely Planet, Australia
(Source- Created by author)
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2.0 IT Service Provider
2.1 IT Service Details
Interactive, which was founded by Richard Light and Murray Major was created to
provide hardware maintenance services for different types of computer equipment’s. Interactive
provides varied services ranging from business continuity, Cloud and managed services, website
maintenance and Data Centre for different organizations to cater to various needs in order to
meet client expectations (Camilleri, 2018). Primary reason Interactive was chosen as an IT
service provider for Lonely Planets is due to top of the line staffs in order to provide customized
IT service, having an innovative approach to solve issues related to website maintenance
(Mitchell, 2019).
2.2 Service Catalogue
Interactive provides different services ranging from fully automated cloud services,
which is customized based on organizational needs (Dudin et al., 2015). Data Centre’s where
business related information starting from client details, payments are securely stored in
Interactive servers, where built-in security mechanisms in compliance with PCI DSS and
ISO27001 are maintained to protect business related data (Ghahramani et al., 2017).
2.3 Organization Structure
The organization is divided into different parts for better management of entire
organizational structure. CEO, executives, senior managers, support staff, software designer,
website developers are few of the roles and responsibilities associated with the organization
(Stark, 2015). There are enterprise architects, head of strategy and network architecture and other
roles common in information services providing organizations (Hahn et al., 2017).
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Figure 2: Organizational structure of IT service provider
(Source- Created by author)
3.0 Stages of ITIL and ITSM Implementation
3.1 Plan
i. Website Implementation
Purpose: The purpose of implementing website is to develop an interactive platform for users to
avail the different services provided by the organization, which include trip planning and other
facilities (Nasution, 2016 (Obwegeser, Nielsen & Spandet, 2019)).
Objective: Primary objective of designing and developing a website was to provide users
different facilities related to travelling starting from hotel bookings, location, maps of nearby
sites with available dining facilities (Stein et al., 2015).
Key Activities: Key activities related to website implementation include interaction with
customers, booking of hotels, reading articles and journals related to travel, looking for visiting
sites in a location (Frolov & Ermolovich, 2018).
Metrics: This includes mechanisms to test and implement mechanisms essential in a modern day
website like live websites for a better customized user experience (Vidgen, Shaw & Grant,
2017).
Role: Primary role of a website is to develop as well as promote different aspects of a business
and provide customers with an idea of works conducted in an organization.
Business Case: Website implementation is developed with the justification of increasing user
base of Lonely Planet and create an interactive platform related to travel information’s.
SLA: SLA is a Service Level agreement done in between the client and subsequent customers
availing services provided by a client, here which is opting for services from Lonely Planet.
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Deming Cycle: This is used for improving website requirements and related management
procedures adopted by organizations to strategize effective outcomes of a project (Willcocks &
Lacity, 2016).
ii. Management Strategies
Purpose: Purpose of devising management strategies in accordance with Lonely Planet is to
devise a concise plan for conducting different operations related to catering customers and
provide with subsequent management strategies.
Objective: Primary objective of management strategies is to create a hierarchy of working
structure prevalent within the organization and improve subsequent customer interaction
procedures.
Key Activities: Key activities include managing information technology operations, client
interactions, and operational management of work structure prevalent within the organization.
This include devising client satisfaction mechanisms.
Metrics: Metrics for evaluating management strategies include efficiency rate of corporate
governance within the IT organization providing services to the company, financial aspects and
estimation of generated profit.
Role: Management strategies play a pivotal role in improving the outcome of a company related
to increase of profit, increase of customer base and a complete process of managing functioning
mechanisms.
Business Case: Management strategies are adopted by businesses to improve strategies related
to conduction of business processes within an organization. This includes adopting strategies that
are beneficial for the firm.
SLA: SLA is agreed upon in between the firm taking up the responsibility of devising
management strategies and the organization developing the strategies for improving outcome of
the entire process.
Deming Cycle: This helps to structure the functioning mechanisms of an organization in order to
adapt to changes in a constantly changing business environment, where competitors are
constantly trying to outrun a firm within the travel industry.
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3.2 Design
i. Cloud storage
Purpose: Purpose of a cloud storage is to facilitate online storage for different types of customer
information starting from customer name, address, mobile number and other necessary factors
required for booking tickets and other facilities provided by Lonely Australia.
Objective: Primary objective of cloud storage is to provide online storage in order to decrease
cost related to installation of hardware facilities for storing user data.
Key Activities: Key activities include storage of data, remotely accessing user data required by
organizations, protecting user privacy and providing data integrity.
Metrics: Metrics are related to having robustness of online storage facilities as well as data
transfer rate from cloud storage facilities provided by Interactive.
Role: Role of cloud storage is to provide online storage facilities for an organization and
protecting data from online theft by using data encryption processes, which provide data
integrity.
Business Case: Lonely Planet is using cloud storage facility to mitigate the risks associated with
having a portal with important user information and protecting sensitive information is an
important part.
SLA: The service level agreement for cloud storage is done in between Lonely Planet and
Interactive who are securing customer information in cloud storage for the website and mobile
application users.
Deming Cycle: This is helpful for structuring and creating a framework in an orderly manner for
storage of data ranging from client information and services selected.
ii. Data Centre
Purpose: Purpose of a Data Centre is to create a single database for all information related to a
website. Example can be cited where all customer information of Lonely Planet is using
Interactive Data Centre, which provides premium service to the clients.
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Objective: Having a customized user integrated facility of cloud services, which are compliant
with PCI DSS to cater to client needs and demands.
Key Activities: Key activities include providing better customer experience to the client,
connection of cloud storage facilities to various cloud storage juggernauts.
Metrics: Metrics for evaluation and validation of Data Centre is provided using certain
compliance standards put forward by PCI DSS and certification standard of ISO 9001 and
27001.
Role: Role of Data Centre is to provide data safety and data security of user information, which
are provided to the travel website and mobile tools and applications using industry grade
encryption mechanisms.
Business Case: Interactive offers a high quality data integration for clients, which is essential for
generation of revenue based on securing mechanisms adopted by the organization for a given
project.
SLA: SLA is devised in between organization opting for a service and the organization
providing the service.
Deming Cycle: This is used for a systematic approach of data integration mechanisms adopted
by organizations in a sequential way after analyzing requirements of a client.
3.3 Deliver
i. Mobile Tools
Purpose: Purpose of mobile tools is to provide customers an interactive platform for different
activities related to travelling ranging from booking of hotels, booking of flights, reading
journals of a specific destination and associated processes.
Objective: To provide customers with necessary tools for ease of travelling across different
locations as well as providing insurance facilities, sightseeing tours with an interactive platform.
Key Activities: Key activities include provision of bookings in different locations ranging from
Australia to Middle East and premium activities include journals only accessible by opting paid
service.
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Metrics: Metrics include ease of usability of mobile tools with different incorporated services as
discussed in the previous sections ranging from booking of facilities to provision of insurance to
the customers.
Business Case: Mobile tools are developed for increasing the customer base and accessibility of
services for users in a concise manner on both android and iOS platforms.
SLA: This is established between the mobile application developers and Lonely Planets to
provide a documentation for services created to match user demands within the platform.
Deming Cycle: Mobile tools developed are analyzed and tested through various phases in
software testing to create an unparalleled user experience to satisfy end users.
ii. Car Services
Purpose: Purpose of providing car services is to improve customer experience through
application of smart technology for device navigation, automated parking facilities and route
maps for ease of travelling for users opting to avail services through Lonely Planets.
Objective: Objective is primarily to improve experience of customers and develop a structured
framework for providing multifarious facilities to customers ranging from ease of travelling to
booking of vehicles.
Key Activities: Key activities include provision of car listing on website, pick up location as
well as drop off location. Rentals are provided on a time with a starting and an end date based on
choice of location for travelling around different parts of the world.
Metrics: Location of services, provision of facilities and listing of car availability function as
basic metrics for car rental services.
Role: Role of car services is to provide customers with best facilities and a good user experience
opting for car rentals through Lonely Planet website.
Business Case: Subsequent provision of customer catering facilities improve the company’s
overall services provided to customers.
SLA: Agreement is done in between Lonely Planet and car rental services providing cars to the
agency to increase business for car rental facilities and services from Lonely Planet.
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Deming Cycle: Analysis is conducted for providing car rental services to customer in order to
have an unprecedented customer experience.
3.4 Operate
i. Client handling
Purpose: Purpose of client handling is to provide customers with solutions with modern day
technological equipment and use of software tools for instant response mechanisms for grievance
redressing and immediate attention to customer feedback.
Objective: Objective of client handling is to improve business relations and provide clients with
best in quality or good service with provision for addressing to problems given by clients.
Key Activities: Key activities include having an automated response mechanism, immediate call
responding and message responding procedures through implication of technology in business
processes of the organization.
Metrics: Metrics for evaluation include quality of services provided by the organization, for
example if a customer is lost and calls for assistance, immediate responding mechanisms should
be devised for addressing emergency situations.
Role: Role of client handling is directly related to improvement of client interaction to improve
process of business conduction.
Business Case: Client handling is attributed within business processes crucial for an
organization.
SLA: The different Call Centre around the globe catering to business needs of a client oriented
service and Lonely Planet to cater to customer demands.
Deming Cycle: Analysis of client requirements play a crucial role in client handling services,
which are responsible for growth of businesses within travel industry.
ii. Business Processes
Purpose: Business processes include different aspects in a travel and travel journal listing
website. Purpose of this is to devise mechanisms to improve customer satisfaction.
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Objective: Improving conducting processes of both internal and external aspects of a business,
which includes meeting customer demands and providing with best services.
Key Activities: This includes active response mechanisms related to accounts, recruiting eligible
personnel, providing technical support as well as security mechanisms for protection of customer
data.
Metrics: This includes quality of services, in operational aspects, management processes,
governing mechanisms in order to develop a dedicated base for catering to customer demands.
Role: Role of business processes is to handle all aspects related to managing a business ranging
from types of services and data securing and operational mechanisms adopted by organizations
to improve overall performance.
Business Case: Subsequent analysis provides with operational aspects related to managing an
organization including technical aspects responsible for improvement of services.
SLA: Companies employ this mechanism internally, due to incurring of extra cost for business
process mechanism validation. Therefore, this is an internal mechanism opted by organizations
to improve quality of services.
Deming Cycle: Analysis of requirements to seamlessly conduct operational aspects of managing
an organization.
3.5 Control
i. Provision of Services
Purpose: Purpose of this is to create an overall idea regarding the different services provided by
Lonely Planet to provide a clear idea to the customers regarding the types of services starting
from listing of places, booking of hotels, renting cars and other related facilities provided by a
travel website and mobile application to provide a optimum quality of services to the customer.
Objective: Provision of services help organization in devising active strategies for operational
purposes as well as increasing services based on customer demand.
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Key Activities: Key activities include listing of services ranging from booking of tickets, car
rental facilities, navigational facilities and client handling mechanisms devised to provide
customers top of the line services.
Metrics: Metrics for evaluation consist of quality of services offered to the customers based on
demand and increasing interaction between clients and business personnel.
Role: Provision of services provide a concise idea regarding business processes as well as types
of services offered by an organization to the clients with the help of modern day technologies
facilitating organizations in helping to provide the services.
Business Case: Provision of services is operated based on client demand, and is under constant
improvement based on feedback, which forms the basis for the improvement in an organization.
SLA: This is an internal procedure, which is under audit through officials specially appointed for
the service and help organizations in improving overall client handling processes.
Deming Cycle: Provision of services is analyzed through client interaction, which is a procedure
to improve the working mechanism of an organization.
4.0 Conclusion
4.1 Effectiveness of ITSM Model
The model adopted for handling the entire process mechanism is highly efficient based
on the requirement of different business processes as put forward by the organizations working
structure. This helps to improve the client interaction mechanisms and working strategies
adopted by organizations to handle information technology services. The role of information
technology services is to cater to business needs of an organization. Lonely Planets required
handling of website and protection of data through Data Centre as well as cloud storage facilities
to ease the business processes. The different phases described the implicational methodologies of
an organization ranging from handling software services to client handling mechanisms in order
to cater to customer demands. This helped the organization to develop subsequent strategies
which increased the efficiency of working mechanisms of the organization. This was a successful
model to adopt in order to devise effective software management methodologies for the
organization helping customers to travel around the world.
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4.2 Improvement of ITSM by Similar Organizations
Similar organization catering to client demands from travel industries are also
incorporating software mechanisms to improve business processes. There are adoption of cloud
services, calling facilities, quality services and other facilities necessary for handling client
demands. Using software processes these organizations are improvising and providing live
tracking mechanisms for services like car rentals as well as tracking of customers to help them if
any problem arises during the tenure of travelling. Companies are shifting from hard copy data
and using online storage facilities with security mechanisms to protect user data. This is a shift in
using facilities and client handling mechanisms, which improves the overall working structure in
an organization to facilitate best quality of services. Moreover, use of software has facilitated in
global expansion of organizations around different parts of the world catering to client needs.
This is backed with outstanding quality management services adopted for data securing policy
and data integration mechanisms.
4.3 Improvement of Proposed ITSM Model
Entire business process as described in the organizations working structure to address
demands of clients ranging from booking of rooms in hotel, buying of flight tickets, renting of
cars as well as associated business processes to improve internal and external aspects of client
handling mechanisms. The proposed structure will provide an organization with all the specified
business requirements to cater to client demands, however there are a few aspects which require
more attention. Quality of services provided are not checked in an orderly fashion which leads to
loss of various important aspects in client handling businesses. Improvement of this specific
aspect will help to increase an organization client handling procedure and provide with necessary
changes required to address the pertinent situation. Business processes are customizable models,
which should be changed based on organizational demands.
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5.0 References
Almeida, R., Percheiro, I., Pardo, C., & da Silva, M. M. (2018, October). An Ontology-Based
Model for ITIL Process Assessment Using TIPA for ITIL. In International Conference
on Software Process Improvement and Capability Determination (pp. 104-118). Springer,
Cham.
Batabyal, R., Srivastava, A., & Kurien, T. (2016). U.S. Patent Application No. 14/672,165.
Bingham, B. J., Fletcher, T. A., & Choudhary, H. S. (2019). U.S. Patent Application No.
10/333,799.
Brisebois, M. A., Drummond, B., Mehta, A., Chene, M., & Flannigan, M. (2017). U.S. Patent
No. 9,836,446. Washington, DC: U.S. Patent and Trademark Office.
Camilleri, M. A. (2018). Nurturing travel and tourism enterprises for economic growth and
competitiveness. Tourism and Hospitality Research, 18(1), 123-127.
Dudin, M., Frolova, E., Gryzunova, N., & Shuvalova, E. (2015). The Deming Cycle (PDCA)
concept as an efficient tool for continuous quality improvement in the agribusiness.
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Implementation into Oil Production Processes. In SPE Russian Petroleum Technology
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García-Holgado, A., García-Peñalvo, F. J., Hernández-García, Á., & Llorens-Largo, F. (2015,
July). Analysis and improvement of knowledge management processes in organizations
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4(1), 6-18.
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Hahn, S. E., Sparks, B., Wilkins, H., & Jin, X. (2017). E-service quality management of a hotel
website: a scale and implications for management. Journal of Hospitality Marketing &
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management. In Handbook on business process management 1 (pp. 105-122). Springer,
Berlin, Heidelberg.
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Schmidt, H. (2019). Explosive precursor safety: An application of the Deming Cycle for
continuous improvement. Journal of Chemical Health and Safety, 26(1), 31-36.
Stark, J. (2015). Product lifecycle management. In Product lifecycle management (Volume 1)
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innovation to cloud services. Springer.
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