You can really learn to manage services yourself. A sustainable service organization is simpler than you may think.
— Jan van Bon
Company
USM Coach is a company dedicated to helping customers to become self-sufficient in solving their service management needs.
Our approach is based on Unified Service Management (USM) method.
We contribute actively to the development of the USM method.
People
Mikko Ahonen
Mikko is a certified USM Coach. He has over 30 years of experience in various Software Development roles, such as Full Stack Developer, Architect, Scrum Master, Chief Product Owner, and CTO.
For the last 11 years, he has worked as an Independent Software Professional. He holds one M.Sc. in Computer Science and another one in Economics.
He spends his free time with his four year old daughter and dances argentine tango.
What is USM?
Today all business are service businesses. Even if you are just selling potatoes, you will legally need to provide a support for returning the bad ones.
For many companies it is not enough to just provide services. They see the need to become customer-driven in order to survive in a competitive market. To become customer-driven, you need to focus on the long-term relationship with the customer, instead of only looking at individual transactions. This means that how you manage your services needs some new thinking as well.
The USM method provides a standardized management method for a service organization to manage its people, its processes, its technology, and its services.
USM is different from frameworks and standards, such as ISO 20000-1, COBIT or ITIL, which are collections of best practices. USM is built on principles inspired by those practices. USM does not compete with these standards and frameworks, but is complementary to them.
In fact, if you need certifications for your business, USM is probably the fastest, least expensive, least risky, and probably even the most useful way to do it. After you deploy USM, the auditors can cross-reference certification requirements to the activities in workflows, profiles and other specifications of the USM, to demonstrate compliancy.
The USM Method was authored by USM Chief Architect Jan van Bon. Jan has extensive exprience in Service Management, including being a member of the ITIL v3 guidance team between 2006-2007. Jan became increasingly frustrated with the complexity of common standards and frameworks, including ITIL and various ISO standards, and started developing a more simplified method for service management, based on principles. USM is the result of that work.
The USM Method was developed and is owned and managed by the SURVUZ Foundation in Netherlands.
Why USM?
The USM method has the following features and benefits:
- It is universal, so you can use it to manage any service.
- It unified, and allows workflows to co-operate more harmoniously even in complex networks of service providers.
- It is learnable, because it is based on principles instead of practices
- It is free, so you don't need to pay royalties for using it
- It is simple, so you can learn it and become self-sufficient
- It is non-redundant, so you can avoid duplication of work
- It is open, so it fosters a culture of sharing ideas and practices