These days, an organization is only as good as it's information technology. It doesn't matter if you're running a Fortune 500 behemoth, a family-owned business, or a non-profit, you've got to make sure your technology works -- and works well.

That means investing in your IT, which is exactly what American companies are doing. A 2018 survey conducted by Deloitte and OnResearch asked 500 executives from mid-market, privately held companies how much of their annual budget was allocated to technology.

One-third said it was 5 percent. Another 45 percent said it was somewhere between 1 and 5 percent. Most said they planned to spend more in the future.

It's a safe bet that some of that money will be spent on ITIL Foundation Certification for IT professionals.

After all, these are the people who can drive innovation, revenue, and growth. They protect your resources and reputation. They empower employees with the right tools at the right time. And they ensure that your organization is meeting the constantly expanding and evolving expectations of customers and constituents. They keep you on the cutting edge.

Simply put: IT professionals are the lifeblood of organizations large and small, and ITIL is at the heart of what they do. It's the framework of best practices for pumping out IT tools and services to employees at all levels of your organization. And it works.

As an article in CIO magazine points out, "ITIL's systemic approach to IT service management can help businesses manage risk, strengthen customer relations, establish cost-effective practices, and build a stable IT environment that allows for growth, scale, and change."

But of course not just any IT professional or team of professionals can put ITIL in place and expect to reap all of it's benefits.

It takes knowledge, skill, and effort in order to successfully fulfill the promise of ITIL. And earning ITIL Foundation certification is one way for your team to obtain all three.

Here's why:

It's just the beginning ...

ITIL, or the "Information Technology Infrastructure Library," as it used to be called, is a voluminous collection of articles that describes framework for delivering IT services in the most efficient and effective manner possible.

It currently consists of five books, each detailing a variety of processes and stages of the IT service lifecycle:

• service strategy
• service design
• service transition
• service operation
• continual service improvement

These are the things every organization needs its IT team to prioritize in order to achieve success. To properly implement the systems for each, your team needs to know all about ITIL -- what it is, how it works, how to implement it.

Having them earn ITIL Foundation certification ensures that they understand each of the five volumes of the ITIL life cycle and how to implement them for your organization.

Earning ITIL Foundation certification is the best place for your IT team to start if you want your organization to reap the benefits of ITIL.

It benefits your business

ITIL isn't some flash-in-the-pan IT philosophy that was developed by some fly-by-night organization in order to make a few quick bucks.

IT professionals who have failed, succeeded, and taken careful, copious notes about what works best have carefully crafted a proven framework of best practices over the years.

And then they wrote it all down, refreshed and refined it, and kept working to make sure that its principles would be sure to benefit businesses--and it's benefits are immense:

• better alignment between IT and the business (or organization),
• better service delivery and customer satisfaction,
• reduced costs due to more efficient use of resources,
• better management of risk, possible service disruptions, or failure, and
• more reliable IT service--even in the midst of constant change.

And of course there are more benefits, but you get the idea ... .

The preparation pays for itself

When you commit to paying your IT employees to prepare for ITIL Foundation certification, you're not actually paying for the piece of paper they'll receive after they pass the test. You're paying for the preparation.

This is where your employees are going to truly learn the ins and outs of ITIL. They'll study service strategy, design, transition, operation, and continual improvement. They learn how to implement each. And they'll eventually pass the exam.

But that's not what really matters. What really matters is that they'll have an incredibly deep understanding of ITIL, how it works, and how to implement it at your organization.

That's what is going to make your information technology work and work well.

Learn more about ITIL Foundation certification

If you want to learn more about helping your business become more successful by helping your IT team achieve ITIL Foundation certification, connect with Infotec today.

You will learn about ITIL Foundation certification, which is where a more effective and efficient information technology team begins.