Beyond the service desk: ITSM, ITIL and the Americas’ next challenges

Is ITSM and the adoption of ITIL in US, Canadian and Latin American companies stuck in the past? And do IT leaders/CIOs seeking to solve the most pressing challenges still not fully recognize the problem-solving potential of ITIL?

In the context of high-speed organizational change and specific tech-related issues – such as governing and realizing enterprise benefits from AI, cloud costs and data security, among others – what do Ken Jarvis - former CIO and part of PeopleCert’s Enterprise Americas team - and ITIL Advisory Board members say about the benefits of implementing ITIL today?

“The trend in the general approach to service management could be described as “stable” – however it shouldn’t be.”

That’s according to Ken Jarvis – former CIO and part of PeopleCert’s Enterprise Americas team: “This isn’t on the CIO agenda, as they often tend to see ITIL as a piece of functionality – part of a service desk system – that they don’t need to worry about. It works, it’s still in place – but that’s the issue.

“CIOs have a lot of other problems to solve, but they don’t realize that ITIL can solve them,” Jarvis added, pointing to strategy, digital product and service management, customer experience, transformation and AI governance as challenges that ITIL can help address.

And while CIOs may be more focused on networks, systems and keeping costs under control, are they asking questions about, for example, how to manage the interface of DevOps and service management or develop closer relationships with the business?

Then, there’s the role of service management tools: “I don’t believe that tools themselves have changed the perception of service management, but some people in organizations feel that a tool will provide the necessary management framework, removing the need for ITIL, which can result in some CIOs asking for tool implementation to be the primary focus,” Jarvis added.

Gabriel Espinosa, Senior Solutions Director: Managed Support at Apex Systems and ITIL Advisory Board member, shared observations from his direct experience working in several Latin American markets — notably Colombia, Costa Rica, Panama and Ecuador — where large companies and, in certain procurement processes, government departments demonstrate meaningful maturity in ITIL adoption and have included ITIL certification among the requirements for service providers. This pattern, while not uniform across the region, reflects a growing recognition of ITIL's value in these markets, consistent with the broader digital maturity trends observed in leading regional ecosystems such as those of Chile, Brazil and Uruguay.

He noted that SMEs and the wider public sector tend to adopt ITIL only partially and without comprehensive governance — a gap that remains visible even in the region's more digitally mature markets.

He explained: 'With limited budgets for automation and ITSM tools, this slows down the adoption of practices such as change enablement or service configuration management.'

He also points to an emphasis in the region on using ITIL practices such as incident management to 'firefight' rather than taking a proactive approach, which leads to uneven digital maturity and resistance to cultural change.

“ITIL can still be perceived as bureaucratic or paperwork rather than a value enabler,” he added.

However, other experts delivering training in North America have seen a shift in the view that ITIL is just about IT and not the business more widely.

Pearl Quan, education consultant and ITIL Advisory Board member, noted how training candidates in some companies are having a “lightbulb moment”, when they see ITIL is about the organization, not only IT.

Despite this progress, Quan acknowledges there are ongoing “roadblocks” to a more holistic adoption of ITIL, mainly driven by culture.

Key issues and the need for greater governance

In the current hierarchy of issues facing CIOs in North American and Latin American companies (and those elsewhere in the world), the top three concerns, Jarvis said, are likely to be:

1. 1.  AI
2. 2.  Cloud costs
3. 3.  Security, risk and compliance

AI, understandably, is a topic that dominates all technology discussion at present – and one to which we will return later in this article.

However, out-of-control cloud costs come a close second in the issues league table: “Cloud costs have always been an issue – an un-budgetable item I’m expected to pay for at the end of every month,” Jarvis explained.

Though business users and development teams drive cloud use – and AI exacerbates the problem of high demand and variable usage – it’s the CIO who owns the responsibility for this expense.

Meanwhile, with the turbulence in international geopolitics, cybersecurity has become – Jarvis noted – a tool of “warfare”, while the demands of compliance require organizations to “keep up” with ongoing changes.

But what about AI?

AI – what is it good for?

In a recent report the Financial Times’ chief data reporter, John Burn-Murdoch, said that the “battle is now over exactly how much value [AI] provides”, with focusing on the difference between “reported increases in coders’ output and the apparent lack of a corresponding boom in product or value creation”.

While one study he quotes found coders “created or edited almost 300% more files” it became just a 30% increase in “the number of full software releases”. Equally, the “increase in mobile app releases has not been accompanied by any increase in downloads”.

He concludes that “a lot of corporate AI use and spending today is inefficient”, combined with “poorly-suited structures and processes”.

Reflecting this state of unrealized AI expectations, the ITSM.tools/Atomicwork 2026 State of AI in IT report – conducted mostly among North American IT professionals and users – showed that while 54% anticipated faster, data-driven decision making from AI, only 47% said this was realized. Similarly, only 39% saw improved employee or customer experience against the expectation of almost half (48%).

On LinkedIn, Quinton Pienaar, partner – EMEA customer transformation and salesforce leader at PwC – quoting the company’s 29^th Global CEO survey said that 56% of CEOs “say their AI investment hasn’t moved revenue or cost” which, he adds, is an “operating model problem” rather than a “tooling problem”.

However, that’s only part of their – and their C-suite technology colleagues’ – issue with AI. Ken Jarvis points also to the issues of cost, control, accuracy and bias.

“There is no control over what tools people are using in an organization. The organization could buy licences, but the governance is not in place to manage and control all the tools people are buying. It’s not just the cost of the AI tool itself; it’s racking up the cost of AI queries too,” Jarvis said.

He also highlighted the inherent biases contained in every AI tool, the problems it creates and how that might affect a business, for example financial implications and reputation damage: “If someone makes a decision based on AI, who’s to blame if it goes wrong? Yet again, the risk is caused by a lack of frameworks to govern decision making. These are the governance issues everyone is struggling with.”

But while the challenges facing organizations and their CIOs in the US and elsewhere today are not unique, the speed at which they are happening is new. For Jarvis, AI remains a serious threat as well as an opportunity to organizations – and the need for governance has never been greater.

The benefits of ITIL adoption across the Americas

Despite the serious challenges facing CIOs and other IT leaders across the Americas, there are upsides when adopting a framework such as ITIL.

“Formalized ways of working mean reduced reactive support practices, improved traceability, and improved regulatory compliance – especially relevant in banking and insurance,” Espinosa said.

He also cited better executive visibility for IT value – through dashboards and KPIs – though there was still more work to do to achieve “value co-creation” with the business.

The demand for a common language and understanding of service management is something Quan sees from companies investing in ITIL, along with a recognition that there is a service value system in organizations that requires cross-functional collaboration.

ITIL (Version 5) – a structured and validated approach to the challenges faced by organizations

ITIL (Version 5) builds on ITIL's strong IT service management heritage, expanding its scope and positioning as the global best practice framework for digital product and service management in an AI-driven world — for every role and every organization.

As the Americas’ market moves from ITIL 4 to ITIL (Version 5), how do the experts think this will evolve the framework’s adoption and begin to address some of the most critical issues facing CIOs and senior leaders?

“The (non-linear) ITIL product and service lifecycle model helps break the rigidity of sequential phase-based models—a highly useful feature for organizations combining legacy systems with digital transformation,” Espinosa said.

“The explicit integration of product and service helps align digital product development teams with support functions, bridging a common gap in South American organizations that are digitizing channels such as mobile banking, retail, and fintech.”

“And the transformation model provides a formal guide for large-scale organizational change initiatives—a highly sought-after resource, given that many companies are undergoing digital transformation with management backing but lack a clear methodology.”

Quan observes a mindset change driven by ITIL (Version 5) and the importance of the product and service lifecycle in the guidance, helping people in different jobs and parts of an organization to appreciate each other’s role in delivering value via products and services.

“The number one priority today is to get ITIL involved as part of solving the problem of AI,” Jarvis said.

“And revisit implementation: establish a project to move to ITIL (Version 5), based on strategy, building closer business relationships, getting on top of DevOps and delivering a whole bunch of benefits cost-effectively.

“The new ITIL is more than a service desk tool and can solve a lot more problems.”