Transaction economics: Minimizing the cost of executing a support process (service transaction).

Consumption (demand) economics: Minimizing the number of times a type of support transaction needs to be executed across the units of cost.

The basic focus for reducing costs is on the transaction economics side of the business. These are the things like the number of calls end users make to the service desk, the cost of processing an order and the cost of performing a network operating system upgrade/migration -- things that have a repeated action or process associated with them. The goal is to reduce the cost of transactions through improving defined measurable activities. Advanced training for service desk agents and improved known error database entries are examples of activities that can drive transaction economics by reducing the time to resolve an incident.

Consumption economics adds opportunities to eliminate, or reduce, the original need for the "consumption" of service. Here you want to address issues such as reducing the number of incidents by fixing the underlying problem. Underlying problems could be the poor reliability of a device or the need to process unmanaged or unapproved changes. Focus on eliminating service transactions altogether.

In ITIL, this is the focus of improved problem, capacity and availability management processe s.As is the case with all ITIL service delivery processes, financial management measurements, reporting and planning will improve and become more accurate over time. The key is to start sooner rather than later. Using the ROM approach can get you started on the road to success and help you quantify the ROI of your ITIL adoption and service improvement programs.