IT service management
ISO 20000-1 consulting: do you need a consultant?
A consultant helps you build a service management system, but the standard does not require one. If your incident, change and SLA processes already run, you can confirm them with an online self-assessment and receive the certificate within 4 hours of passing and payment.
01: Consultant role
What does an ISO 20000-1 consultant actually do?
ISO 20000-1:2018 describes what a service management system (SMS) must contain. It does not tell you how to build it. A consultant fills that gap with experience from other IT providers and translates the clauses into your daily operations.
Most projects consist of the following work.
- Gap analysis
- The consultant compares your current processes with the requirements and lists what is missing, from the service catalogue to documented change approval.
- Process design
- Incident, problem, change and release management are defined, assigned to roles and written down in a form your team will actually use.
- Service levels and catalogue
- Services are described, SLAs are agreed with customers and reporting is set up so you can show that the targets are met.
- Internal audit and management review
- The consultant prepares or runs the internal audit and the management review, which belong to clause 9 on performance evaluation.
- Audit support
- In the classic route, the consultant prepares your staff for the on-site audit by a certification body and answers findings afterwards.
02: Scope and rates
Typical scope and indicative day rates
Consulting fees depend on the size of the provider, the number of services and how much documentation already exists. The figures below are indicative ranges, not offers. Day rates for ISO consultants in Switzerland usually fall between CHF 1,200 and 2,000. In Germany, Austria and France, EUR 900 to 1,600 is a common range.
A small IT provider with a few services and some existing ITIL practice would plan along these lines.
| Work package | Indicative effort | Result |
|---|---|---|
| Gap analysis | 2 to 4 days | List of missing requirements |
| Service catalogue and SLAs | 3 to 6 days | Documented services and service levels |
| Incident, problem and change processes | 5 to 12 days | Defined and documented processes |
| Internal audit and management review | 2 to 4 days | Audit report and review minutes |
Added together, that is roughly 12 to 26 consulting days. At the rates above, the indicative total lies between CHF 15,000 and CHF 50,000, before the fees of a certification body if you go the classic route.
03: Decision
When a consultant makes sense and when you can do without
A consultant pays off if you start from zero. That means no service catalogue, no ticketing discipline, no written change procedure, and several customers waiting for you to fix that. The work of designing processes is real work, and outside help shortens it.
The picture changes if your team already runs a ticketing tool, approves changes before they go live and reviews incidents on a regular basis. In that case the missing piece is rarely design. It is the proof that the system meets the standard. Paying for 20 consulting days to produce documents you mostly have is hard to justify.
Small providers and internal IT departments are often in this second group. Their processes exist, but nobody has measured them against ISO 20000-1. A structured self-assessment does that measurement for a fraction of a consulting budget.
04: With Zertify
How to get certified without a consulting project
Zertify certifies on the basis of an online self-assessment. There is no on-site audit and no consulting engagement. You answer the questions yourself, and SICE reviews every assessment before the certificate is issued. The certificate itself is issued by G6 Agency AG under licence from SICE.
The self-assessment for ISO 20000-1 has 36 yes/no questions. Thirteen of them are mandatory requirements of the standard, and all thirteen must be answered yes. Among the remaining 23 questions you need at least 16 yes answers to pass.
Take the self-assessment
It is free and needs no registration. Answer each question against what your organisation really does today.
Close any gaps
If a mandatory question is answered no, you know which requirement to work on before you try again.
Pay and receive the certificate
After you pass and pay, the PDF arrives within 4 hours. No account is needed to buy.
Show it to customers
Every certificate carries a number and a QR code that lead to a public verification page. A purchasing department or a tender team can check it in seconds.
The price is CHF 799 (EUR 799) in the first year, then CHF 529 (EUR 529) per year including the yearly online re-audit. The certificate is valid for 3 years. The subscription renews automatically and you can cancel it in your customer account at any time, effective at the end of the current year. If you cancel, the certificate ends with the paid year. Swiss and Liechtenstein customers pay 8.1% VAT, which is included in the prices.
05: Preparation
What should be in place before you answer the questions
A self-assessment is only worth something if the answers are true. Before you start, check that these areas of your service management exist in practice and not only in a slide deck.
Service portfolio and catalogue
Your services are defined, and customers can see what you deliver.
Service level agreements
Targets are agreed and you measure them.
Incident and problem management
Incidents are logged and resolved, and recurring causes are investigated.
Change and release management
Changes are assessed and approved before release.
Capacity and availability
You plan resources and monitor uptime against what you promised.
Continual improvement
Improvements to the services are recorded and followed up.
If two or three of these are missing, a short consulting engagement for just those areas can be a sensible middle path. Build the process with help, then confirm the result through the self-assessment.
06: FAQ
Questions about ISO 20000-1 consulting
07: Guide
Related pages
Check where your IT services stand
The self-assessment shows in a few minutes whether your processes meet ISO 20000-1.
Free and without registration.