What is ITSM? What are the special features of this class of information system? In what areas is it used, and how can it optimize daily work in the entire organization, addressing business needs? In this text, you will learn the answers to all the above questions.
What is ITSM?
ITSM is an acronym for IT Service Management; the term refers to systems that enable service management, and nowadays, this is not limited to IT services alone. ITSM can be defined as an elaborate platform that supports the handling and execution of various activities in an organization and goes far beyond a helpdesk-type system, conceptually related originally to the requests that go to the IT team. Today, much more is covered under ITSM.
In the simplest terms, ITSM is an environment through which users create requests for their needs or initiatives, which then go to specialists for execution. The length of the path of a single request depends on the type of service it concerns. It can be a simple user-service communication, or an elaborate process such as the deployment of a new employee (onboarding).
What activities does the ITSM system improve?
The first and obvious enough example of such a case, (which alludes to a traditional helpdesk solution) is a report of a hardware failure. An employee’s laptop breaks down; a program won’t run or a printer refuses to cooperate. In such a situation, the employee opens the Customer Portal, fills out the form, describing the type of problem in detail (completes the description, name and model of the equipment, indicates the degree of urgency, the impact of the failure on the work, if he has one, attaches a screenshot of the error that was displayed on the screen) and sends the request, which goes to the IT team. And what if the computer doesn’t want to start at all? Then the employee can use the Customer Portal in the mobile app or ask a colleague to create a ticket on his behalf.
With a good description of the request, the support team will determine whether remote assistance is enough or a visit to the workstation will be necessary. Or perhaps it will be enough to send an instruction, because the problem the employee encountered is repeated periodically by others in the organization and the team has already developed a policy.
Custom ITSM – IT Service Management for non-technical departments
Employee technical support is a typical example of ITSM application in a company. Let’s move on to the less obvious ones! What other departments in the company can benefit from ITSM?
The HR team can carry out the process of introducing a new employee (onboarding) to the organization, as well as his leaving the company (offboarding).
Each activity is interrelated and follows in the correct order; the system will not allow any of the key steps to be skipped, so there is no question of ignoring or omitting any aspect. This minimizes the risk of mistakes and carelessness, which, in both the onboarding and offboarding process, affects the opinion that the hired person develops about the company. Both processes involve supervisors, the HR team, the IT team, and often accounting or administration – depending on the size of the organization and the complexity of the entire process. During an offboarding, it is necessary, for example, to revoke access and privileges to company resources or data on the organization’s activities; the HR team, in turn, will need to conduct a so-called exit interview, i.e. a final assessment of work at the company.
Every process implemented in ITSM is broken down into activities to be done in the right order; activities are organized, assigned to the right people/teams and given a completion date. All people included in the process know what they are supposed to do and when.
A few words about ITSM benefits
The ITSM system allows you to monitor the execution of your company’s processes. This allows you to quickly identify and solve problems, make improvements and improve performance. As a result, the organization makes better use of its resources and grows.
ITSM brings order to the organization. All activities are mapped in the system, data is properly cataloged, employees know what to do and in what order, and individual information is available to those affected; with restrictions. Effective work management (including incidents, problems, changes, knowledge, resources, IT services and more) becomes possible.
With customizable dashboards, employees have access to statistics with different levels of detail. Monitoring and reporting allows you to respond quickly to incidents (incident management, problem management), which prevents downtime of your entire organization environment. As a result, the company maintains business continuity. This is especially important for business-critical services.
ITSM is a system that will develop in parallel with the organization. Sometimes it happens that an organization wants to implement many processes at once, in addition to complex ones. In such situations, we recommend acting in small steps. It is worthwhile to implement initially the operation of a single process to understand the functioning of the environment. This makes continuous improvement and adding more business processes and functionality much easier. The solution has to be generic and usable by everyone. It is worth starting the analysis by building a service catalog, for example.
If you would like to talk about IT Service Management or other needs related to business digital transformation, please contact us.