ITSM in the Post-Pandemic World

FREMONT, CA: 2020 has been unlike any year ever before. In the most literal sense, it changed everything we once deemed normal—from the way we live to the way we work. Social distancing norms and country-wide lockdowns impelled companies across industries to adopt a remote work culture with no prior planning or operational contingencies. Such a massive overhaul impacted every business department, including IT, which is essential for most modern-day organizations. 

IT teams were expected to manage remote users and ensure security and availability of critical system infrastructure at any cost. The most practical and sustainable way to address these challenges was to adopt robust IT Service Management (ITSM) tools that can help remote users gain access to services seamlessly and quickly. With self-service and process automation, these systems can enable organizations to achieve streamlined service delivery. Also, it empowers IT teams to take a structured approach to service management, increase transparency and accountability, and implement new functions that can drive customer satisfaction. 

Given the pandemic’s longevity, its unprecedented nature, and the subsequent effect on business operations, ITSM tools and processes can help your business thrive in a multitude of ways. Listed below are the top four!

Improve Transparency via Service Catalogs 

At its core, service catalogs act as a single, consistent source of information that offers employees an accurate list of services—both IT and business—available to them. They help improve transparency across the board, from day-to-day IT operations and handling issues to continual service improvement. They help enhance an organization’s self-service capabilities, drive employee behaviors through demand management, and focus on continual improvement efforts. By providing service- and financial-level information, service catalogs empower employees in requesting services. It helps organizations optimally balance availability and performance against resources for current or planned services—which plays a massive role during this pandemic as resources are working remotely. Providing a definitive list of services to assess any potential impact, service catalogs help improve impact analysis capabilities for incident and problem management and change control. 

Take the Pressure off the Service Desk

ITSM self-service tools are becoming an essential asset for companies, given their ability to help remote workers and other users quickly solve their issues by themselves rather than burdening the service desk.

Fosters Collaboration 

ITSM helps improve collaboration between IT and other business operations by gathering and distributing internal tribal knowledge from the self-service portal, chatbots, and even in-application recommendations.

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Up the Ante with Automation

Speed is everything on the service desk, and enabling process efficiency through automation is the key to maximizing the business value of IT. By eliminating redundancy and mundane tasks, ITSM automation helps companies streamline business processes, reduce technical and business service costs, and improve organizational productivity. Through proper prioritization and governance, it helps organizations improve the quality of service and customer experience. ITSM automation enables businesses to handle repetitive tasks like password resets, standard changes, and approvals to save resources their time and efforts. It will help the organization reduce IT workload and speed up ticket processing and resolution time. Instances are aplenty where ITSM automation has help companies achieve a 25 percent growth in work efficiency. Given the transition to cloud environments, ITSM automation can help organizations provision resources within a private or public cloud via an end-user portal for customers, developers, engineers, or any other approved person. 

Alongside IT, ITSM automation also has a substantial impact on the business- and customer-front. It can allow companies to quickly deliver precisely what the customer wants through personalization and improve customer service by maintaining synergy and information flow between the front and back office. In a nutshell, ITSM automation can drive digital transformation initiatives, accelerate business efficiency, and increase customer satisfaction.