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IT is both the foundation and the lifeblood of most modern businesses. Take away their IT ecosystem and there might not be a business left at all.
So why does it feel like so many businesses are built atop an IT ecosystem that’s wobbly, convoluted, and seemingly bolted together with spare parts?
As organizations grow, it’s natural for various IT components to get added to the mix. IT infrastructure might have started out neatly organized. But add a reorg or two, a few digital transformations and maybe an M&A, and voila: convoluted infrastructure.
IT service management is a way of reimagining how businesses think about and deliver IT across the organization. When implemented well, this approach can greatly improve business efficiency and the customer experience.
What is IT service management?
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IT service management (ITSM) is an approach to delivering IT comprehensively throughout an organization. It centers on the idea that IT should be treated as a service (IT as a service). Design, delivery, management, and improvement of technology (including its use and supporting processes) are all contained within the ITSM framework.
ITSM goes far beyond the IT service desk, encompassing IT operations, digital transformation initiatives, and even aspects of user experience and customer satisfaction.
Organizations use ITSM to keep their entire IT ecosystem in line with business needs and goals and to actively manage that ecosystem throughout hardware and software life cycles.
ITSM vs. ITIL
ITIL was formerly an acronym for Information Technology Infrastructure Library, but now just a standalone term that refers to a framework within ITSM that provides best practices for effectively managing IT services. ITIL is now in its fourth edition (ITIL 4), which was first released in 2019.
In other words, ITIL is a set of guidelines for how to implement ISTM, collected into a book. What the Project Management Body of Knowledge (PMBOK) is to project management, ITIL is to ITSM.
Organizations often use ITIL as a starting point rather than a legally binding document, and it’s possible to implement ITSM without following ITIL.
ITSM vs. DevOps
DevOps is a combined approach to both development and operations (and sometimes security, in which case the portmanteau expands to DevSecOps) that seeks to break down information silos and improve collaboration and sharing.
A philosophy rather than a set of practices, DevOps can be used alongside ITSM, and many large IT teams will mix and match these approaches for various IT processes.
ITIL and DevOps are sometimes considered opposing or contrasting approaches, where ITIL leans toward a more rigid, defined structure and DevOps leans toward openness and sharing. Both can be used effectively within IT service management, guiding what ITSM looks like in particular contexts.
How ITSM enhances collaboration
ITSM serves organizations in numerous ways. The most important is in creating a unified approach to delivering IT services and operations — but we aren’t going to focus on that one, since other companies that deliver ITSM have that covered pretty well.
Instead, we’re going to show you how ITSM helps organizations in two additional areas: collaboration and customer experience.
Let’s start with three ways that ITSM enhances collaboration.
Keeps everyone on the same page
ITSM helps IT divisions stay focused on user satisfaction and company goals, which makes for clearer prioritizing and decision-making because everyone’s on the same page — including both IT professionals and senior stakeholders.
IT service delivery teams aren’t as likely to get tunnel vision, focused on whatever project or service has been assigned. Instead, teams have a better chance to see the big picture and work toward the right overall goals.
ITSM also helps support cross-team collaboration within the broader organization (or within client organizations) because the approach eliminates disjointed approaches to IT. Systems are designed holistically so that departmental silos don’t go up.
For example, using an ITSM approach, organizations will make upgrade decisions based on overall organizational goals, not whichever director makes the most noise. And those upgrade decisions won’t be made in isolation — collaboration and openness with other departments and systems is baked in as a priority.
Improves visibility into workflows
ITSM also improves efficiency and collaboration by providing better visibility into IT workflows — especially when used alongside high-quality IT project management software. Using ITSM it’s easier to see a project’s progress and to identify, troubleshoot, and solve issues when they surface.
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Scales processes with ease
ITSM is more efficient than piecemeal IT support, and it creates more efficient processes throughout the organization. Businesses can then take on more because their processes are scalable in ways that weren’t possible before the business treated IT as a cohesive service rather than as distinct modules.
By increasing efficiency and productivity, businesses and teams find themselves with more bandwidth to take on new projects. And because their ITSM processes are repeatable and scalable, getting those new projects up and running is less resource-intensive, too.
How ITSM improves the customer experience
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ITSM doesn’t just help your organization internally. It also helps you develop a stronger customer experience programs — whether those customers are consumers, businesses, or even other business units within a larger organization.
Minimize service interruptions
Across all sorts of industries, customers expect businesses to offer uninterrupted service. And in certain cases downtime is an existential threat. When service interruptions aren’t acceptable, the old break-fix IT model of service isn’t sufficient.
ITSM helps here because it proactively addresses the entire IT life cycle, actively searching for issues and vulnerabilities so they can be solved before they become a problem.
ITSM also helps IT teams maximize efficiency so that when unforeseen problems do occur, your IT teams can respond more quickly and restore service (and customer experience) in less time.
Speed up response times
ITSM helps IT teams become more agile and more responsive. With a more comprehensive understanding of entire IT systems, ITSM teams can identify the personnel with the needed skills and assign them quickly.
And because productivity and efficiency are already higher, teams are better able to respond to requests made by end users.
For the customer, this means no more dealing with layers upon layers of IT service personnel as issues escalate endlessly. Done right, users get access to the support they need much faster and with fewer touchpoints.
Learn what product enhancements users will care about most
ITSM also provides opportunities for better reporting and insights than with other approaches because the ITSM group has access to a wider range of information covering the entire IT estate.
One way to use this enhanced ability is to surface opportunities for product improvements as you interact with user feedback.
For example, a typical market research team at a SaaS company might mine user survey data for responses about desired features and call it a day. But from an IT service management approach, teams might pull from that survey data, usage statistics, crash data, bug reports, and help desk calls.
This access to a wider range of inputs leads to more informed decisions about product roadmaps, R&D, and more.
7 essential ITSM processes (+ the tools you need for them)
Let’s take a deeper look at seven of the most significant processes that make up IT service management, along with some of the tools you need to do them well.
Quick note on terminology: Those following ITIL 4 will typically call these elements ISTM “practices,” not “processes.” This is a change from previous ITIL iterations.
Akshay Anand, writing at ITSM Tools, explains:
“ITIL 4 expands the ITSM processes into ‘practices.’ These share the same value and importance as the previous ITIL processes. Through the processes, elements such as culture, technology, information, and data management can be considered to get a holistic vision of the ways of working in support of business processes and business goals.”
For our purposes, we’re talking about the same thing regardless of which term you choose, and indeed all seven listed below map to one of the ITIL practices.
1. Service request management
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Service request management (SRM) is the process of solving and managing requests from customers. In the ITSM context, these are often requests about upgrades, provisioning, application access, and so on.
In this practice area, when people need new technology, different access, or help with the technology they already have, they create a service request. Then it’s up to the IT group to receive, triage, organize, and ultimately resolve those service requests.
Service requests come in all shapes and sizes. They can be as small and simple as a password reset request, and they can be massive, like a request for a new fleet of workstations.
ITSM groups rely on some kind of SRM software to facilitate this practice. While it’s possible to track SRM in a Microsoft Excel spreadsheet, there are better purpose-built tools out there, like Teamwork Desk.
Desk is Teamwork.com’s help desk software and ticketing system. It’s the perfect way to manage service requests from customers or clients centrally and efficiently — and it integrates seamlessly with the Teamwork.com project management platform, too.
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2. Knowledge management
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Knowledge management is the process of documenting, organizing, using, and sharing the information a company possesses. The practice includes documentation, knowledge sharing, and knowledge structuring or organization.
The goal of knowledge management is to provide the right information to the people who need it with the least possible amount of friction.
This practice area affects most parts of most businesses. For example:
Training and onboarding utilize knowledge management tools and systems to present the relevant knowledge to new hires and trainees.
Employees and customers or clients engage with knowledge management when they search for stored information on policies, how to use or troubleshoot a product, and so forth.
DevOps teams contribute to knowledge management when they produce technical documentation for their latest development project.
These are some of the tools teams use to support knowledge management:
Knowledge bases
Wikis
Intranets
Generative AI tools are also becoming an effective tool for knowledge management, though this is still an emerging use case.
Teamwork.com is best known as a project management software platform, but our Spaces knowledge base software is highly capable as a one-stop-shop for knowledge and resource sharing. Plus, Spaces offers seamless integration with Teamwork.com, infusing projects with company knowledge and creating a true single source of truth.
3. IT asset management
IT asset management (ITAM) takes care of the company’s assets (usually including both physical and intangible assets). It’s closely related to service request management; in fact, tickets for one often contain an aspect of the other. The dividing line is in the names: Asset management is concerned with things (do you have the computer you need?), whereas SRM is concerned with actions and capabilities (does it do what you need it to do?).
Teams often use a database tool to store asset inventory information.
Teamwork.com can serve as an effective resource hub that supports asset management, and our Document Editor is a great resource for IT asset management.
4. Configuration management
Configuration management tracks configuration items, or the ways in which systems, software, people, and documentation relate to one another.
For example, consider the question of which servers various processes and applications run on. This isn’t the domain of SRM or ITAM. It might fit under knowledge management, but we tend to think of knowledge sharing as a little more static. The way an organization configures server load is likely to be more fluid — but it still needs to be documented and managed.
5. Incident management
Incident management is identifying and addressing issues with service or technology. ISTM approaches incident management as a service, enabling rapid response so that incidents can be dealt with before they spread or escalate.
One example of an incident would be a core application or customer-facing website failing. Incident management means having processes and resources in place to rapidly resolve the outage. Teams typically use a ticketing system to handle incident management (such as Spaces by Teamwork).
6. Problem management
Another area IT project managers oversee, problem management takes a step back from the incidents themselves (usually after they have been resolved) and asks the question, “what problem caused this incident to occur?”
It’s one thing if that website went down because a server fried. It’s another if the cause was the early stages of a cyberattack. Businesses need to know the difference, and the processes that focus on this “why” question are a part of problem management rather than incident management.
A ticketing system can be useful here as well, as can a wide range of tools related to risk assessment, security, and testing.
7. Change management
Change management in IT deals with changes to IT infrastructure (for example, a server upgrade or cloud migration), making sure organizations set up and then follow standardized procedures (including educating users before, during, and after the change).
Users should know why a change is happening and what that change will mean for them. Anyone involved with executing the change should also have a clear understanding of the process of implementation and the tasks and schedule related to it.
The change management process should include clear procedures for requesting changes and for processing those requests as they come in.
Eliminate complexity with collaborative ITSM tools
IT service management is a smart approach to the growing technological complexity and interdependence that most organizations are experiencing. It empowers IT teams to view various disjointed IT responsibilities as a cohesive whole, enabling a proactive approach that drives efficiency and lowers costs.
But setting up ITSM well so that your organization gets the most benefit possible can feel like a complex and confounding puzzle.
Teamwork.com is a key piece of that puzzle: While not a comprehensive enterprise service management or ITSM solution, Teamwork.com provides visibility through numerous tools that help ITSM groups collaborate better across their organizations, leading to measurable service improvements.
More resources for IT service providers and MSP's:
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