With the age of technology in which we live today, no business can do without ITSM. However, there are many businesses that do not completely understand the impact and scope that ITSM actually has. Here is a brief overview of what ITSM is, what it can do for your business and how you can leverage it to improve your organization’s competitiveness.

What is ITSM?

ITSM stands for Information Technology Service Management. It is a discipline that is used to manage small, medium and large-scale IT systems in a business or organization.

The Impact of ITSM on Organisations

For the most part, ITSM attends to the back-office aspects of Information Technology in businesses. The idea is that processes be regularized using structured documentation as well as delivery.

There are many service providers, such as SysAid, that can help you integrate ITSM into your business’s infrastructure.

Which Areas Does ITSM Cover?

There are basically five areas that ITSM covers:

  • End Users: Customers as well as employees who require IT services
  • Services: All the hardware, infrastructure, software applications, and so on
  • Quality: Resolving IT related issues efficiently and effectively
  • Business: Helping the business carry out core operations and attain company goals
  • Costs: Reducing costs for the company and also being able to get the most from a company’s IT budget

The Impact of ITSM on Businesses

You would be surprised at the massive impact a fully integrated ITSM system can have on your business.

In a 2017 Forbes Insights survey, when respondents were asked what benefitted their organizations most as a result of ITSM implementation, these were the findings:

  • 42% of the respondents stated that they had realized significant cost savings in business processes.
  • 38% of the respondents saw an increase in employee productivity.
  • 35% saw cost savings in their company’s IT systems.
  • 31% said that they were able to respond much faster to their customers.
  • 18% of the respondents stated that they were seeing faster times to market for their goods or services.

These results showed that the implementation of ITSM has an organization-wide impact, making it more competitive when it is used for services beyond just the IT department.

In fact, the survey showed that many organizations began using ITSM for their IT services, however, when they saw the effectiveness of the discipline, then ended up using it for their entire enterprise.

The survey also found that those organizations that had made ITSM a part of their overall business strategy experienced significantly more benefits than those that did not.

Here are the results of benefits for organizations that used enterprise-wide ITSM vis-à-vis those that did not:

Parameters Enterprise Strategy Ad-Hoc ITSM
IT Systems Cost Savings 49% 28%
Increase in Employee Productivity 48% 16%
Business Process Cost Savings 40% 28%
Increased Customer Response Time 25% 12%
Increased Time to Market 14% 16%
Better Digital Opportunities Support 3% 8%

 

Of the six parameters measured, 4 clearly showed that businesses that had incorporated ITSM in their overall strategy saw greater returns on investment, versus those that did not.

What this means is that when an organization invests more time and resources on creating a strong ITSM infrastructure for the entire enterprise, it experiences significant benefits.

Challenges Faced by ITSM

Despite the great strides that ITSM has made in improving business functions, there are still challenges that are being faced in its implementation.

  • Fragmentation

ITSM services are still extremely fragmented in the majority of businesses. Despite the fact that there is clear data that shows what a positive impact ITSM can have on an organization’s competitiveness, businesses still continue to use it only for IT services or for specific departments within the organization.

  • Cyber Security

With the growth in technology, one of the challenges that most ITSM implementations is cyber security. Security breaches and hacking have become more and more common, which means that data protection has become a key concern for most, if not all businesses.

  • Migrating Data to the Cloud

Businesses are beginning to realize the benefits of moving their IT systems to the cloud. This trend is especially true of small and medium businesses. The challenge is that transferring infrastructure can be expensive, especially for the bigger organizations. In fact, it took Atlassian 2 whole years to transfer its IT infrastructure to the cloud.

The Future of ITSM

As with any process, evolution is the key. And ITSM is no exception to that rule. So, according to Forbes, here are some of the changes in ITSM we should witness over the next few years:

  • The Use of Artificial Intelligence and Automation

Artificial intelligence is already being applied to ITSM so that employees can be provided with 24/7 help from the IT service desks. Digital agents are being created who can resolve basic IT issues that employees may have.

Automation is also on the increase, with many organizations creating home-grown automation scripts to increase efficiencies. This trend in using AI and automation in IT systems is expected to grow over the next few years.

  • Mobility

Thanks to the growth in mobile technology, most people are connected on the go. The expectation among professionals is that they should also be able to conduct business on their mobile devices. Therefore, IT services should also be able to provide services to employees while they are on the move.

  • ESM (Enterprise Service Management)

The next stage of evolution for ITSM is to also deliver ESM going forward. By using the technology as well as the principles of ITSM, ESM can offer service management to multiple business divisions in an organization, to create an enterprise-level system. ITSM’s tools are designed for keeping track of a business’s service levels, managing service requests and incident reports, as well as creating status dashboards.

Businesses that are large and have multiple division such as operations, finance, human resources, legal and so on, will benefit significantly from an enterprise-level service management system.

The importance of ITSM has been growing over the years, and now, with the developments in technology, this discipline can expand beyond just being a solution for the IT department of a company, leading to greater competitiveness and efficiencies.

 

About The Author:

M Umair is a technology writer (IT, Software’s, Entrepreneurship) and professionally providing authority backlinks on sites, Click Here

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