ITSM

IT Service Management (ITSM) refers to all processes and activities in managing the delivery of IT services to customers. It is essential to understand that the main focus of ITSM is the delivery of values to customers instead of just the tools or the framework.

ITSM is essential for a variety of reasons. Implementing ITSM can help regularize processes through structured delivery and documentation. ITSM implementation also helps in saving costs by building a predictable IT org and implementing ITSM for business benefits by bringing actionable IT insights to the business that help in decision making.

ITSM Efficiencies

A significant benefit of ITSM is its ability to improve IT efficiency. ITSM does this in the following ways:

  • Efficient use of scarce IT resources: The ITSM umbrella encompasses the entire range of IT services for a more efficient approach.
  • Process workflow: Automated process workflow improves collaboration and eliminates many manual tasks, giving more time to focus on strategy and customers.
  • Save time and money: ITSM identifies and eliminates recurring problems and promotes faster issue resolution, which will reduce costs in terms of time and money investments.
  • Reduce downtime: Faster IT response and improved availability management mean that your resources will always be working to improve your business.
  • Prevent issues before they occur: Create compelling, customized responses to specific IT issues.
  • Insightful reports: Reporting automation makes the reporting process more cost-effective and accurate.
  • Service-based incident management: ITSM allows you to identify potential issues and respond to them before they cause serious problems.
  • Quickly bounce back from critical IT issues: ITSM provides the strategies and resources to weather even the most challenging IT storms and then bounce back quickly.

ITSM Processes

To reach the expected efficiencies, ITSM is usually done with certain processes. A few of the core ITSM processes include:

  • Incident management: it handles the entire incident-management process (a disruption to regular operations) to restore the services to customers as quickly as possible
  • Problem management: it removes defects from the IT infrastructure, eliminates recurring incidents, and stabilizes the environment
  • Change management: it tracks scheduled and planned infrastructure changes, including the approval and rollback scenario.
  • Request management: it manages and follows up on service requests by setting up priorities and progress updates
  • Knowledge management: it is the process of creating, sharing, using, and managing the knowledge and information of an organization
  • IT Asset management: it makes sure that the valuable items, tangible and intangible, in your organization are tracked and used efficiently

vs. ITIL

Information Technology Infrastructure Library (ITIL) is the most commonly used framework for ITSM. It provides detailed best practices for IT functions to align with an organization’s business outcomes. The ITIL framework has been through several iterations, with the latest referred to as ITIL 4

However, ITIL is not the only framework for doing ITSM. Other widely used frameworks include Capability Maturity Model Integration (CMMI), Control Objectives for Information Related Technologies (COBIT), ISO 20000, Six Sigma, and others.

ITSM in Polyrific

In Polyrific, we always look for ways to improve our ITSM process. As the first principle of ITSM says, delivering values to customers should always be the top priority over the tooling and frameworks.

We have been using the Jira Service Management app to manage all IT requests (if you’ve missed the announcement, please find it here). It has helped us track and set priorities on common IT-related requests, like adding new user accounts, resetting passwords, VPN access, etc.

Please let us know if you have ideas or feedback about the things we should improve on the ITSM process. We will very much appreciate it.

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