Benefits of ITSM in delivering value

The ever-evolving tech scenario is crafting an environment that is rapidly changing and impacting how businesses operate. Born as a set of practices to ensure that technology meets users’ needs, today, an organization reaps the benefits of ITSM in delivering value.

But what is ITSM, and why is it important? What is the future of ITSM?

Simply put, IT service management (ITSM) is the process of how teams manage the end-to-end delivery of various IT services to their customers through various activities like designing, creating, delivering, and offering support. Following a proactive, process-oriented approach, ITSM aligns the technology with the business needs and increases organizational efficiency. According to a Forbes survey, 56% of enterprises find the benefits of IT Service Management solutions extremely important to their organization in supporting cloud computing and mobile computing efforts.

With changing IT scenarios and the advent of powerful technologies, ITSM is more relevant than ever. However, IT service management must not deviate from its primary purpose – delivering value to businesses.

Challenges for IT service management

Today, people expect technology to do more with a lot less, putting businesses under immense pressure to undergo digital transformation, increase their efficiency, capture new markets, and cater to their customers. Tech leaders are pressed to be more innovative and creative. With the IT landscape changing tremendously, IT service management has its share of challenges.

Keeping up with skills in the changing landscape

Deficiency of skills is a top issue that ITSM faces. 80% of North America’s IT teams face a skill gap, with the problem increasing by 155% in the last three years. The skill gap leads to delays in development and deployment, expensive operating costs, and increased stress. Despite the skill gap, less than 60% of business executives are ready to offer formal training to employees, which shows that organizations are not serious about skill development. Strategic and continuous training is the perfect antidote for this raging skill gap challenge.

Managing IT budgets

Managing IT budgets, including the cost of maintaining uptime and availability, making upgrades, and fixing bugs and patches, can be a headache. Companies spend most of their IT staff hours on these upgrades and maintenance work. If not managed well, a lack of funds for maintenance work can cripple the organization’s efforts to pursue a new project or initiatives like digital transformation, cloud computing, and more. To counter this issue, businesses are now adopting cloud computing and automation strategies to manage their IT resources better.

Fragmented IT services

A long-hurting challenge that IT-managed services companies face is that ITSM remains  fragmented within most enterprises. The majority of enterprises do not have a clear idea of how or where to use IT service management or realize the value of ITSM. According to a survey by Forbes, only 8% of businesses focus on the advantages of ITSM to closely align it with the overall success of a business. Organizations with more ITSM focus on enterprise-level goals taste more success than others in the lot.

Lack of service management hurts business competitiveness

With companies delving deeper into their digital transformation efforts, the need for ITSM is taking on a new urgency. We can compare the lack of IT service management in an enterprise to purchasing a state-of-the-art motor vehicle with no provisions for error detection or management. It might seem exciting at the start, but eventually, the results will be catastrophic. A business spending excessively on maintenance and updates without venturing into new projects or initiatives kills the competitive spirit of the organization, leading to its downfall.

Aligning the focus of service management to deliver value

Focus on a business-first ITSM approach

IT service management does not limit itself to IT. The success of ITSM is defined by not how well the technology works but by how much a business benefits from it. For this same reason, organizations must reimagine the use of ITSM beyond IT teams, and support other vital business functions like finances, customer support, HR, compliances, and more. With a single integrated enterprise platform, businesses can enjoy better control, transparency, and maintenance.

Understand each sector to the core

Each sector and vertical in an organization or industry has its own way of working, style, and nuances. To create the right solution that serves the unique requirements of the verticals, the IT teams must understand the sectoral nuances at their core. With ample research, surveys, and understanding, the ITSM teams can create vertical-specific solutions that increase the productivity of the business.

Measurable results

As the saying goes, you cannot manage what you cannot measure. Whatever solution you create, you must calculate the outcomes. Let the stats speak for the success and benefits of ITSM services. Measurable outcomes help the business and ITSM providers make upgrades or fix issues with the existing solution and reap more rewards.

The new IT with service management

IT service management is now an integral part of the digital transformation journey of an organization. But why do businesses need ITSM? With technology and IT teams becoming an inevitable need for enterprises, businesses are looking for a smarter approach to deploying and managing technology.

Contributing to the digital transformation efforts

IT service management, today, is an inevitable part of digital transformation efforts. According to Forbes, 57% of business executives rate ITSM tools and methodologies as vital to their digital transformation efforts. By following an enterprise-first approach to service delivery, the likelihood  of businesses adopting ITSM increases. IT service management delivers enhanced transparency about the system design, increases productivity among developers and designers, and helps an organization to up its ability to add a new service or vertical.

A part of the cloud strategy

Similar to digital transformation, IT service management plays a critical role in the success of an organization’s cloud computing efforts. 56% of businesses find ITSM extremely useful for their cloud strategies. IT service management fits perfectly into the cloud strategy of an enterprise, offering them improved transparency into the cloud provider’s issues. ITSM offers businesses better support to SLAs, more flexibility to adopt new technologies or platforms, improved security, and better support to cloud users. IT service management is the way forward to build an organization’s cloud infrastructure.

Powering mobile computation

Mobile computing is becoming a basic necessity for today’s businesses, and IT service management supports an enterprise’s efforts for the same. Similar to the cloud, ITSM offers businesses greater transparency with mobile computing, while offering better device support and handling a large number of users. IT service management enhances the security of mobile computing and makes more services available on mobile devices.

Enhancing big data analytics

Data is an inevitable part of today’s business world. With the popularity of big data on the rise, enterprises feel that ITSM plays a crucial role in their growth. IT service management caters to the needs of a larger pool of customers and enhances the support a business delivers to more extensive data sets. With ITSM comes more flexibility to adopt new technologies, improve big data system management, and enhance overall data security.

Conclusion

IT service management is now a critical factor that determines the success of a business, its flexibility, and its adaptability to new technologies. Wondering about the future of ITSM? Want to know more about how IT service management can boost your business? Let’s take a step further on your ITSM journey.