What is ITSM? A Guide to All of the Details, Simplified

In today’s world, everything is bound together by IT. Be it any field, the growth and outreach have been helped by the IT sector. The easier it looks, the more difficult it is. Without management of the IT sector, this wouldn’t have been possible. 

Diving into ITSM-

ITSM or for better understanding IT service management helps in the better optimization and management of the business units. In other words, it helps in designing, creating, delivering, supporting, and management of the lifecycle of IT services. They also help in solving daily issues that can erupt and create a problem in the business world. Functions like AWS and Azure are also included along with the other features. It also provides value to stakeholders and end to end-users. ITSM senses potential risks that can arise, and it accordingly takes measures to tackle them. ITSM practices the principles of Agile, Lean-IT, DevOps, etc. 

Stakeholders of ITSM-

Who is a stakeholder? In simpler words, a person who is interested in a product, company, or service and wants to further invest in it is called a stake holder. They invest with a will to draw some value to themselves. Suppliers are the people who get paid initially or are the people who provide a certain service. Middle suppliers can also be considered as stakeholders if they further invest in forming a chain.

Stakeholders in ITSM can be employees of the same ITSM, different companies, vendors, regulators, users, etc. ITSM stakeholders are divided into two broad categories-

INTERNAL STAKEHOLDERS-

People who work in the same organization and invest in the home organization. They are also known as internal customers.

EXTERNAL STAKEHOLDERS-

People who belong to a different company other than the one providing the service are known as external stakeholders.

Importance of ITSM-

Implementation of ITSM helps in structured delivery and documentation. It also helps in cost-saving and thus better decision making. A growing business needs ITSM for a mature process. Some of the common benefits of ITSM are-

• Improved quality of service
• Reduced IT costs
• Improved governance and lower risks
• Increased flexibility
• Better agility

Implementation of ITSM processes-

The right way to implement ITSM processes is to understand business needs. For example, we have a team fire fighting issues at all times; in such a case, it is better to find the root cause and remove the issue.

ITSM focuses on going from incident management to problem management. This means rather than solving the current incident, and we should consider the underlying problem. Cultural change, along with ITSM tools, help in the correct implementation of the ISTM process.

Some of the key points to be kept in mind are-

Evaluating your needs-

For better results regarding ITSM tools, we need to consider the size of the current team and the ability to scale it in the near future. However big the team is, they should be mature enough to understand the adoption of the ITSM process.

Problem statement-

The issue you are trying to solve should be clear to everyone, and there should not be any ambiguity regarding it. You should define your critical issues first and then proceed with the rest. After this, you should plan which process is needed according to the severity of the issue. Defining your problem prior will help you to align your service better and obtain better business results.

A framework to be adopted-

What framework you need to choose highly depends on your problem statement. Different frameworks help you to streamline the service, reduce risk, and aim at getting better output. Frameworks are in varying capacities, and they deploy different processes.

ITSM best practices-

• Incident management- the process of reducing the current erupted issue so that the business process can work smoothly.
• Problem management- It is the process of identifying the underlying problem due to which similar issues come into the light.
• Asset management- Every organization requires hardware and software for its work. The tracking, updating, and management of assets is achieved through asset management.
• Change management- Any change offered in the service should be communicated to all the clients and should be updated in the system, and this is done by change management.
• Project management- it helps in better planning, tracking, and delegating tasks throughout a project lifecycle.
• Knowledge management- it is the process of passing information to all clients in a better-organized manner.

ITSM vs. ITIL

Understanding the difference between ITSM and ITIL is important. ITIL is the most commonly used ITSM framework, but it’s just one of the ways of doing ITSM.

As Stephen puts it – “The easiest way to describe the difference is to think of goldfish and fish per se: a goldfish is a fish but not all fish are goldfish. So ITIL is ITSM but not all ITSM is ITIL.”

Top ITSM Matrics-

• First level resolution
• Customer satisfaction
• Cost per ticket
• Meantime resolution
• First contact resolution 

Challenges of ITSM-

• Knowledge Transfer
• Auto-generated alerts
• Mixing incident and service request
• Adoption of new technology

Top 5 ITSM tools-

Any tools to come into the top 5 should have the following features-

• Formalize IT processes and practices according to an ITSM framework
• Offer an internal service request and incident ticketing system.
• Track internal service requests and incidents at the micro and macro levels
• Organize and manage IT assets
• Centralize a business’ IT service knowledge

1. Zendesk Support Suite
2. Fresh service
3. SolarWinds service desk
4. SysAid
5. Jira service desk

The future of ITSM, as with most technologies, lies with AI. Reports say that IT organizations spend 66 percent of their resources on day-to-day operations, in “keeping the lights on” activities. AI in ITSM would bring about the automation of mundane work with changes like auto ticket resolution, workload optimization, predictive maintenance, to name a few. The future of ITSM will be heavily influenced by AI, with effects reaching across departments, from the management to the agents to the customers.

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