As businesses scale, the need for strong IT service management (ITSM) becomes even more pivotal. It is crucial for companies to build and maintain a sustainable IT system that complements their business growth and promotes digitization.
Amid this growth, IT departments are expected to improve responsiveness to governance, risk management, incident management, and more. Adding further complexity to an already intricate environment, IT systems need to smoothly integrate upgraded tools and applications into business workflows as technology evolves at an exponential speed.
Organizations are in need of efficient IT service management to quickly and proactively address problems, ensuring they have adequate technological support at hand. By continuing to support your organization’s tech needs, ITSM features help you position your business better for long-term success.
Most companies today rely on ITSM tools to execute policies and processes that drive agility, operational efficiency, automation, and customer satisfaction. However, due to the rapid evolution of the ITSM software market, businesses find it challenging to choose ITSM software with the right capabilities that fulfill their functional requirements.
In this blog, we will discuss key ITSM features to help you make the right choice.
Key ITSM features
1. Service desk:
An IT service desk is a communication channel that serves as a point of contact between a business and its end users namely customers, partners, vendors, and employees. Service desks aren’t your typical help desks. In fact, they handle multiple ITSM processes, from incident management to service requests, change management, knowledge management and more. Being a centralized hub of multiple processes, they form the face of your company.
Some of the processes you can efficiently handle are:
- Ticketing: Real-time ticketing systems give you instant updates on the status of service requests and incidents
- Project management: Create and manage projects, monitor their progress, assign tasks to users for a simplified project workflow
- Incident resolution: With automation, smart analytics and real-time analytics, you’re able to resolve incidents swiftly and reduce the mean time to repair (MTTR).
2. Service catalog:
Service request management is one of the fundamental ITSM processes which is assisted by a user-friendly service catalog. Your users may request different services such as employees requesting access to a software, new laptop, or your customer requesting pricing information for one of your service offerings.
The IT service catalog serves as a centralized service management tool that lets you approve the use of these service requests within the parameters of compliance. This simplifies the user experience, expedites service delivery and allows the end-user to quickly deploy pre-approved services within your company’s defined boundaries.
3. Configuration management:
Configuration management is an ITSM tool feature that ensures that your hardware and software IT assets maintain a consistent and desirable state over time. This proactive approach builds consistency and compliance across your entire IT infrastructure.
ITSM maintains configuration by automating tasks such as updating SSL certificates or installing a certain Windows version across all your company-wide machines. By doing this, it reduces the risk of configuration drift, where assets deviate from their desired state over time.
Another challenge businesses usually encounter as they grow is maintaining standardized names for on-premise software. This confusion happens when there are multiple versions of the same software, which may lead to inaccuracies and discrepancies in your data record. To avoid this, ITSM supports software normalization that lets you create standardized records for each version of the software.
4. Reporting tools & analytics:
ITSM software comprises customizable reports that let you track key metrics such as ticket resolution times, incident frequency, software performance and usage patterns. The analytics feature is very useful in detailing service metrics, yielding custom reports on tickets resolved per each service desk employee and the frequency of requests. This advanced analytical and reporting capability gives insights into the state of IT services and allows you to make decisions backed by data.
5. Knowledge base
Knowledge base is a customizable knowledge repository that contains information about your product, software, services or other miscellaneous topics. This allows for an efficient and specific way of information management. It contains setup guides, FAQs, troubleshooting guides, software tutorials and knowledge articles.
The knowledge base is quite useful for new employees during their onboarding as they can quickly familiarize themselves with your IT processes. Similarly, it gives your customers prompt access to troubleshooting information so that they don’t have to wait for the IT team’s guidance.
6. Asset & license management
Integrating asset discovery and management with ITSM lets you track and optimize the entire lifecycle of your IT assets. By having real-time access to information about your assets, you can make configuration changes, security updates, resolve incidents, and manage device deployment.
License management is another crucial process that begins with collecting data on software usage, including licenses, installations and user access. This data is then compared with the terms outlined in the agreements. In case of any discrepancy, the IT teams will be notified automatically so that they can rectify any non-compliance issues.
7. Auto-discovery & deployment
With a rise in BYOD policies, many employees bring their devices to work or even use cloud software at home when working remotely. Without a discovery network, you won’t have an idea of the ghost devices using your network and their activities. A cloud-based auto-discovery agent would detect all the computer devices that have the agent installed in their system.
It will then scan their information, IP address, configuration and anti-virus details. Having this protects you from data breaches, unauthorized software usage, and gives visibility into your network’s state. Having a robust security mechanism is vital, as a survey by Security.org revealed that 25% customers won’t do business with data breached companies again:
8. End-point & patch management
End-point management keeps company data secure at all end-points including laptops, computers, tablets, mobile phones, and digital printers. To put security measures in place, it implements screen locks, erases confidential data, manages wifi passwords, and assumes control over the device remotely.
Patch management secures your software landscape by scanning different devices, identifying any security updates and then applying software patches. This guarantees that all your devices are updated with the latest security version and protects them from cyber attacks.
IT Service Management is an indispensable asset for business today. With proactive incident management, real-time asset tracking, knowledge management and streamlined service request handling, you can steer your company towards improved business outcomes. By integrating ITSM, you’re not only transforming your IT operations, but also strengthening your business’s competitive landscape.
Frequently Asked Questions
1. What role does proactive end-point management play in enhancing IT security?
A proactive approach to end-point management protects sensitive data on end-point devices like laptops, desktops and tablets. Measures like screen locks, mandatory password access and device lock reduce the risk of security breaches.
2. What ITSM tool features contribute to greater financial transparency?
The asset and license management features help you curtail wasteful spending. They give you greater transparency into software usage patterns, license allocations and any underutilized software. In case there are any extra licenses, you will be notified so that you don’t pay for software that isn’t being used by your teams.
3. What are the risks associated with not implementing an ITSM solution?
By not implementing ITSM software, you expose your company to numerous risks that disrupt your operations and lead to dissatisfied customers. These risks include frequent unplanned downtime, slower incident response times, higher operational costs and security breaches.
