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it service management

Why Service Management Tools are important for your business departments.

IT Service Management (ITSM).

ITSM is integration of set of policies, process & procedures to manage IT services. ITSM helps business to have a strong hold on managing the entire cycle of IT Services from implementation, improvement to customer focused IT Services.

ITSM helps business to have a strong hold on multiple IT management frameworks that can be applied to both centralized and de-centralised systems. ITSM can be applied to general IT management frameworks and also to unique industries like healthcare, government or technology which have unique specified IT requirements. ITSM changes organizations to deliver value based services to customers than just being technology management services companies.

What does ITSM do for your business?

ITSM offers various frameworks for businesses to create management standards around IT services and customer service practices. It encompasses quality management, software engineering, change management, information security management as well as popular management framework standards like ISO 9000, ITIL® and ISO/IEC 20000.

It isn’t so much what ITSM can do, but what businesses can do with the frameworks that live within the ITSM discipline. They are designed to bring organization and structure to service-oriented IT departments, aligning IT goals with business needs and goals. It’s used as a guide to help businesses effectively align IT goals and business goals, especially for companies that are customer-focused. If your company has already embraced change management, you’re already on the path to building an ITSM environment – it’s all about improvement and growth in processes, services, products and software.

ITSM service desk

One primary practice that falls under ITSM is the service desk, which is defined in the ITIL® manual. ITIL® views service desks as a Single Point of Contact (SPOC), which can streamline communication within an organization or business unit. Service desks act as a hub for users and customers to contact well-trained staff to manage issues in an organized and coordinated manner.

The service desk is viewed as a primary IT function in ITSM to provide a SPOC to accommodate and manage users, IT staff, customers and IT objectives. An IT service desk, call center or help desk is the central hub for incident tickets, service requests, questions, internal issues, client and customer service and more. As such, it’s importance is heavily emphasized in the ITSM discipline as well as the ITIL® framework.

ITSM Processes

Information Technology comes with processes that are specific to technology, ITSM seamlessly integrates them with business objectives & goals, ITSM changes the focus from IT-specific to value based services.

  • Process Focus: shifting IT from focusing on technology to thinking about processes on a business-level
  • Prevention: viewed as “firefighting” in IT, but addressed as preventative on the business side
  • Proactive: shifting IT practices to a proactive, rather than reactive, strategy
  • Customers: viewing users as customers
  • Distributed, sourced: changing from traditional centralized IT with everything completed in-house
  • Integrated, enterprise-wide: shifting from a siloed IT department to a department with less isolation
  • Repeatable, accountable: creating structure instead of “ad hoc” practices by standardizing processes
  • Formal best practices: establishing processes rather than working off informal policies so everyone is on the same page
  • Business perspective: moving away from thinking about IT-specific needs to full-scale business needs
  • Service orientation: shifting from traditional “operational specific” IT initiatives to a focus on customer and client service

Some of the popular ITSM frameworks:

  • ITIL® 4: a framework of best practices for delivering IT services
  • Business Process Framework (eTOM): a framework designed for telecommunications service providers
  • COBIT (Control Objectives for information and Related Technologies): an IT governance framework
  • FitSM: a simplified, streamlined service management framework typically aligned with ISO/IEC 20000
  • ISO/IEC 20000: considered the international standard for IT service management and delivery
  • VeriSM™: is a service management approach for the digital age that helps service providers to create a flexible operating model to meet desired business outcomes
  • IT4IT: The Open Group IT4IT Reference Architecture is a standard reference architecture for managing the business of IT. It uses a value chain approach to create a model of the functions that IT performs to help organizations identify the activities that contribute to business competitiveness.

ITSM tools

You’ll find plenty of software suites that are aimed at supporting entire ITSM processes to handle ticketing, service, incidents and any upgrades, changes or problems. Typically, these suites are marketed as either ITSM or ITIL® solutions and focus on supporting IT workflow management. These ITSM software suites contain everything businesses need to work within the framework of their choice, and offer flexibility for businesses to deploy all the features they need.

There are over 100 tools that claim to support ITSM and ITIL®; only some are certified. Software vendors can gain approval from Axelos to use the trademark and an “ITIL® process compliant logo,” according to Axelos’ website, as long as the software meets the functional requirements to support ITIL.

Top ITSM tools sorted by price performance ratio, by best value for money.

  • SMART ServiceDesk.co
  • Spiceworks
  • TOPdesk
  • Zendesk.com
  • Atlassian Jira Service Desk
  • Freshworks Freshservice
  • ManageEngine ServiceDesk Plus
  • Cherwell Service Management
  • SolarWinds Service Desk
  • Ivanti Service Manager
  • ServiceNow.com
  • BMC Remedy

ITSM certification

You can earn a certification in the ITSM discipline, and there are options for corporate-level training and certification, as well as for individuals. But before you find the correct certification program, you need to know the framework you plan to use. While you can be certified in ITSM as a discipline, most programs are based on a specific framework. As all ITSM Tools are based on ITIL®, Individual ITIL® Certification are must to have. List of organization providing ITIL® trainings can be found at https://www.peoplecert.org/ways-to-get-certified/online

Few Service Management Solutions which we have evaluated and these solutions also have been Pink Verify for ITIL Compliance

  • SMART ServiceDesk.co – 11 Processes
  • IBM Control Desk – 12 Processes
  • Manage Engine – 4 Process
  • Micro Focus – 7 Processes
author avatar
Eppo Luppes

Facilitation of a Business Simulation is what Eppo has done for more than 15 years now. Hundreds of simulation attended by thousands of delegates made him very experienced in helping organizations and individuals to learn capabilities and discover new ways to adapt to an ever changing working environment. Business simulations as the Apollo 13, Marslander and others will make an impact, or as Eppo says: “ You forget what you had for dinner yesterday, you will never forget the business Simulation you did, and the learning outcomes”.

Eppo has developed the capability to facilitate the Business Simulations by combining his experience from the field of ITSM, his unique capability to teach and his personal style. The latter can be described as respectful and challenging. The facilitator ‘plays’ several roles. Of course one of them is ‘the game leader’. His motto is that delegates should understand the simulation rules and be comfortable in a safe environment, before even starting. However when the simulation is running, his role might change into the CEO who challenges the team to make decisions on conflicting events. Never ever these challenges Eppo imposes on the team are too difficult to handle. So part of his facilitation skills is to lower - or to raise the bar according to the challenges the team just can handle. Because doing a business simulation should also be fun to do and be rewarding.

A business simulation hardly ever is a one-off. The delegates are askes – at the end of the simulation – to reflect on their own experience of the day. This 30 minutes of reflection is ‘the most important half hour of the day’. Delegates and facilitator will capture lessons learned and use these newly acquired skills the next day. One of the key questions of these reflection is: “what will you do different tomorrow?”.

NOT A GAME!, a Business simulation is serious matter. Hence, before engaging with the team, Eppo will discuss the learning outcomes before performing the simulation. What are the presenting issues? What are the goals of the team and its management? When are we satisfied? And most important, What are we going to do AFTER we have completed the Simulation?