Becoming a mature IT organization is the goal of just about every IT department. Even if an organization’s IT team is comprised of one expert who works with different solution providers to flesh out technology services, that individual will want to develop efficient, streamlined operations. Large organizations need to strive for IT maturity or risk having inefficiency, bureaucracy and instability lead to instability and waste. Either way, many companies begin with IT systems that exist solely to support the business. They need to evolve to the point that technology delivers value and serves as a catalyst for innovation. Mature IT departments deliver on that promise.
Becoming a mature IT organization requires a gradual evolution in which companies move from having homegrown help desk systems to using dedicated IT service desk tools to achieve ITSM excellence. Three ITSM modules that serve as the foundation for this iterative growth are:
1. Incident Management
The first stepping stone to future excellence, incident management gives companies an opportunity to organize, prioritize and document support tickets in the most efficient way possible. An incident management solution is the lifeblood of a dedicated help desk solution. It will convert emails into support tickets, use keywords and similar details within those messages to prioritize and sort those tickets and provide tracking and documentation functions that ensure everything is taken care of in a timely manner.
These capabilities underpin everyday IT and support operations. IT teams spend a great deal of time responding directly to user demands, no matter how trivial they are, and IT organizations that want to become mature need to streamline these processes. Incident management makes that possible.
2. Problem Management
Dealing with problems is critical if you want your IT team to ever make serious progress toward maturation. Many incidents that consistently come up on the service desk are caused by problems with the configuration. These issues undermine your efficiency by causing the same end-user problems to arise over and over again, leading to an operational climate that fuels tedium and waste. Ignoring these problems may be an option in some circ*mstances, but only if your IT and support teams have the extra time in the day to deal with repetitive concerns without getting too stressed and frustrated.
However, satisfying your IT and support teams and creating an efficient work environment is not the only issue that comes into play here. You also have to consider the way IT delivers value to the business. Innovative projects, app development and similar tasks can fuel organizational growth and value creation, but your IT teams can only work on these efforts if they have time. Problem management frees your IT organization from spending all of its its time on menial tasks and lets them make room for innovation.
3. Change Management
Solving problems and releasing new apps and services hinges on being able to change the IT configuration efficiently. Change operations can create considerable risk in IT departments that have not streamlined and coordinating their processes. A single mistake can lead to downtime or data loss. A user going off the script can make changes that have dire unintended consequences. You need to be able to anticipate the implications of changes, streamline scheduling, organize processes and provide users with viable collaboration options. Change management gives you all of these functions while letting you establish best practices that ensure stability.
Becoming a mature IT organization means being able to handle the diverse range of tasks that come up on a consistent basis while maintaining efficient operations. Advanced ITSM tools make that possible, giving you the stepping stones you need to achieve full maturity.
