There’s a big variety of IT Service Management (ITSM) software available to choose from, so how do you go about finding the right one for your company? From cost to administrative needs and implementation style – each vendor offers different options. Whichever vendor you pick, there are four features that make up a great ITSM platform.
1. ITSM Platforms Need to be Customer-Centric
There are often a lot of cooks in the kitchen when it comes to ITSM. Decision-makers, thought leaders, staff and admin support all interact with your ITSM platform in different ways, and you need to be sure your platform is easy to work with.
A platform that puts a customer-centered focus on your system and your team is a critical factor. It also needs to allow for the adoption of the ITIL framework at a pace that is right for your organization – growing from low to medium adoption up through expert.
One of the best ways to ensure anyone can pick up your ITSM platform and use it – from those in IT to other departments like HR, finance and facilities – is to pick a vendor that offers a codeless ITSM tool.
Dusty Borchardt, business systems manager at Oklahoma City, said he and his team are big fans of TeamDynamix ITSM, “This is the first IT Service Management Platform we’ve implemented that everyone loves to use.”
Borchardt describes the implementation process itself as “fantastic.”
“We worked side by side with the TeamDynamix team to configure the system. The TeamDynamix consultants taught us every aspect of the platform as we progressed through the system setup,” he explains. “This helped us understand not only how to use it, but more importantly, how to think about the system strategically. It was an immediate transfer of knowledge on how the system works across all areas.” Using TeamDynamix has helped Oklahoma City’s IT support teams realize their vision for using industry best practices to improve the delivery of IT services.
“We adopted the ITIL framework more than 15 years ago. We’ve had effective processes in place for a while, but we haven’t had a decent toolset to manage them until now,” Borchardt concludes.
2. Product Strategy for ITIL
ITSM is evolving, and your platform needs to be able to adapt as well. A nimble and agile platform that is committed to a road map for the future will ensure that your systems are ready for every evolutionary change in the ITSM sector.
Without a configurable platform, you won’t be able to quickly adapt to the changes and evolution in maturity – especially as it relates to the adoption of ITIL best practices. In addition, you want to make sure your ITSM tool is easy to use, own and operate – meaning you don’t need a big team of admins to make sure the tool works properly. Cumbersome and complex ITSM tools can quickly drain your resources and impede success.
Nutrabolt, a rapid-growth active health and wellness company based in Austin, Texas, is using TeamDynamix ITSM to build out its IT strategy and establish effective IT processes that follow industry best practices. As a result, Teammates are communicating better — and IT staff work more efficiently to support the needs of a global workforce.
“I’ve always looked to universities as a model,” Mark Dittenber, director of IT, said. “They have to onboard thousands of new people every semester.” With the rapid growth Nutrabolt is experiencing, Dittenber wanted to bring those same capabilities to his organization.
In his research, he learned that TeamDynamix is widely used to streamline workflows and improve IT maturity.
“I liked the platform’s lightweight nature, as well as its ability to scale with our needs,” Dittenber observed. He and his Team were able to implement TeamDynamix in a matter of weeks.
At Festival Foods, ease of use was a big factor in the grocery chain’s decision to switch to TeamDynamix off another popular ITSM system.
“I’ve used a couple of tools now,” Alex Turek, IT service desk manager, said, “and I’ve found that the biggest question is: How many IT resources do you need to maintain them? There are fantastic platforms out there for IT Service Management, but you might need two full-time head counts just to keep them up and running.”
“This tool can run itself,” Turek said. “I’m impressed with the lack of coding knowledge and IT terminology you need to know to set it up. It’s drag and drop, and it’s completely customizable. There’s not a lot of work we have to do to maintain it. It just works.”
Festival Foods’ previous IT Service Management platform required deep technical expertise to make any changes. This was becoming an issue because it was draining the IT service desk employees and taking up too much time.
“Our developers were very booked and didn’t have time to maintain it, so this fell to the service desk,” Turek said. “I’m not a developer, so trying to make changes and configurations was hard. Our end-users were very dissatisfied in trying to use the tool. They didn’t like submitting tickets. And our IT team was not very satisfied with what they could get out of it, either. We did some research, and the TeamDynamix all-in-one tool was very appealing to us.”
3. ITSM Self-Service Portal and Automation
If you are working on an ITSM team, you are undoubtedly overwhelmed by the sheer volume of requests. Getting your arms around this problem involves several key steps, and one is to implement a centralized portal. self-service With ITSM spending on the rise in the coming years, plenty of questions need to be answered, but none are more prominent than: “Are you ready?”
One of the most compelling reasons to go to a self-service portal is that it actually contains valuable information—and you can easily find it. Self-service portals cut down on call volume and free up your help desk relieving them of the burden of being swamped with redundant and mundane tasks.
Additionally, you can pair your ITSM platform with an integration and automation tool like iPaaS (integration platform as a service) and fully automate all those requests for password resets and the like. This eliminates manual, mundane tasks and frees your team up to work on larger, more practical projects.
That’s what the City of Avondale is doing.
By leveraging a single portal with automated request routing and workflows, they can be more responsive and transparent with citizens. The government for the City of Avondale consists of 14 departments serving nearly 100,000 residents. Its use of TeamDynamix (TDX) began within the IT department, which was looking for a better way to support employees’ use of technology through ITSM.
“Before, people would have to call or email our help desk with their service requests,” said CIO Jeff Scheetz. “However, now with the portal, IT has been able to create workflows and automation, rather than managing the many email and ticket requests. The workflow ensures that the requests are handled efficiently and provides additional reporting capabilities. Before, it was hard to prioritize tasks without a full view of what was going on.”
In just a little over a year, Scheetz and his staff transformed the delivery of IT service for the city using the TeamDynamix platform.
Now, government employees can submit their IT service requests through a self-service portal, and they can find answers to common questions and problems within a growing knowledge base.
When service requests are submitted, they are routed automatically to the appropriate team member for a response, based on the nature of the issue. Team members are automatically notified when tasks that affect them are completed or require their involvement—and comprehensive dashboards give IT leaders full visibility into the status of all service requests.
“We have better communication now, and tickets are getting handled much faster,” Scheetz observed. “The platform saves everyone a lot of time and helps us make sure that nothing gets lost in the shuffle.”
4. Integrated Knowledge Management
A highly indexed knowledge base is essential for any ITSM team that wants to improve its service quality and efficiency. And when you have a highly indexed knowledge base with the ability to take iterative feedback for updates and integrated service buttons you can more easily drive self-service adoption.
There is much talk amongst the TeamDynamix customer base on the topic of Knowledge-Centered Service (KCS®). KCS is a great way to document and enhance your knowledge base for crowd consumption. Many organizations that have implemented KCS are now seeing significant improvements in incident resolution and student satisfaction.
When it comes to knowledge management, the challenge is how to document and enhance all organizational knowledge for crowd consumption. This is where KCS and your knowledge base come in. You want to be able to offer employees and customers a one-stop shop for all ITSM questions and service requests.
The University of South Dakota (USD) struggled with knowledge residing in silos across various departments as well as poor communication, leading to inefficiencies when delivering service.
Katharina Wymar, head of Project Management, said “We lacked that one platform, that one mindset that allowed us to share knowledge.”
That’s when they turned to the solution of a knowledge base so that all of their information could be in a single, easily accessible location.
After building out their knowledge base and implementing KCS they quickly saw an 18% reduction in time logged to service tickets, and after six months there were 31,000 users, 262,000 page views, and 5,000 knowledge articles being included in the base.
Looking for more tips on evaluating ITSM vendors? Check out our guide to finding the best ITSM tool. Want to hear how TeamDynamix’s ITSM measures up? See what our customers say about us.