As IT departments modernize their service management tech stacks, automation stands out as a pivotal force driving significant transformations in how the IT service desk operates.
By enhancing efficiency, minimizing errors and emancipating IT professionals from repetitive tasks, automation fosters an environment ripe for innovation. Below, we explore how automation is reshaping IT Service Management (ITSM), spotlighting examples of its successful integration and the profound impact on service delivery and operational proficiency.
Enhancing Efficiency
Automation introduces unparalleled speed and consistency to ITSM processes. Routine tasks such as ticket routing, incident management and user requests can now be processed in a fraction of the time, with minimal human intervention.
Using automation to reduce the drain on IT resources and provide a better service experience is one of the key initiatives for digital transformation in the financial services industry. And to achieve success in this area, you need the right people, processes and technology in place.
“We’re lean and mean,” Deborah Rojas, Chief Information Officer for Charter Oak Financial said. Her department supports the IT needs of 300+ financial professionals and nearly 200 other staff with only a handful of full-time employees.
With TeamDynamix ITSM, the practice optimization team has created a single point of contact for IT and other types of support: a “one-stop shop” for people to get help.
“We had a merger three years ago, and people are still trying to learn names, functions, and responsibilities,” Rojas said. “Seats changed, and responsibilities changed. So, we said, let’s just keep it simple and use one email address and one phone number. With that, we’re providing the simplest way that people can find an answer to their questions.”
Automated workflows help ensure that IT service tasks are completed in a timely manner, and Rojas and her team have full visibility into the status of service requests—as well as the data they need to measure the team’s effectiveness.
Besides improving the ticketing experience for users, Rojas’ team has also streamlined offboarding processes, and they’re now working on transforming onboarding and developing the knowledge base.
“When you think about bringing someone into an organization, there’s so much that needs to be done,” Rojas said. “We want to help that person feel welcomed into our organization, understand the entire platform and who to talk to. We need to think bigger and bolder and then have some consistent way to deliver that experience, and TeamDynamix lines up well for that.”
Minimizing Errors
Human error is an inevitable aspect of manual processes. However, automation, with its precision and consistency, significantly reduces these errors. Automated systems follow predefined protocols, ensuring every action is executed accurately and consistently.
For Palm Beach State creating a holistic view of the hundreds of applications and systems they utilize daily, was an important reason to invest in TeamDynamix iPaaS for automation.
“We were looking to find a solution that allows us to get the relevant data needed to our stakeholders, while also presenting a user experience for students that makes sense,” Ken Libutti, CIO, said.
One way they are using iPaaS is to make the process of pulling student and registration information more efficient. Using the Workday connector, iPaaS pulls student data from Workday and places it into a data warehouse. Within the warehouse, one can find dashboards for student enrollment and student access measures.
“We didn’t want to build a bunch of point-to-point integrations, rather we wanted to leverage iPaaS to manage all integrations to one data warehouse,” Libutti said.
Additionally, they’ve built another workflow to handle how continuing education students are added to the database. People who enroll in continuing education classes don’t need to be provisioned in the same way a student at the college needs to be, so Libutti and his team had to come up with a way to make Eventbrite work with their other systems.
“We needed to have the courses loaded into our learning management system, as well as make sure the people registered for these classes populated into RAVE,” he said. “RAVE is our mobile safety application, and we use it for a couple of things like emergency announcements, as well as communication to students in targets groups.”
Using iPaaS, Libutti and his team built a workflow that uses APIs from Eventbrite to pull the registration data for each person and place it into an SQL table. That data in the SQL is then used to provision the continuing education students and add them to RAVE, they are also added to Canvas.
The result is a fantastic user experience for the students registering for these non-credit classes through Eventbrite and a workflow that automates the access and information needed by the institution on the backend to properly create logins and access needed from Active Directory, as well as getting the information into RAVE for any communication needs.
“We want all the data to come into the data warehouse because we know TeamDynamix iPaaS can keep all those APIs in sync, which keeps the data in sync and it ensures we are doing the transforms that need to be done to the data,” Libutti said. “Having that single source of truth – knowing the data is in sync and valid – is our main focus and why we were so interested in iPaaS.”
Liberating IT Professionals for Innovation
By handling mundane tasks, automation liberates IT professionals, allowing them to dedicate their expertise to strategic initiatives and innovation. This shift from maintenance to innovation amplifies the value IT brings to an organization.
At Pima County, one of the goals of bringing on TeamDynamix for ITSM and iPaaS (integration platform as a service) is to reduce toil.
“People feel so much more empowered and have so much more worth when they are doing things that are intellectually rigorous and challenging versus when they are just repeating the same mechanical actions over and over and over with very little thought,” Mark Hayes, information technology leader at Pima County, said.
“Our ITSM is our entry point to our entire IT organization, and we want our employees to graduate out of this area into other roles within our organization – network technicians, client services, desktop technicians, developers and project managers,” he continued. “If all they’re doing is handling tickets and doing the same mundane, manual tasks over and over that’s not particularly great training. So investing in tools that allow our employees to engage in meaningful work is something that’s important to us as an overall IT organization.”
With TeamDynamix now in place, Pima County is looking to automate and integrate as much of the manual ITSM processes into workflows as they can.
“The drudgery of working through mundane, repetitive tasks doesn’t exist just in IT,” Hayes said. “I think the more we can reduce toil within the departments that we support, the more people are going to buy in and understand the value of what we’re trying to achieve. There’s nothing like success to breed more success, and once other departments see the benefits they’re going to want these tools too.”
One of the key advantages of TeamDynamix iPaaS is its no-code nature, which empowers technical employees across the organization to set up their own integrations and automations. This democratization of technology reduces the dependency on IT teams, who often face a backlog of requests from various departments.
By enabling non-IT employees to create and manage their own integrations and automations, iPaaS frees up IT staff to focus on higher-level tasks, such as strategic planning and cybersecurity. This not only improves overall efficiency but also fosters a culture of innovation and collaboration within the organization.
Impact on Service Delivery and Operational Efficiency
The infusion of automation into ITSM has profoundly impacted service delivery and operational efficiency for many organizations in the following ways:
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- Enhanced Agility: Automation accelerates decision-making and execution, enabling organizations to respond swiftly to market changes.
- Increased Scalability: Automated systems can easily scale up or down based on demand, ensuring consistent service quality regardless of workload fluctuations.
- Elevated Customer Experience: Swift, error-free resolutions enhance customer satisfaction, fostering loyalty and trust.
Automation’s role in the evolution of ITSM is undeniable. By enhancing efficiency, reducing errors and freeing up IT professionals to focus on innovation, automation not only optimizes operational processes but also propels organizations toward a future marked by innovation and excellence. The examples and testimonials highlighted underscore the transformative potential of automation in ITSM, paving the way for a more efficient, innovative and customer-centric IT landscape.
Automation in ITSM is not just about keeping pace with technological advancements; it’s about setting the stage for groundbreaking innovation.