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August 31, 2023

2 minutes read

Harnessing the Power of One Platform for ITSM and PPM

By

Andrew Graf

Did you know using one platform for IT Service Management and Project Portfolio Management can help you better understand your resource capacity and balance workloads? This is just one of many benefits of using an IT Service Management tool that includes PPM.

Resource capacity planning allows you to get a big-picture view of your entire IT organization, allowing you to balance workloads across projects and support; and to see the different types of work that need to be done at any given time.

For example, if you have three IT technicians that need to cover three functional areas of business – like service, projects and operations – you can engage in resource capacity planning and optimize each technician’s workload based on their skill set and their availability. As a result, the work can be completed more effectively and efficiently as each technician is focused on work that plays to their strengths. And because you have a full view of the work and the time it will take, you can avoid overcommitting or underutilizing your resources.

This approach is especially useful when you have limited resources, but an increase in demand for the support of remote learning and remote workforces.

There are many other benefits to the one-platform approach for ITSM and PPM including:

  • Improved IT productivity
  • Improved quality of service (QoS)
  • Improved IT performance measurement and reporting capabilities

By combining ITSM and PPM you get to have all relevant information in one place. Instead of switching between different pages or programs, everything you need can be right in front of you in a comprehensive, custom dashboard. This allows for a greater amount of information to be at your fingertips, including:

  • The amount of and type of work that needs to be completed.
  • The estimated length of a project or task.
  • Information on which areas need more resources within your organization.
  • Information on who is assigned to do what.
  • Information on who has the availability to help fulfill certain needs.
  • And information on when people have availability to do the work.

Having this list of information readily available to aid in decision-making speeds up various processes. For example, someone could quickly identify where a bottleneck is occurring, or where excess capacity exists within the resource pool.

Supercharging ITSM and PPM with Automation

The benefits of a one-platform solution for ITSM and PPM are enhanced even more when you can include an integration component. By combining iPaaS (integration platform as a service) with your ITSM/PPM platform you can automate both complex and simple tasks, as well as connect disparate systems throughout your organization.

Employees no longer need to spend time on the repetitive, mundane tasks they normally have to complete before working on bigger projects – things like system name changes, resetting passwords or granting certain permissions to software. All of these and more can be automated with workflows using iPaaS.

If you choose a codeless platform for this, you get the added benefit of anyone being able to use these tools – not just IT. By allowing lines of business to create their own workflows you can free up your IT resources to work on larger projects and eliminate the logjam when it comes to integrations within your organization.

Companies and Organizations Working Better Together

At the City of Madison, the TeamDynamix platform is being used to support digital transformation initiatives with great success.

Like many other businesses and organizations – the demand for service has gone up exponentially over the last few years as IT now has to support better digital experiences and a “service anywhere, anytime” mentality, even within the public sector.

“Demand for service is skyrocketing, but our staff levels have stayed relatively the same,” Abigail Ferguson, Customer Success Manager for the City of Madison’s Information Technology, said.

To address the growing demand, the City of Madison is taking a proactive approach and combining Project Portfolio Management with ITSM using a single platform through TeamDynamix, “This is going to help us really get a sense of what projects align with our strategic goals. We can see what projects align with our service catalog that exist today and take a more proactive approach with our customers and other agencies,” she said.

And reactively, Ferguson said they really want to lean on utilizing their ITSM tool and tickets to help staff better manage their time and improve efficiency.

“We historically haven’t tracked the amount of time we spend on resolving tickets or on a project or task,” she explained, “So we are asking everyone to do that now using our tool so that we have a better picture of what expenditures do we have (in terms of staff time) and then we can use that to have a holistic view of resources so we can do resource capacity planning.”

Once they know their baseline for certain tasks and projects they’ll be able to identify areas where they might be able to make process improvements and provide a quicker, better customer experience.

This single platform approach for ITSM and PPM is also going to help the city identify what projects should be a high priority and what projects can be turned down or scheduled for a later time, “In government, you can’t always say no – it’s more of a ‘we can do that later’ so we want to be able to support our staff and our citizens the best we can by prioritizing the work,” Ferguson said.

Festival Foods, a grocery store chain that operates about 40 grocery stores and supports 9,000 employees with an IT staff of 40, including a seven-member service desk, also uses TeamDynamix for both ITSM and PPM, as well as iPaaS.

“Before, we had no project governance process,” Alex Turek, IT service desk manager, explained. “It was very ad-hoc. Whoever could scream the loudest got the most IT resources. Finding a tool that also included PPM was huge.”

Managing projects and IT services within the same platform has brought significant benefits, leading to improved efficiency and accountability.

“Technicians can see their project work and their IT work in one space,” Turek said. “This means it’s easier to communicate and ensure follow-through. Project managers can assign tasks to my service desk team within the same dashboard they’re using to resolve tickets. Those pop right up, helping them be aware of all their tasks and priorities so they can easily meet their deadlines.”

The next step for Turek and his team is to leverage the integrated Platform-as-a-Service (iPaaS) capabilities within TeamDynamix to automate their most repetitive processes.

“We’re looking to automate tasks such as password resets, user account deactivation, user onboarding and other tasks we do often, so we can reduce the daily workload on our team,” Turek said.

Want to learn more about the benefits of bringing ITSM and PPM together with iPaaS? Check out:

Andrew Graf

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