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April 14, 2023

6 minutes read

ITSM Best Practices: Embarking on a Digital Transformation

By

Andrew Graf

These days, it seems like most businesses and organizations are in the midst of, or just kicking off, their digital transformation initiatives. Digital transformation refers to the process of using digital technologies to fundamentally change the way a business operates, to deliver better value to customers and to enhance employee productivity and efficiency. These initiatives involve the use of new digital tools, technologies and processes to innovate business models, enhance customer experiences and, in some cases, create new revenue streams.

Undertaking a digital transformation is important because it helps businesses stay competitive and relevant in the fast-changing digital landscape – especially in a post-covid world.

By leveraging the latest digital tools and technologies, businesses can streamline their operations, improve efficiency and reduce costs. Additionally, digital transformation initiatives can help businesses to become more agile, allowing them to respond more quickly to market changes and customer demands. This can help businesses to stay ahead of the competition and capitalize on new opportunities as they arise.

For many, digital transformations kick off in IT where legacy systems and processes are modernized to better serve both employees and customers. Here are two stories from organizations that have modernized their IT Service Management platforms to better their service delivery experiences and improve organizational efficiencies.

Improving IT Service with Automation and Integration

Florida’s Gainesville Regional Utilities (GRU), a multi-service utility owned by the City of Gainesville that serves 93,000 customers, needed a better way to handle service requests from retired GRU employees.

Using automation and integration with their TeamDynamix ITSM platform they’ve been able to solve a key challenge for the city’s IT department, making it easier for IT staff to provide exceptional customer service for the thousands of retired GRU employees who live all over the country.

Before bringing on TeamDynamix, the City of Gainesville was fragmented – keeping track of incidents, service requests and IT account management separately. In addition, it couldn’t handle the management of multiple IT projects, so the city had to use an entirely different platform for Project Portfolio Management (PPM). 

“We had to look in four different places to see what employees were doing,” says Jean Clark, IT Manager for Enterprise Services. This lack of a holistic view made it difficult to manage IT resources effectively.

In switching to TeamDynamix, Gainesville now has one unified system for managing projects, incidents, service requests and IT accounts. “Having a single pane of glass allows us to prioritize our work better,” Clark observes.

What’s more, the automated workflows that IT leaders can set up within TeamDynamix help make IT staff more efficient. In return, city employees are getting better IT service and technicians are reducing the amount of time they are spending on manual tasks.

The flexibility of the platform, no-code workflow and the integration hub allows for some more advanced and sophisticated automations. Gainesville has been able to use the platform to easily establish and operationalize a way to help former employees receive better service.

TeamDynamix’s exceptional versatility and its Integration Platform-as-a-Service (iPaaS) capabilities mean that the IT team can do things like create web forms that kick off automation tied to not only the ITSM platform but also to any business application. This is achieved using a library of pre-built connectors to common platforms such as Workday, Salesforce, Active Directory and hundreds more.

Using TeamDynamix, GRU has successfully integrated Workday which is supported by Gainesville’s IT department along with the other applications used by the city. Employees and retired GRU employees receive their pensions through Workday – but prior to TeamDynamix, only current employees were able to submit service requests regarding Workday issues through GRU’s online service portal. Because retirees are no longer city employees, they don’t have an Active Directory account, and they needed an Active Directory account to submit tickets to IT support staff online.

GRU Business Systems Analyst Tristina Grywalski worked with the TeamDynamix implementation and process consulting team to develop a simple solution to this problem using the platform’s flexible configuration options.

As a result of their efforts, GRU retirees no longer have to call IT support staff during normal business hours, wasting valuable time for retirees and support staff alike. Instead, they can use the online service portal just like current employees with an Active Directory account can, resulting in faster and better service.

In just the first two months of this capability alone, more than 150 retired GRU employees from all across the country had submitted service requests online. “The service team is very grateful for this solution,” Grywalski says, noting that it has allowed them to be more efficient in resolving people’s problems.

Adopting a Digital First Strategy

Frontwave Credit Union has adopted a digital-first strategy to deliver a heightened experience to all members. Based in Oceanside, California, Frontwave has experienced a lot of growth over the last few years and that’s resulted in many competing priorities as the organization continues to scale. Because of this, there is a renewed focus on understanding process excellence.   

“We’ve dubbed this year the year of the process, and that’s where we are really focused,” explains Roger Estrada, Vice President of Process Excellence and the Program Management Office. “We are meeting this increased demand by restructuring what we do and how we do it by making our processes scalable, creating better escalation paths, providing self-service opportunities and prioritizing requests based on different criteria. But it all begins for us by really understanding our value stream and overall service flow.” Estrada and his team work cross-functionally with IT, Operations, Finance and many other groups to support the respective team’s initiatives.   

The process excellence initiative dovetails seamlessly with leadership’s digital-first vision.

When it comes to IT Service Management (ITSM), Estrada said the organization is hyper-focused on reviewing processes and ensuring there aren’t any non-value add steps that result in friction or a bad experience, “We want to make sure we’re properly set up to meet the needs and demands of our organization and our customers.”  

To do this, his team engages with the IT organization to help uncover any areas for improvement. With the organizational focus on digital-first, Estrada is tasked with finding opportunities to support this vision. The PMO team is doing this by listening to the voice of the process, gathering data and analyzing it critically to really see where improvements can be made.  

As an example, Estrada worked with IT leadership to identify areas where IT technicians were spending too many hours on manual work. “As we started evaluating our processes, we were seeing there are a lot of manual processes that cause a drain on our resources,” Estrada said. “We think we can get some positive results and benefits by introducing some automation.” 

“Many IT teams are loaded down with service tickets, so we wanted to look at our processes and see where there are opportunities to automate ticket resolution and find ways to improve our ease of service,” Estrada said. “The quicker and easier it is to resolve tickets, the better the experience is.” 

As part of this strategy, Frontwave made the switch to TeamDynamix as it offered a unified platform that encompasses IT Service Management, Project Portfolio Management (PPM) and enterprise integration and automation (iPaaS). With a no-code platform, the team can reduce time spent on system administration and can roll out new functionality, workflows and integrations faster. As organizations seek to level up their key functions such as IT service delivery and to initiate digital transformation, many are requiring new technology solutions to be no-code. 

“We have a lot of competing priorities so we really want to understand the team’s workflows and priorities so that we can continue to deliver the best customer experience,” he said. 

Better Together: Why ITSM and PPM Belong on One Platform

For most IT organizations, there’s been a real uptick in demand – especially when it comes to digital transformation – causing a tsunami of requests that bog down IT teams.  

With the influx of new tools and solutions being implemented to usher in a new digital experience and an evolution of user expectations to have fulfilling digital experiences – especially when it comes to customer service – it can be a real hornet’s nest for IT teams to manage.   

A single platform approach allows IT leaders to engage in resource capacity planning to improve their technicians’ workloads and quality of life. Additional benefits of using a single platform for ITSM and PPM include: 

  • The ability to foster and promote process improvements through digital transformation 
  • Improved user experience for customers, employees, IT technicians and project managers. 
  • The consolidation of systems and applications for more efficient management. 
  • The ability to bring service and project management together. 

Frontwave is looking to automate manual tasks that bog down resources. TeamDynamix can supercharge ITSM and PPM by integrating with enterprise systems, or it can be used to integrate any applications for data transfer and automation. This can include Workday, Salesforce, Teams, Slack, DocuSign, Office365 or any of the hundreds of solutions that make up an organization’s tech ecosystem. 

“Our focus is really on improving our operational layer and looking to optimize with technology enhancements,” he said. “Our biggest focus is on delivering the best experience, products, and service to our members.” And TeamDynamix is there to support that.

Andrew Graf

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