Automation is key when it comes to ensuring tasks are completed quickly and accurately. Automating repetitive processes frees up your IT service desk staff so they can focus on more important matters while also reducing wasted man-hours spent on mundane tasks.
The key here is to make sure you have the right ITSM tool in place with integration and automation capabilities. Many organizations chose codeless ITSM platforms that come with iPaaS on a single platform.
With iPaaS connected to your ITSM, you can integrate and automate systems and apps throughout your entire organization. iPaaS (integration platform as a service) centralizes all integrations into one hub with a library of connectors to common systems such as Workday, Oracle, your IT Service Management platform, Salesforce, the Active Directory, Azure, and hundreds more, as well as any APIs.
With all systems connected and data points now secured in one spot, end-users can leverage the platform to move data, transform data, and build out automation and workflows using a visual flow builder that can be triggered from a field change, form fill or any number of actions.
What does this mean for your IT service desk?
A recent study from InformationWeek found:
- 58% of organizations say their IT team spends more than five hours per week (six-and-a-half work weeks annually) fulfilling repetitive requests from the business.
- 90% of respondents say that manual and repetitive IT tasks contribute to low morale and attrition in their organizations.
When you look at the statistics, it’s clear that many IT service desk employees are wasting time on tasks that can be automated. And these tasks are directly impacting the morale of IT employees.
When asked to rank the tasks that directly contribute to low morale, the study found the top 5 time-wasting tasks are:
- Password resets.
- IT ticket clean up.
- Onboarding/offboarding employees.
- Managing credentials.
- Software provisioning.
If you’re looking to see improvements in both efficiency and IT service desk employee retention, the data shows automating tasks is a great place to start.
In conclusion, achieving excellence at the IT service desk requires clear communication skills, proactive problem-solving abilities, effective knowledge management practices, continuous improvement initiatives and collaboration between different departments within an organization – all while keeping a customer-focused approach top-of-mind.
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. 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.”