How To Streamline IT Service Management for Your Business?
Information technology is at the heart of countless businesses the world over. Global IT spending is estimated to be $4 trillion in 2021 (according to Gartner research), an 8.4% increase on 2020’s total ($3.75 trillion).
As hardware and software facilitate so many business functions today, from communicating with clients to working remotely, effective IT service management (ITSM) is essential. But what does this mean? What benefits does good ITSM offer? And how can you streamline your ITSM successfully?
We’ll answer these key questions, and help you get off to the right start, below.
What is IT Service Management?
IT service management refers to the various day-to-day activities related to your IT infrastructure and programs. This covers all the information technology your team relies on in the workplace, from your laptop and its software to the printers churning out paperwork.
Effective ITSM ensures that your hardware and software is configured to help your business achieve its objectives. Otherwise, you could burden yourself and your entire team with an inefficient setup that causes more issues than it solves.
As a term, ITSM may also refer to IT services delivered to customers. In either case, well-planned, well-executed ITSM is paramount to achieve optimal performance.
What are the Benefits of IT Service Management?
Let’s take a quick look at the top benefits of good ITSM:
Improve Efficiency of Operations
Maximizing your business’s operational efficiency allows you to make the most of the hours available each day. That’ll be a welcome change if you and your employees often struggle to accomplish your daily goals before quitting time arrives.
Manage Operating Costs Better
Good IT service management will enable you to reduce spending and get more bang for your buck. You can take advantage of automation tools to cut the number of manual processes required and empower staff to do more during working hours.
You can remove inefficient hardware that requires regular maintenance and repairs. And you can reduce overheads by implementing more applications and tools that streamline remote work.
Enhance Productivity
Improving your operational efficiency and integrating new technologies into your business processes will make employees more productive. Workers will be able to focus on the most important tasks with fewer distractions and maintain a consistent rate of productivity without being hampered by inefficient technology.
Deliver a Stronger Experience for Customers
Good ITSM enables your team to perform at its best and provide your clients with a better level of service. That could be because of faster responses to queries, more reliable communication, or improved workflow that leads to quicker deliveries.
Tips for IT Service Management Streamlining
Try these tips to streamline your business’s IT service management:
Clarify Your ITSM Strategy Early
The first step in streamlining your ITSM is to determine your most important requirements. Consider what you need to help employees perform at their best and to address recurrent problems.
For example, your in-house IT technicians may be stretched so thinly that employees have to wait days for a solution to an issue. That could leave them unable to achieve their goals and cause delays. In that case, you may find that using an external IT support helpdesk is the most efficient option for the time being. That will relieve the pressure on your in-house technicians and prevent employees from wasting valuable time.
Alternatively, you may discover that you need a better inventory management application to track stock, or new computers that run faster. Make a list of the most important factors affecting your infrastructure’s efficiency. The better you know your weaknesses, the sooner you can start building on your strengths.
Monitor Progress and Make Adjustments When Necessary
Track all IT service management processes and assess them regularly to determine if they’re the best they can be. Your technicians might have started to fix issues sooner, or you could have upgraded your server for improved performance, or made any number of other changes to your ITSM.
But you may lose track of the progress you make over weeks and months if you lack a solid tracking system. Working with a reputable managed IT services provider can make this easier: they’ll assess your current setup and make tailored recommendations based on your business operations. They’ll help you understand changes made and their impact on your company.
Create a Custom Knowledge Base to Save Time
Your employees may encounter the same problems again and again. Perhaps their computer crashes frequently. Maybe a particular platform signs them out automatically and refuses to let them back in even when they enter the right logins.
Whatever recurrent issues disrupt your business operations, describe them and their solutions in reader-friendly documentation. And compile these into a knowledge base accessible to all employees.
That means you won’t be forced to keep finding a way to solve a problem from the beginning every time. Instead, you and your workers can look it up in your private knowledge base immediately.
Try a New Approach If Your Current Strategy Doesn’t Work
What works for your business’s IT service management today may not be so effective a year from now. Your requirements can change regularly, especially when you scale or adopt a new working model. It’s easy to become dependent on specific processes, but you may need to explore new approaches from time to time.
Working with a managed IT service provider ensures you’ll receive professional guidance on improvement opportunities. Specialists will assess your IT infrastructure to determine how it could be adjusted, what benefits you can expect, and how best to implement changes. Read more about what you can expect from managed IT services.
Work With a Seasoned IT Service Provider in the Greater Toronto Area
GenX Solutions is an IT service provider with nearly 40 years’ experience of helping businesses in the Greater Toronto Area. We offer a comprehensive range of solutions, from per-incident technical support to information security and beyond.
To discover how we can streamline your IT service management, contact GenX’s team today!