Three Keys to a Successful ITSM Refresh

Based on the lessons that Farrier and his colleagues learned from their experience, here are three key strategies that can help organizations of all types improve how they deliver and manage IT services.

1. Understand your pain points.

The first step when embarking on an ITSM tech refresh is to truly understand what’s holding you back.

“Talk to your help desk employees,” Farrier advised—the people who are on the front lines of doing the IT work. “Get their input into the challenges they’re facing, and then come up with a plan that can help alleviate those challenges.”

In looking for an ITSM platform that would help the team accomplish their goals, Farrier engaged his support staff in the search process, as “they’re the ones who deal with the system daily,” he explained. “They might sometimes be the forgotten folks, the ones who stay behind their laptop handling tickets. Yet, they’re the ones who know what it will take to make the system better.”

B&I Contractors, a mechanical systems contracting service company based in Florida, echoed that advice.

“We had outgrown the IT Service Management platform we were using, and quickly realized we needed to find a new tool that could support us,” Jay Reymond, Senior Engineer in IT, said.

Before starting their search, Reymond said they talked to key stakeholders and put together a checklist of key features needed to address existing pain points within the IT organization. “We had to really dig through the tools that are available and figure out which ITSM software made the most sense for our business needs,” he said. B&I ended up selecting TeamDynamix as the new ITSM tool for the company.

2. Do your research.

As mentioned previously, Farrier and his team enlisted the help of industry partners such as Info-Tech Research Group to help narrow down their search and find the right ITSM tool for their business needs. While Info-Tech offered several vendors for evaluation, they ultimately chose TeamDynamix based on the guidance they received.

“We found TeamDynamix because it was listed as a Leader in Info-Tech’s quadrant for ITSM,” Farrier noted.

TeamDynamix has also been recognized as an ‘Honorable Mention’ in the 2022 Gartner Magic Quadrant for ITSM.

When researching ITSM vendors you’ll want to be sure they can provide the following features and functionalities out of the box:

• Incident and problem tracking – when you run a service desk you need to have fast routing and the ability to group tickets for both incidents and problems. Doing so will allow you to properly communicate and be transparent throughout your organization. 
• Service portal and knowledge base – Did you know a support call can as much as $22 (according to HDI), while self-service is just $2 per incident? It’s a recommended best practice to build out a solid knowledge base and service portal so customers can resolve their own issues instead of taking up your IT help desk’s valuable time with requests like “How do I change my password?” 
• Workflow automation – Your teams should be focusing their efforts on your organization’s highest priorities. By setting up automation for mundane, manual or error-prone activities they can do just that. 
• Asset management and discovery – Make sure you can identify and track assets, plan for changes and respond to issues with an understanding of CI configuration history, blackout and maintenance windows and impact maps. 
• Change management – The majority (nearly 80 percent!) of issues reported to IT are the result of poor change and release management. Make sure your tool allows you to properly organize and manage plans, execution and communication for new functionality and maintain the continuity of existing services.  
• Dashboards and reports – Great ITSM dashboards and reports give you the key metrics needed to make confident decisions, helping you to identify issues before they become problems, support key meetings, profile trends and communicate the value IT provides to your entire organization.

3. Find a true partner to help you optimize processes.

Because IT staff often feel pulled in many directions and time is at a premium, “we try to lean on some of our vendors and partners for help” in implementing new software, Farrier said.

As part of their implementation process, Farrier and his team found they needed to reevaluate and revise key processes when configuring the platform – especially around creating a better self-service portal experience.  Here is where the ITSM software provider can also differ.  It was important for the team at Legacy to find a software partner that also offered process consulting and implementation services.

By spending a little more time on the planning, the company was better positioned for the actual migration.  With the plan in place, the implementation itself can go faster. “It put us in a better position to succeed,” Farrier observed.

Are you interested in hearing from more companies that have recently refreshed their ITSM tools to provide a better experience? Check out: Companies Share Tips for Automating IT Service Management, Solving IT Challenges