In preparing for this blog I interviewed a global support manager at an international agribusiness corporation where SysAid was enabling increased end-user responsiveness, improved asset and change management, and enhanced OpEx efficiencies overall. As it turned out, this very strong narrative aligned very well with EMA research data on how IT service management (ITSM) operational efficiencies are impacting IT OpEx effectiveness overall.

Looking at this bigger picture, the role of ITSM teams is growing, not shrinking in importance. ITSM is increasingly providing a source of governance and efficiency in supporting all of IT in incident and problem management, release management (including agile and DevOps), change management, and asset management. In many cases ITSM teams are also leading the charge in supporting mobile requirements both for IT service consumers and IT professionals for improved efficiencies. So given all these trends, which I’ll examine in a little more depth in this blog, I think it’s safe to say that ITSM operational efficiencies reside at the very center of improving IT efficiencies overall.

Before going any further, I should mention that the data points I’m referring to in this blog are taken from three different research projects: one on digital and IT transformation; one on ITSM futures, and one on next-generation asset management.

Let’s start with the growing role of ITSM teams in supporting IT more broadly. Workflow and scheduling are part of the reason why ITSM integrations reach out to support operations and other IT groups. This is especially true as workflows evolve into runbook requirements for operations and release management processes for application developers. For instance, our data also shows that improved operations-to-service desk integrations for incident and problem management is a number one ITSM strategic priority going forward. These integrations may feature workflow, shared analytics, leveraging configuration management database insights into service interdependencies, and combining trouble ticket data and user interaction with operational data on service performance—just as a few examples.

Improved operations integration with ITSM configuration management capabilities for change and configuration management comes in at second place. But perhaps the most surprising piece of news is that 80% of ITSM teams in our research either already had support for DevOps or planned to—through workflow or scheduling or even through provisioning via CMDBs and configuration management tools. In all of the areas mentioned here, ITSM efficiencies directly impact the efficiency of IT overall.

Another key area for ITSM is integrated support for asset management. Hardware and software asset management often become sinkholes of inefficiency in IT organizations. Here are just two key data points:

• IT organizations spend an average of ten hours a week reconciling data accuracy issues for asset inventory.
• IT organizations spend an average of more than 30 hours preparing for audits for compliance-related reasons (and 8% spent more than 100 hours).

Talk about OpEx efficiencies—this area is clearly a sweet spot for improvement that good ITSM /ITAM investments can help to rectify!

Now let’s talk about mobile. Mobile is changing the game for IT, and once again ITSM efficiencies stand in the forefront of making mobile access an effective reality. 78% of our ITSM respondents indicated that mobile support for IT service consumers either meaningfully, or dramatically, improved outcomes in terms of both IT efficiencies and end-user productivity. In another question, mobile showed strongly in both enabling improved responsiveness to IT service consumers and increasing IT efficiencies overall while reducing OpEx costs.

By now hopefully you can see the connection—whether through integrated workflow, project management, incident, problem or change management, ITAM and mobile support—ITSM operational efficiencies really do equal IT efficiencies overall. But how important are IT and ITSM efficiencies in the larger scheme of things? Insight on IT and ITSM efficiencies was the number one analytic priority for digital and IT transformation in our research. And when it came to business metrics, IT OpEx efficiencies were at the very top.

To explore one case study of an effective ITSM team who are providing the backbone to global business growth, please take a look at my Q&A here. This case looks at some of the key factors that enable greater IT efficiencies, including the adoption of a scalable ITSM solution that is simple to use and easy to deploy.

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