The concept of automation is nothing new in IT service management (ITSM) – from what’s already embedded within ITSM tools for workflow automation and the associated capabilities to additional capabilities that help ITSM teams to remove themselves from the manual overhead of high-volume, low-value repetitive ITSM tasks. Used smartly, IT automation will help your organization to eliminate defects, redundancies, and free up staff for higher-value work.

In this blog, I look at how your ITSM team can better utilize automation to improve its IT services, support, and customer satisfaction across the organization in pursuit of the modern-day IT department and business Holy Grail of “better, faster, cheaper.”

This blog by @Doronywood looks at how your #ITSM team can better utilize #automation in pursuit of the modern-day business Holy Grail of “better, faster, cheaper”. Click To Tweet

1. Improving customer experience and outcomes

Business-affecting automation isn’t just a differentiator, it’s a fundamental component of the modern enterprise – with it used to not only speed up “the work” but also to deliver better customer experiences. The use of automation within ITSM capabilities should also be thought of in this way – with the employed automation not only helping within IT operations but also providing superior IT capabilities that ultimately deliver better business outcomes.

Enhancing the customer or client experience is, therefore, a main objective of IT automation – either directly through externally-facing technology in particular or via the support of other corporate capabilities where the linkage might not be so obvious. For instance, the IT department – and ITSM – might help to “power” a certain human resources (HR) capability that better enables the employees who provide the capabilities to deliver the products and services that are eventually consumed by external customers.

The automated provision of home-based working capabilities for employees is a great example of this, especially while many organizations deal with the employee and customer-based impacts of the COVID-19 crisis. With the agreed workflows and associated automation capabilities ensuring that employees are set up as home workers as quickly and as successfully as possible. This includes the provisioning of the appropriate IT equipment to employees by IT at HR’s request. Along with the needed access to software and services, some of which they won’t have used before (while office-based). Plus, there’ll be various corporate employee policies that need to be applied. For example, facilities might provide each employee with a homeworker health and safety assessment, which HR needs the employee to complete.

No matter the task, when setting up home-based working for employees, there’ll likely be elements that can be automated to save time and effort (and cost), and allow employees to be productive as soon as possible, which in turn positively affects business operations and customer outcomes.

The use of #automation within #ITSM capabilities should thought of as not only helping within IT ops but also providing superior IT capabilities that ultimately deliver better business outcomes – @Doronywood Click To Tweet

Nowadays we can’t escape the fact that every business function outside of IT is dependent on technology in one way or another. And even though IT automation might start in IT, its greatest impact should be on the business and its customers. And savvy organizations are waking up to the fact that the needs of employees are an important part of delivering a better customer experience.

Take the processes of employee self-service service request fulfillment as another example. As an organization increases in size, so will employee demands, operational complexity, and the repetition of tasks. Here, automating the service request fulfillment process means that employees will get their needs met more quickly, which means they’ll be happier and more productive, and the IT department (and consequently the business) benefits from reduced manual workloads and redundant tasks (and the cost savings this brings) plus, potentially, simplified front and backend workflows.

2. Boosting employee and customer satisfaction with workflow automation

The scenarios outlined above can be further enhanced through the use of a fit-for-purpose workflow management solution. Whereas traditional ITSM tools can limit how your teams function – forcing them to work in a certain way and potentially necessitating manual activities and potential rework. A workflow management solution such as SysAid Workflow Designer allows you to improve both IT and interdepartmental workflows, enabling previously disparate teams to work better together in driving up end-user productivity (as well as their own).

Such solutions help IT and other business functions to optimize their operations and outcomes. Because digital workflows can be quickly designed, delivered, and modified – by non-developers – using a visual interface, drag-and-drop capabilities, and easy-to-use editing tools.

This means that every part of your organization, and not just IT, will benefit from:

• The improved management of digital workflows
• Improved productivity and efficiency for both service providers and receivers
• Saved time and reduced costs, especially when combined with Automate Joe – SysAid’s built-in service orchestration engine
• A better employee experience.

For example, in these times of crisis, solutions such as Workflow Designer can be used to help your organization with its emergency response efforts as well as with its operations. Facilitating response-effort needs such as:

Amidst #COVID19, solutions such as Workflow Designer can be used to help your organization with its emergency response efforts as well as with its operations – @Doronywood #ITSM Click To Tweet

• Communications management – both internal and external
• The setup of remote working facilities for employees
• Tracing the contacts of affected employees to quickly identify others at-risk
• Dealing with the increased volumes of tickets related to remote work
• Employee self-reporting of health status
• Transforming manual business processes into digital workflows to help with the new remote ways of working.

3. Automating incident ticketing and the initial processing

The most commonly automated task within ITSM is already incident ticketing – with the reason being that incident automation makes it easier for the service desk to stay up to date on the tickets created, customer replies, and staff assignments/responsibilities, plus a whole host of other things.

If we look at the common activities within the incident management process:

• Incident detection and recording/incident reporting and communication
• Priority classification and initial support
• Investigation and analysis
• Resolution and recording
• Incident closure and customer satisfaction survey

In this process, someone needs to review a ticket before the appropriate IT support resolution team can address/resolve it – and this can be manually intensive and is a cost that can be removed through the use of automation.

The use of automation here – in classifying, prioritizing, and routing tickets – means that this manual effort is reduced, saving time and cost. It also frees up IT support staff to focus on more important tasks.

ITSM automation can really help organizations streamline processes, which can significantly reduce costs. It also offers up the chance to improve the quality of service and customer experience thanks to speed enhancements and error reductions. I’d love to hear about your successes with automation, please let me know in the comments.

And, if you’re looking to learn more about automation within SysAid, please take a look at some of the following resources:

• SysAid Workflow Designer
• Service Desk Automation