IT Service Management (Questions/Answers)

Whether your IT support comes from a Utah IT services company, or from your internal IT team, the fact is that you may not be making the most of them if you’re not properly managing them. By determining what your organization needs IT for, and how you can best match those needs to available IT resources, you can optimize your Utah IT services.

Why should IT Service Management matter to you?

Do you know whether your Utah IT services are optimized for your operational needs? Have you even taken stock of what your staff and business as a whole use IT for, and determined how the services and technologies available can be better matched to those needs? Do you know how doing so can benefit you?

So much of success in business (or lack thereof it) comes down to resource management:

• How much time and money goes into delivering your product or service? Compare that to how much you charge, and you get your primary margin – is it what it should be?
• How productive are your staff members, and what are the primary factors that affect their productivity?
• What are your policies, processes, and practices based on? How recently have they been assessed and updated?
• How do you measure success?

These are all important questions to answer if you want to make sure your business is optimized in its daily operations, meeting goals, and growing overall.

By failing to consider factors like these, you could be overlooking complications that are having a severe effect on your bottom line: efficiency bottlenecks, overspending, and more.

And just as you have to think about these concerns for your organization as a whole, you also need to apply this way of thinking to separate parts of your business – such as IT.

Without assessing the ways that you use IT services and technologies, the way they are delivered to you and your staff, and other considerations, you could be missing opportunities to improve your business and save money.

That’s why IT Service Management is so important.

What is IT Service Management?

IT Service Management is the practice of managing and adapting the way IT services are selected for, delivered to and used by an organization. Over all else, IT service management is about maximizing value of your Utah IT services by arranging the ideal combination of users, best practices, and available services and technologies.

When considering IT Service Management for your business, it’s important that you answer the following questions:

• How does my business run?
  This may sound easy to answer, but you may be surprised. Depending on the size and complexity of a business, the answer to this question can vary a great deal.

  Do you deliver a product, service, or both? What third-parties do you work with, and what data do they require access to? Is there more than one business location? Are you subject to specific compliance regulations?

• Who is my clientele?
  This doesn’t just mean knowing specifically who you work with. You need to know who your client base is – what they want, how they would find out about you, why they would choose to work with you, and why they continue to work with you.

  Without this kind of information, how can you expect to deliver your product or services to your clients as effectively as possible?

• What tools do you need to do business?
  This is the most IT-centric question you need to answer – namely, what technologies do you rely on to get your work done?

  Is it simply a matter of phone and email? Or do you need remote access capability, specialized line-of-business applications, cloud storage in Tier 3 data centers, or more?

By taking stock of how your business operates, who you work with, and how you do so, you can gather the necessary info to implement effective IT Service Management.

What are the 4 top concerns in IT Service Management?

Comprehensive IT Service Management takes every aspect of your organization into consideration, which includes the following:

Employees and Clients
It’s vital that your IT Service Management considers the end user – that is, not just the staff members that use workstations in the office, but any potential clients that use your IT “on the other end”.

This is a common oversight in IT Service Management – whereas priority is often given to those using IT services onsite (and don’t forget about remote working employees either), it can be easy to overlook that your clients can be end users as well.

Do you have an online client portal? Do clients phone or email you to make purchases, file invoices, or open up service tickets?

If so, then you need to consider them as end users for your IT, which makes the need for your IT to run effectively all the more important.

IT Services
As straightforward as this area is, it’s vitally important. You need to take detailed stock of the IT services and solutions (including hardware, software, infrastructure, and otherwise) that are delivered to your business.

Just a few of the questions you need to answer are…

• Are my phones conventional, or VoIP-based?
• Is my infrastructure based on onsite servers, in the cloud, or a hybrid configuration?
• What constitutes my cybersecurity? Do I have an antivirus solution, a firewall, multi-factor authentication, password policies for staff, etc.?
• Do I have remote workers that require remote access?

Whether this is handled by an outsourced managed IT services company, or an internal IT staff, it’s a critical step in building an informed foundation for your IT Service Management.

Quality
How do you define quality in IT services? Is it simply how cost-effective they are? Or how quick the response time is?

In reality, it’s a combination of both of these factors, as well as others, that form the basis of the quality of IT services. It’s important to measure and collect data as to how efficient, long-lasting, responsive, and cost-effective your IT services are.

Support for operations
Lastly, you need to think about how your IT services are enabling you and your staff to do your jobs. Is IT a key factor in how your business carries out its core functions and reaches its goals? Or is it an obstacle in those efforts?

Just as your staff, facilities and other aspects of your organization need to support your business’ mission statement, so does your IT.

What are the top 5 advantages of effective IT Service Management?

When properly implemented, based on the 4 areas of consideration listed above, IT Service Management can provide a number of advantaged in daily operations and long-term business growth:

Boost efficiency and lower costs.
When IT services are implemented to directly and optimally meet the needs of your staff and clientele, you can eliminate unnecessary expenses and efficiency bottlenecks. By making uses of available automation functions, and optimized workflows, you remove the need for some manual and redundant work.

Empower your staff to overcome obstacles.
There are many IT solutions available today that allow employees to approach problems they encounter via self-service. Instead of having to call or even email the IT support desk with their concerns, they can start by logging issues and attempting basic troubleshooting on their own, which is almost always faster and more efficient.

When they do log a ticket, the process for resolution can be mostly automated, further reducing the need for direct attention from a support provider until necessary.

Greater control and governance.
Stricter management of your IT allows for greater control over your data, who has access to it, and how they access it.

This can greatly support any compliance efforts you may undertake, allowing you to know exactly where and how your data is stored, tracking who can (and when they do) access it, and what security measures are in place to protect it.

Improved service quality for clients.
The better your IT is functioning for your staff, the better it will work for your clients as well.

On the one hand, the more efficient your staff is at what they do based on the technology they use, the more quickly and effectively they can serve clients.
At the same time, when your clients use your IT (online client portals, ticket logging systems, etc.), their end-user experience will be that much more effective as well.

Standardization of business processes.
Once you’ve taken stock of the 4 key areas of IT Service Management, you gain a comprehensive perspective on the way your staff interacts with IT. That’s the ideal point at which to document and standardize your processes.

For example, when onboarding a new employee, you can provide them with detailed documentation as to how they will access business data, what the process is for addressing a client request, how to escalate a support ticket after they’ve attempted self-service, etc.

The more detailed your standardized processes are, the lower the chance there is for redundancy, downtime, and inefficiencies.

The bottom line of IT Service Management is that you’re making sure your investment in IT doesn’t go to waste. By managing your IT more effectively, you reduce common pain points (wasted time, unnecessary expenses, negative client experience, etc.), and all but guarantee a seamless and efficient IT environment for you and your staff.

Like this article? Check out IT Onboarding and Project Roadmap (Questions/Answers), Can Your Salt Lake IT Services Company Guarantee Your Complete Satisfaction? or 10 Reasons Why You Should Use A Local Salt Lake City IT Service Company to learn more.