What is ITSM?

Simplifying ITSM

ITSM (or IT Service Management) refers to all the activities involved in designing, creating, delivering, supporting and managing the lifecycle of IT services.

Well, of course it does, but what are IT services? Think of any piece of technology you use at your workplace – your laptop, the apps installed on it, the printer that your entire team uses, or the option to reset your password even after the first 15 times. They’re all services provided by your IT team. In other words – IT services.

Although the most common perception of ITSM among IT users (employees) is just “IT support”, ITSM goes way beyond resolving day-to-day issues. Your IT team is responsible for end-to-end management of these services.

Why is ITSM important?

ITSM is important for a variety of reasons. Implementing ITSM can help regularize processes through structured delivery and documentation. ITSM implementation also helps in saving costs by building a predictable IT org. Implementing ITSM has business benefits by bringing actionable IT insights to the business that help in decision making.

Benefits of ITSM Processes

Benefits of implementing ITSM processes range from IT-specific to Business-level benefits like:

IT-SPECIFIC ITSM BENEFITS	BUSINESS LEVEL ITSM BENEFITS
Increased IT efficiency and productivity through defined roles and responsibilities	Better understanding of business needs
Process implementation based on best practices	Higher IT service availability levels for higher business productivity
Increased support to counter regulatory and compliance challenges	Increased value and cost efficiency
Increased visibility and understanding of IT services	Manage expectations better
Reduced incident lifecycles	Reduced impact of incidents on the business

ITSM processes

The more organized an enterprise is, the better is its IT department. This is one of the most important ITSM benefits that enterprises look for. What other ITSM benefits do enterprises derive, and what actually are these ITSM processes?

ITSM processes are the elements of an ITSM framework. An ITSM process supports its major concepts and describes the way of IT service management. ITSM processes can be divided into the following stages:

Service Strategy (SS) is the first and foremost stage in an ITSM process. The ITSM benefit of this stage is to help determine what exactly customers are looking for, and verify whether the service is financially workable. Service Strategy gives an overall understanding of a company’s services in connection to the Service Portfolio, Financial Management, Business Relationship Management, etc.

Service Description (SD) enables strategic identifications with a detailed description of services offered by an enterprise. A key ITSM benefit from this stage is the assurance that the IT service delivery meets the requirements, and that the organization is capable enough capacity to deliver the services securely.

Service Transition (ST) is accountable for the auctioning of the company’s services. The ITSM benefit of the ST stage is the maintenance of the stability of services while allowing them to be dynamic by hosting changes judiciously. The processes at this stage are Change Management, Release Management, Knowledge Management, etc.

Service Operation (SO) ensures that the services work without hindrance, promptly warding off any disruptions. There are 6 main processes that help SO do that:

◈ Event management - Monitors and provides notifications on how the services are running

◈ Incident management - Restores the normal flow of IT processes as soon as possible, in case of disruptions

◈ Problem management – Caters to the underlying cause of incidents

◈ Request fulfillment – Deals with low-risk, recurrent and pre-defined circumstances

◈ Access management - Deals with accounts and passwords

◈ Continual Service Improvement (CSI) - Constant improvement of the services delivered

ITSM benefits from these processes

Being a very structured approach to IT services, processes can bring lots of ITSM benefits along with clarity and transparency to an organization’s IT structure.

◈ ITSM processes can help an IT department steady the IT service disposal. 

◈ Equipped with clear what-and-how strategies, an IT team can shrink downtime (when disruptions in services occur) and surge the rate of service readiness. 

◈ The decrease in resolve time and an increase in the total rate of service availability are certain to improve user/customer satisfaction marks. 

◈ A more operative approach to day-to-day operations and automating of some of them will decrease the costs of IT service management.