14 benefits of enterprise service management [Infographic]
While the use of IT service management (ITSM) by corporate IT organizations – to improve efficiency, effectiveness, control, and insight – has gained nigh-on global acceptance, many enterprises have yet to recognize that ITSM thinking, best practice, and technology is equally relevant to other corporate service providers.
If we jump back ten years, what is now known as enterprise service management was often little more than the use of the potentially-costly corporate ITSM tool in other business scenarios to get a better return on investment. These days, however, there are a number of compelling reasons for enterprise service management, with the IT organization assisting other business functions – such as HR, facilities, finance, and other business functions – to improve efficiency, effectiveness, control, and insight.
Selling enterprise service management to other business functions
Enterprise service management shouldn’t need to be a leap of faith by either the business as a whole or other business functions. Instead, the business benefits of enterprise service management should be articulated and sold.
These include:
1. Improved efficiency and reduced operational costs
Optimized processes, workflow, automation, and alerting can remove unnecessary manual effort and rework. This is added to when self-service and self-help capabilities are used by employees.
2. Self-service efficiencies and workload reductions
Employees can get to the solutions they need more quickly through self-help. Then this and the ability for employees to log issues and requests via self-service means fewer telephone calls to the service desk or the business function equivalent. The automated delivery of solutions & requests further adds to the potential labour savings and reduces stress on your service desk agents.
3. A better ROI on the corporate ITSM solution investment
The more the people, and business functions, that use the ITSM solution, the better the ROI and per-user ongoing management costs. Also, depending on the business function systems that can be phased out, there is the potential for additional technology cost savings through business-function application rationalization.
4. Improved effectiveness
Using a fit-for-purpose ITSM solution for enterprise service management can help to ensure that all employee issues and requests are dealt with and, where possible, to agreed service levels. No more losing requests in personal email accounts or delays through the inefficiency of individuals.
5. Improved visibility into operations and performance
The use of ITSM technology lets staff and management understand what has been achieved and what hasn’t. It ultimately gives insight into the value that each business function provides and makes it easier for this to be communicated to customers and other business stakeholders.
6. Increased control and governance
Enterprise service management processes and enabling technology can be used to implement much needed internal controls and to provide insight into who did what when as well as higher-level reporting.
7. Better service and customer experience
Enterprise service management ups the corporate service provider game to better deliver against employee expectations across ease-of-use, self-service, service request catalogs, knowledge availability, and self-help, social or collaborative capabilities, anytime and anyplace access (to services and information), and people or customer- centric support.
8. The opportunity for improvement
Firstly, the increased visibility into operational performance from enterprise service management allows improvement opportunities to be identified. Secondly, the ITIL continual service improvement capability provides the mechanism for improvements to be managed and delivered.
9. Improved access and communication channels, plus more effective communication
Enterprise service management and a suitable ITSM solution bring a choice of access and communication channels including telephone, email, chat, self-service, alerts, and a broadcast channel via the self-service portal. Escalation and alerting capabilities also help to ensure that no ticket or communication goes unactioned.
10. Improved accountability, even across business-function boundaries
Not only does enterprise service management technology make it easier to assign and see responsibility and accountability within business functions it does the same across business functions. For example, some business services, such as the onboarding of new employees, require multiple business functions to work together to ensure that everything is delivered on time.
11. Better understanding of what services are needed and provided
Enterprise service management doesn’t have to be limited to support and change management. The ITIL service lifecycle can also be used to manage business function services from service strategy through to service operation, allowing greater insight into the services provided.
12. Standardization
This is not only business-wide, optimized processes but also a common way of working, a common look and feel, and a common service model for employees. It also offers the potential to provide a single point of service, no matter the service provider, companywide.
13. Improved collaboration within and across business functions
Not only does enterprise service management make it easy for work to be passed between individuals or groups, or to be worked on collectively, it also makes it easier for work to pass between different business functions.
Finally, there is also a benefit specific to the corporate IT organization. Not only is enterprise service management an opportunity for other business functions to benefit from ITSM principles and capabilities, it’s also an opportunity for IT to further demonstrate its business worth through its wealth of service management skills, knowledge, and experience and the provision of the technology to support business-wide service management.
If you liked reading this, you should read our ‘How to guide’ on setting up your service desk.
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