5 must-haves in your problem management software

What is problem management? 

In ITSM terms, an incident is a single unplanned interruption or reduction of the quality of an IT service. A problem, on the other hand, is a larger issue. ITIL™ defines a problem as “a cause or potential cause of one or more incidents.” Problem management entails the set of processes and activities responsible for managing the lifecycle of all problems that could happen in an IT service. The crux of problem management is to go beyond just finding a solution, but rather the underlying cause of the incident and finding the best way to eliminate this root cause. 

Problem management can save your organization thousands of dollars and can play a big role in increasing both employee and customer satisfaction.

Did you know, that reports suggest that downtime can cost organizations $300,000 per hour? This cost can be even higher for web-based services. One of the primary goals of problem management is to reduce MTTR (mean-time-to-repair) by using a structured root cause analysis process and custom workflows. A good problem management process helps prevent future problems and disruptions and aims to minimize the overall impact on the business. If implemented correctly, problem management improves service design and delivery and increases productivity.

If you are considering implementing a problem management software to reduce/prevent downtime and enhance employee satisfaction, here are:

The top 5 capabilities to look for in a problem management solution: 

1. Automation: Artificial intelligence (AI) is the future of problem management and aids all ITIL processes like incident management, change management, and asset management, thus, improving IT service management as a whole. Automation is involved in every step of the problem management process. Right from the problem detection phase to closure, automated alerts are sent to all the stakeholders. Moreover, once a problem is closed, automation makes it easy to ask for feedback and conduct  reviews to help improve the process. 

2. Known Error Database (KEDB): A KEDB is a rich repository of problems that have occurred in the past and their respective workarounds. Keeping a record is instrumental in ensuring a more swift resolution of problems. While workarounds are not permanent solutions, they help to minimize impact until a long-term solution can be reached. Overall, it helps prevent recurring problems and ensures that there is transparency throughout this process.

3. Visibility: Your problem management tool should have a dashboard that shows timelines, deadlines, and severity/urgency of problems. This dashboard goes a long way in providing clarity and keeping all steps of the problem management process systematic and transparent. It also makes it easier to conduct a Root Cause Analysis (RCA) and stay organized. This consolidated view of incidents associated with a problem, issues, and causes, helps the problem management team reach solutions faster and more efficiently.

4. Proactive: There are two types of problem management, proactive and reactive. Proactive problem management aims to identify future incidents and prevent them from re-occurring by identifying and eliminating the root cause before they can cause service-impacting incidents. Having problem management solution makes the proactive approach easier to implement. This method of problem management empowers your IT team to thoroughly investigate, find the underlying causes. This is incredibly beneficial for creating an open environment for learning and communication, which, in turn, can increase agent productivity. 

5. Tracking Service Level Agreements (SLAs): A good problem management system will keep up with SLAs based on severity and urgency, and helps improve the resolution times of problems. This helps your IT team to stay on top of your entire IT ecosystem and prioritize problems that affect more critical services.

Freshservice and problem management:

So, it is clear that problem management is a crucial part of delivering proactive service management. This, in turn, helps prevent disruptions to business and deflects a fairly large volume of low-priority, repetitive and redundant tickets. Freshservice has a number of embedded features that helps you implement a robust problem management process. 

1. Automation: It is easy to change status, close, and communicate about a problem’s associated incidents.

2. Visibility: With Freshservice,  you can seamlessly conduct root cause analyses, and record its impact, symptoms, and solutions or workarounds. The dashboard also helps you monitor its progress and view the timeline of events leading up to the problem.

3. Transparency: The KEDB of Freshservice helps you link problems to existing incidents, changes, or releases. This way, you can plan ahead for downtime or service disruptions. Having this helps prevent redundancy in resolutions and gives agents much-needed context about the tickets.

4. Prevent future incidents: Freshservice gives easy reference to solutions and workarounds all within a single window. 

If you are interested in learning more about Freshservice’s problem management capabilities, click here. You can even get a free trial of Freshservice for 21-days. So, get a glimpse into advanced problem management features and more for no cost.