One of the most commonly automated IT services falls within Help Desk, including the basic ticketing system. Our ticketing system has automation tools that categorize, escalate and in some cases auto-resolve tickets through scripts. Although ticketing systems are most common in IT, we've expanded this model to other service centers within our organization including Operations, F&A and Marketing.
The beauty of automation is it can complete some of the necessary yet mundane tasks needed to keep business operations afloat. The best way we've quantified this is the opportunity cost of our team working on higher level activities where they can contribute what automation cannot. Many times, this has allowed our team to progress into new projects and skill sets allowing them to better serve our organization.
"Woo-Hoo, let's roll our a new system," said no IT Team ever. We know new systems and strategies can be disruptive to business, to clients and especially to our internal processes. Therefore, effective change management is paramount. Automation is helping some organizations make efficient transitions from project management to operating systems.
If you're like us, you have software, hardware and system updates that need to be updated regularly and automation can help. Using the ITIL framework, identify issues and defects in a company’s agile environment and pinpoint various processes that would benefit from automation. For us, that includes classroom configuration, office updates and a new process that required passwords to be updated and made more secure every 90 days.
If you are not already your organization need to take advantage of automation to on-board new hires. When a new employee joins, access is needed to several internal systems specific to the organization or the employee’s department. Instead of the employee or hiring manager reaching out to IT to request this access ad hoc, automate the process so it’s requested automatically. Over the last year, this has saved us over 150 hours of help desk support time.
Although automation starts with IT, its biggest impact is on the your business and your clients. Improving client and customer service is the end-game of ITSM automation and every department outside of IT will rely on automation on some level. When a student enrolls in a course, they will received a series of automated emails giving them access to our systems to set up their use profile, launch their course, download digital courseware and access labs.
Automation is no longer see as a threat to traditional job roles but a way to leverage your team, your talents and your organization.
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