When it comes to IT Service Management, businesses are scrutinizing IT – its costs and impact on the business. And as businesses grow more dependent on their IT infrastructures, customer expectations relative to IT service support and delivery increase. Can your IT Service Management Program overcome these challenges? If you’re faced with any of the following questions, you may need to take a closer look at IT Service Management.

1. Why does IT cost so much and where is all that money going anyway?
   In many ways the answer to this question has as much to do with integration and alignment of IT within the business as it does with IT Service Management itself. Often IT Service Management exists within its own silo, and the business has little transparency to the full cost of IT Service Management. Applications that manage the financial side of IT can provide greater transparency into the costs of IT assets as well as service delivery costs. More importantly, such systems enable IT executives greater visibility to model IT changes and better understand the scope and ROI such changes will bring.
2. What have you done for me lately?
   Organizations that encompass the enterprise, whether owned or outsourced, must prove the business value they provide, and IT is no exception – particularly given the substantial investment enterprises make in IT Service Management. Similar to cost transparency, assessing business value can only be determined when the IT organization has a holistic view of its systems (physical and virtual), their direct and indirect costs, and the value these systems provide to the business. IT metrics—utilization rates, licensing costs, consumption data, etc.—must be translated into business outcomes such as increased productivity and reduced costs. Only then will the business fully understand and appreciate the value IT Service Management delivers to the top and bottom line.
3. I have a global teleconference in 30 minutes and the network is down – are you kidding me?!?
   It’s a fact of business life that enterprises are increasingly more dependent on IT systems to run efficiently and effectively. Even at today’s higher availability rates there’s little tolerance for downtime. Proactive IT Service Management is the rule, but requires an integrated approach to monitoring regardless of whether the IT resources are on premise or on demand. Better visibility across your entire IT infrastructure is a key enabler of proactive IT Service Management.
4. I already have a personal Smartphone; why do I need a separate “corporate” phone to access the network?
   IT departments have long been the gatekeepers of what devices may access the network – and rightfully so, given the more aggressive and potentially debilitating threats to network security. That said, however, the expectation is that networks should be device agnostic. People want to be able to connect where ever, when ever and with whatever device they’re comfortable. IT organizations must focus first on customer need and second on the technology that meets the customer need, which usually is driven by a business objective.
5. It takes how long to resolve a simple printer driver issue?
   Again, focusing first on the customer, service level management improvements correlate directly to reduced IT Service Management costs. In addition to improving customer satisfaction, increasing first contact resolution rates and avoiding escalation reduces costs. More importantly, proactive service management leverages the configuration management database (CMDB) to streamline future system upgrades while minimizing potential incidents.

Now more than ever, the effectiveness of IT Service Management is indicative of the effectiveness of your business. Let Nimsoft IT experts help you build a more effective IT Systems Management program with monitoring solutions tailored to the scale and scope of your network.