IT Infrastructure and Operations

Get Expert Help and Guidance with Infrastructure and Operations at Your Organization

How Service Desk Forms the Foundation of IT Service Management

Based on a process approach to infrastructure technology management (as opposed to a strictly IT systems perspective), IT Service Management (ITSM) seeks to focus on customer needs and IT services with a continuous emphasis on improvement. In other words, the customer or client’s needs are addressed first, then comes IT infrastructure planning, implementation and support. It is a framework or standard that is entirely customer centric.

Business leaders sometimes assume that standardizing the service desk is simply a matter of buying the right tool or sorting out the analysts who handle the initial tickets. This mistake is behind more than one misguided service desk standardization project and most hasty IT service management (ITSM) tool purchases.

Service desk technologies and  processes are definitely part of the equation, but the variables extend far beyond the first tier of the service desk. Improving service support is an exercise in organizational change. The goal is to work toward establishing a single service-support team across the IT group and supporting it with a cooperative, customer-focused culture.
 
Focus on building standardized processes for incident management and service request fulfillment one group at a time until everyone who touches a ticket embraces the same set of processes and technologies.

Our approach to service desk standardization focuses on building essential best practices:

• Extend - Facilitate the extension of service management best practices to other business functions to improve productivity and position IT as a strategic partner.
• Standardize - Build essential incident, service request, and knowledge management processes to create a sustainable service desk that meets business needs.
• Consolidate - Build a strategic roadmap to consolidate service desks to reduce end-user support costs and sustain end-user satisfaction.
• Improve - Build a continual improvement plan for the service desk to review and evaluate key processes and services, and manage the progress of improvement initiatives.
• Adopt Lean - Build value map incident management and request fulfilment workflows, and focus the service desk’s efforts on high-value-added activities.
• Select and Implement - Review mid-market and enterprise service desk tools, select an ITSM solution, and build an implementation plan to ensure your investment meets your needs.

Please feel free to contact us for more information on how we can help protect your organization's service desk needs and capabilities.

IT Specialist Network

IT Infrastructure and Operations Basics