Gartner estimates that worldwide IT spending will total nearly USD 4.6 trillion in 2023, exhibiting a 5.1% growth from 2022. In the last couple of years, the pivot towards digital supremacy has grown tremendously amongst both consumers and businesses with the pandemic playing a catalyst role in accelerating adoption.
However, as investments in IT continue to grow, enterprises need new ways to manage their evolving digital complexity. This is where IT Service Management, or ITSM, becomes one of the most exciting and happening places in a business. In simple terms, ITSM deals with processes and models that a business’s IT team relies on to ensure the uninterrupted delivery of digital services to meet the needs of all stakeholders.
But relying on traditional ITSM can be a challenge for enterprises to meet the dynamic needs of today’s digital-savvy end users. This is because traditional ITSM focuses more on processes and effort, wherein today’s highly competitive enterprise technology ecosystems demand an ITSM approach that focuses on generating business value faster. Let us examine the key challenges faced in traditional ITSM that need attention at the earliest:
Core Challenges Faced in ITSM
Poor Automation
Enterprises that stick with legacy processes and tools often rely on manual management of operations. This would leave them vulnerable to errors and biased insights, ultimately resulting in losses.
Siloed Data, People, and Tools
Over the years, enterprises have accumulated many business systems to strengthen different departments. However, their ITSM fails to address the problem of siloed data residing across multiple systems, unable to make an impact across the organization. Similarly, people and tools often operate independently without being able to drive a connected network, thereby leading to a very poorly integrated end-user experience.
Lack of Standardization
With multiple business systems operating in parallel across an enterprise, there are issues in standardizing transactional frameworks. As a result, most systems are not interoperable, leading to a cascade of problems and the inability to have a sound knowledge management practice in place.
Manual Documentation and Information Retrieval
Another problem that traditional ITSM endures is the overwhelming effort needed for manual documentation of process workflows and best practices. This makes it hard for system integrations and new feature additions in the future. Engineers would not be able to retrieve the right integration or operational guidance faster as information is siloed, or it could even be erroneously captured, leading to further complexities.
The Change DevOps and Agile Can Bring
Traditional ITSM is riddled with challenges that do not support its implementation in modern technology ecosystems. What enterprises need to do today is to leverage agile and DevOps to modernize ITSM in accordance with what the market demands. Agile and DevOps can transform ITSM into a core assurance backbone that enables different stakeholders to leverage maximum ROI from the organization’s IT systems.
Here are some of the most radical changes that agile and DevOps can bring to the table in modernizing enterprise ITSM:
IT Standardization
Enable a level playing field for different IT systems and equip them to work seamlessly with each other over common messaging and transactional frameworks while following consistent standards acceptable universally.
Automation
Make processes faster and improve their agility through automation philosophies that are realized by tools ranging from basic data analytics to advanced AI and machine learning-powered solutions.
Streamlined Collaboration
Ensure that different teams operating with different systems can cohesively manage transactional workflows within the business by working together and following a well-planned execution roadmap for successful technology usage.
Faster Time to Market
When businesses achieve the above key benefits with agile and DevOps, they also contribute significantly to the efforts of launching new features or applications faster for end users. This creates a better environment for enterprises to experiment with innovations and launch them faster to the market if they are worth it.
It’s Time to Modernize your ITSM
ITSM isn’t a new concept and has been around for years. But today, enterprises have changed their software development approaches significantly and have transitioned into agile product-oriented development strategies. We are in the midst of a digital revolution where businesses behave more like tech companies, with agile and DevOps philosophies gaining rampant adoption in enterprise tech stacks.
Traditional approaches in ITSM do not work in favor of modern digital experiences demanded by end users. Hence it is essential to incorporate agile and DevOps principles to modernize your ITSM. However, it is equally important to ensure that there is a well-planned roadmap to this modernization exercise with risk mitigation and seamless execution guidelines.
This is where an experienced technology partner like enreap can be your biggest asset. Get in touch with us to know more.
