InvGate Blog

Have you ever stated that you run your IT department “like a business”? If you have, then you’re not alone. Especially after the 2008 financial crisis when most IT departments were tasked with “doing more with less” and cost-cutting and improved efficiency became the order of the day. But, jumping back to this blog’s opening sentence, if you’ve previously stated that your IT department is “run like a business,” do you really have fit-for-purpose IT financial management capabilities? For example, perhaps knowing how much individual IT services costs and how they deliver value to the organization. This blog looks at what IT financial management is and why it’s important.

Topics: IT Financial Management

DevOps, Agile, ITIL, COBIT and what about those ISOs? There can be a lot of confusion in the IT service management (ITSM) best practice world. But here’s the thing – ITIL, COBIT, and ISO/IEC 20000 all complement each other. So, it’s not a zero-sum game. Used well, the three approaches can be blended together to give a real boost to your service and support customer experience. To help, here are three tips on combining ITIL, COBIT, and ISO 20000 that will help to improve your ITSM practices.

Topics: ITSM, COBIT, IT Service Desk

A solid review cycle is an essential part of any IT practice – with IT organizations that review and improve their processes and practices more successful than those that are stuck in firefighting mode and/or are in no position other than to maintain the status quo. Reviewing the maturity of your IT service management (ITSM) practices means that you get to sense check what you’re doing day in, day out and to look at opportunities for improvement. To help, here are ten tips for conducting ITSM maturity assessments.

Topics: ITSM, Maturity Assessment

Aged tickets hurt IT service desks and their parent organizations. From the business’ perspective, employees struggling for much longer than is acceptable and potentially losing productivity. From an IT perspective, it not only means that we’re failing those we serve, we might also have significant issues with our operations. Hopefully, you found part one of this blog valuable and it’s given you a start on handling your aged tickets. Now, let’s roll up our sleeves and keep up the good work! To help, here are five more tips.

Topics: Help Desk

Let’s face it. We’ve all been there. Attending a service review with a customer only to be faced with an incident or request that should have been sorted out months (if not years) ago. Such “aged tickets” happen for a variety of reasons – complex systems, organizational change, or even plain old “not enough people on the IT service desk.” The reality is that these aged tickets hurt us. From the business’ perspective, they have people struggling for much longer than is acceptable and from an IT perspective it means that we “can’t see the forest for the trees.” To help, here are my first five of ten ways to overcome your aged ticket problem.

Topics: ticketing system, Help Desk, Ticket Management

Keeping your IT service desk analysts motivated can sometimes be a difficult job. Between the negativity of end-user complaints, the stream of incoming incidents, and the monotony of some service desk tasks, staff demotivation is not uncommon. Don’t worry though, gamification – which essentially consists of merging game mechanics and work – can help you to keep staff motivation levels up.   So, if you feel that your IT service desk analysts are demotivated (or heading that way), unhappy, or simply bored at work, then gamification could be just what you need to inject a bit of enjoyment and fun into their working day. Please read on to find out more.

Topics: Gamification, Service Desk

ITIL is the go-to framework for most organizations in an IT service management (ITSM) environment but just because something works doesn’t mean that it can’t be reviewed and improved on. Especially because business requirements change, as has ITIL in 2019. Here are five questions to ask yourself, and your organization, when you’re reviewing and refocusing your ITIL approach.

Topics: ITIL

Selecting a new IT service management (ITSM) tool is a major project (and a major investment). It’ll impact your IT service desk, your technical support teams, and your end-user community. To help, here are ten tips for picking the right ITSM tool. Tip #1: Figure out what you want Know your organization and plan accordingly. What will you need the tool to do? There’s a huge difference between just doing the basics of incident, request, and change management and implementing a complex set of ITSM practices. Do you want a CMDB? What about problem management? So many people say they want a tool to “do ITIL” but the reality is that only the most mature organizations will ever have the need for support for over thirty ITIL management practices. Also, understand your business and create a plan based on your reality – not what the ITIL textbook says or what ITSM tool vendors are trying to sell you.

Topics: ITSM, InvGate Service Desk

Managing an IT help desk is one of the most visible roles in IT. Done well, you can support your team, inspire great service, and increase customer satisfaction. Done badly, you’ll demotivate your people, have unhappy customers, and a high churn rate (in terms of both team members and help desk users). If you want to improve how you manage your IT help desk, are about to take on a help desk manager role, or simply want to ensure that you’re doing whatever you can to get things right, then here are ten tips for becoming a great IT help desk manager.

Topics: Help Desk