InvGate Blog

Stephen Mann

Stephen Mann is an independent IT and IT service management content creator, and a frequent blogger, writer, and presenter on the challenges and opportunities for IT service management professionals. In his career, he’s held positions in IT research and analysis (at IT industry analyst firms Ovum and Forrester), IT service management consultancy, enterprise IT service desk and IT service management, IT asset management, innovation and creativity facilitation, project management, finance consultancy, internal audit, and most recently product marketing for a SaaS IT service management technology vendor.

ITAM 101: 10 Tips for Delivering IT Asset Management Quick Wins

Posted by Stephen Mann on February 13, 2019 at 12:30 PM

IT asset management (ITAM), software asset management (SAM), software license management (SLM), and software license optimization (SLO), are often looked at from one or, hopefully, two perspectives: 1. cost reduction (or optimization) and 2. improved governance, including compliance. However, there’s a third perspective which shouldn’t be overlooked – the insight that effective ITAM provides to help with other IT, and business, decisions and activities. This blog offers some examples of this, before showing the power of even simple ITAM activities and then offering 10 tips for getting started with ITAM quick wins.

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Topics: ITAM

3 Key 2019 Trends for the IT Service Desk

Posted by Stephen Mann on January 9, 2019 at 10:02 AM

How’s your IT service desk faring? Hopefully it’s meeting all the agreed service level agreement (SLA) targets, your end users and customers are happy, and so are your service desk agents. Or maybe they’re not and you need to improve your operations, performance, and the perceptions that people have of the delivered IT support capabilities. Looking forward to IT support in 2019, the people who agreed with the former – that everything is great with their IT support capabilities – will still, in many ways, have the same challenges and opportunities as those who agreed with the latter. Odd, I know – with the key difference being that they might be better positioned to address them.

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Topics: Service Desk, IT Service Desk, Employee Experience, AI, Artificial Intelligence

ITSM and IT Service Desk Tools – Should You Build or Buy?

Posted by Stephen Mann on September 12, 2018 at 2:23 PM

While IT help desk and IT service management (ITSM) tools have been available for 30 years or so, it still might surprise you that not every organization has invested in one yet. Of course, the majority have – from the largest of enterprise organizations to small-to-medium businesses (SMBs) – but there are still organizations that operate their IT support and other ITSM capabilities without the help of a fit-for-purpose tool.

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Topics: Help Desk Software, Service Desk, ITSM

The Top 6 Must-Have Technologies for IT Support

Posted by Stephen Mann on March 21, 2018 at 7:49 AM

Have you ever stopped to think about which of the many capabilities within your IT service management (ITSM) or IT service desk tool (or home-grown equivalent), and wider IT-management toolset are the most important for IT support? It’s pretty hard to do – to whittle everything you use down to a top 6 – and then the next question is: How does this map to the collective requirements of other IT organizations and their support capabilities. After all, most of us like to be vindicated in our choices.