InvGate Blog

Dealing with underperforming employees is tough. No matter how many courses you attend, books you read, or years of experience you have, we think one of the hardest service desk manager tasks is supporting underachieving analysts while maintaining team morale. To help, here are ten tips for managing an underperforming service desk analyst.

Topics: Service Desk

Technology is upping the pace of work and increasing the rate of change – yes, it’s making our lives easier but at the same time it’s putting some crazy pressures on support teams who are striving to meet customer needs and business demands. IT self-service capabilities exist to help here, along with the ability to reduce costs, empower customers, and increase staff productivity.

Topics: Service Desk, Self-service

Change advisory boards (CABs) exist to ensure that all business-affecting changes are tested, reviewed, and approved such that change activity delivers value without crippling the rest of the business. If you want to know how best to operate your change advisory board, here are our ten top tips for getting the most out of your CAB.

Topics: change management, Change Advisory Board

We’re very happy to introduce InvGate Service Desk 6.0, a version that features a totally renewed interface to continue making your life at work easier (and more organized). The goal we set ourselves was to improve the experience of all those who use InvGate as their main work tool: Agents, Managers, and Administrators now have more visibility on pending tasks with the option  to operate them in a simplified way, all from the same screen. The star of this major redesign is the "My work" section, where the technical users spend most of their time organizing their day to day. Keep reading to learn about all the changes and improvements that this new interface brings.

Topics: service desk, Service Desk Software, service desk software features, IT Service Desk, InvGate Service Desk

IT asset management (ITAM) is the capability, or set of processes, that can really help your organization to get a better handle on what IT assets have been installed in, or are used by, your business. Done well it can save you money, decrease request fulfillment times, drive efficiency, and mitigate risk. It can also be the difference between meeting your legal and regulatory requirements and audit failures, fines, and all manner of bad stuff that non-compliance brings with it. However, sometimes getting a handle on the possibilities, and needs, of ITAM can seem daunting. So, here are five quick tips for getting started – it’s time to get your ITAM on.  

Topics: software asset management, IT Asset Management, InvGate Assets

Who knew that there are so many situations in IT service management (ITSM) where – for whatever reason – it’s easy for people and organizations to think that something is different from the reality. It might be that something is considered too hard to do or that something simply doesn’t need to be done (because something else is being done). After writing a first blog on the topic, we decided that there was a need for at least two more blogs outlining some of the common misguided ITSM expectations. Here’s the second. And this is the third blog, where we take our growing list up to nine examples of where people’s assumptions or expectations are different to the reality.  

Topics: ITSM

In writing our first blog that looked at three commonly-held incorrect assumptions and IT service management (ITSM) expectations gaps, we realized that there are many more situations where – for whatever reason – it’s easy for people and organizations to think that something is different to the reality. Maybe that something is too hard to do or that something simply doesn’t need to be done. Hence, we decided to write two more blogs on the topic, with this blog looking at three additional misguided ITSM expectations.

Topics: ITSM

So, here’s the thing – we’ve all come across IT service management (ITSM) “own goals” in our careers. For instance, a new ITSM tool that cost way too much but was no better than the one before it. Or a revised process that was meant to make things leaner but instead complicated things to kingdom come. Or expensive ITSM consultancy that just didn’t deliver the expected benefits. These are all examples of where our expectations weren’t met, and they aren’t the only instances where there can be a significant gap between our expectations and reality. Sometimes these are bad things – like in the above examples – where the desired reality never appears. But sometimes there can be occasions where the reverse is true. For instance, where we don’t do something because it’s too hard, but we could have accomplished it with the right knowledge and focus. This blog looks at three commonly-held incorrect assumptions and ITSM expectations gaps. Hopefully, you’ll find them helpful.

Topics: ITSM

Building a new IT service management (ITSM) workflow in your ITSM tool is a really exciting step. Stay with us here – it’s about seeing your optimized process all mapped out and ready to come to life! What’s not to love? Workflow automation saves time, money, and effort, allowing your IT support teams, in particular, to focus on the day job of helping people. Here are eight tips for making sure your new workflow delivers value as well as four common workflow-building pitfalls to avoid.

Topics: ITSM