InvGate Blog

Post-COVID-19 crisis, we – as a society – have a long way to go still but, despite the pain of the first half of 2020, there was a lot to celebrate and to learn from for corporate IT organizations. Hopefully, your IT organization and IT service management (ITSM) personnel have reflected upon what were probably miserable times on a day-to-day basis to see just how many challenges they responded to. It’s good to call out these successes. But it’s perhaps even more important to understand the learnings and to build on them as we all go forward into what will be the “new normal” for IT service delivery and support. To help, this blog calls out some of the key challenges faced by IT organizations, offering a key piece of learning for each.

Topics: ITSM, COVID-19

The COVID-19 crisis has been a big challenge for most organizations, with the need for suitable technological capabilities – to enable the new ways of working – a significant part of the various solutions employed to address its impact. This in turn places a heavy reliance on an organization’s IT service management (ITSM) capabilities and the ITSM tool that enables them – especially for IT support. Of course, a big part of an IT service desk’s success is the people they employ and the processes they use. But the other factor that helps to lift an IT service desk from good to great is the use of a fit-for-purpose ITSM tool. And by “fit-for-purpose,” we don’t just mean that it offers all the required ITSM capabilities but that it delivers against all that the IT service desk needs – from the ease of use, through making changes (including upgrades), to the total cost of ownership (TCO).

Topics: ITSM

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

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

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