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IT Service Management has, over the years, become an extremely important feature in IT departments all over the world today. Irrespective of which IT framework an organization employs, there are certain best practices they must follow when it comes to consistently keeping their IT operations efficient and effective. Here are some of them

Don’t just align your services, integrate them

A majority of ITSM frameworks are built to integrate IT fully into a business. This essentially means that the IT department isn’t isolated from the other departments of a business, but actually works in tandem with them to align to their business goals. However, merely aligning IT with the needs of a business will not achieve integration. Under IT service management, IT needs to become an integral part of the organization, which helps drive business decisions, achieve business goals and improve not just IT services, but the performance, management and services rendered by all departments.

Being proactive and not reactive

When IT initially took off, the primary focus was on reacting to problems related to technology that would invariably crop up. 

Organizations and businesses today rely heavily on IT, and a sudden system overload or crash can lead to massive operational and financial losses, which they can’t afford. 

They should be proactive and be able to anticipate problems before they happen. In much the same way, the IT department can’t afford to wait for their system to overload and crash, but keep improving their services through frameworks like ITIL. This means determining what proactive steps should be taken in advance, such as upgrading a system well in advance, before the number of users is more than the system capacity.

End-to-end planning

A lot of IT Service Management needs to be focused on the idea of holistic, end-to-end planning. When departments of a business function together instead of working in silos, the business will not only run more smoothly, but also drive better performance and results. The same holistic approach needs to be implemented in the design of IT services as well. 

Instead of providing stop-gap solutions and solving problems as they arise, ITSM designs services, implements, analyzes and monitors them and works towards continuous improvement. In other words, it is an end-to-end process and the amount of planning and design that is usually recommended in ITSM frameworks reflects this.

Structured workflows for incidents

Incidents are the most common point of contact between the IT department and individuals. This lays significance on employing standardized workflows across the enterprise. Using a structured workflow increases accountability, since everybody will be using the same procedures. This means that incidents can be tracked and recreated, and data about similar incidents can be collected to develop best practices, increase process efficiency and drive better visibility.   

Keeping information secure

A very important point that most ITSM frameworks stress on is the need to keep information safe and secure. This includes everything from having controlled user access with unique IDs and passwords, to limiting what work can be done on certain workstations. As an extension of IT services, ITOM in combination with IAM can be deployed to physically limit access to specific, important business areas like server rooms, admin panels and more.  

Constant and consistent improvement

The most important IT service management practice is to keep improving, constantly and consistently. Most frameworks suggest that using ITSM should result in systems being constantly analyzed and refined as businesses scale. This essentially means that businesses are dynamic organizations that exist in constantly changing environments. Much like organizations are constantly looking at ways to improve how they function as a whole, IT should also constantly look at providing more efficient and cost-effective solutions in a dynamic environment. The technology being used may be the best in the market today, but there is always an upgrade or a better technology round the corner. When businesses change direction and discard their old, inefficient processes in order to grow, there is no reason why the tech departments should be any different, and IT service management recognizes this fact.

Wrapping up

Experts in IT Service Management at EoraTech will analyze and recommend these best practices across an agreed set of frameworks aligned to your business. EoraTech’s legacy in ITSM, built on several decades of quality and customer satisfaction, enables us to offer a comprehensive range of services to enable and manage the exciting ITSM space.

Consult our specialists for IT Service Management solutions that will help your organization and business thrive.

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