The Benefits of AI in ITSM (and the Challenges)

Many organizations are quickly recognising the potential of AI in ITSM. 

ITSM solutions like ServiceNow are a rich source of data and much of that data can be used to optimize processes related to ITSM.

The ITSM providers themselves understand this, and are increasingly offering AI capabilities through their platforms.

However, due to the broad focus of organizations like ServiceNow, the uses for such examples of AI are limited. As such, organizations seeking to take full advantage of AI in ITSM are using purpose-built, third-party AI solutions.

In this post, we highlight the use cases for and benefits of AI in ITSM, and the challenges associated with implementing and using AI in ITSM effectively. Continue on https://www.perspectium.com/blog/the-benefits-of-ai-in-itsm-and-the-challenges/

ML in ITSM: The Machine Learning Use Cases Revolutionizing ITSM

Increasingly, organizations are utilizing ML in ITSM, with ITSM solution providers such as ServiceNow providing in-built ML capabilities on their platforms.

However, organizations that want to take full advantage of ML in ITSM are replicating and extracting ITSM data to feed into purpose-built ML solutions.

This post explores the potential benefits of applying machine learning in ITSM, and why ITSM integration solutions are a key enabling technology in this use case. Continue on https://www.perspectium.com/blog/ml-in-itsm/

ITSM Integration Benefits and Best Practices

 IT Service Management (ITSM) integration helps organizations align disparate ITSM vendor services and applications. 

In modern, data-driven business, aligning such services and applications is crucial, since many organizations leverage various vendors to serve their customer’s needs.

In order to provide a seamless and consistent standard of service, an organization’s ITSM applications must be connected. Such interconnectivity enables inter-application workflows, allowing data to transfer securely between apps.

Additionally, strong ITSM integration negates the need for manual data entry. Duplicate processes associated with keeping applications up to date can be avoided, by enabling real-time updates across services.

Benefits of ITSM Integration

ITSM integration helps streamline what would otherwise be a complex and disjointed technology stack. This provides value by enabling greater scope for automation, improved standards of service for the customer, less informational silos and more readily available data. 

Here’s a breakdown of the key benefits of ITSM integration:

• Increased Automation. By reducing the need for manual data entry, organizations save time and are able to expend their resources on more value-adding activities. This also mitigates the potential for human error and the associated financial and reputational costs.
• A Single Source of Truth. Greater interconnectivity between critical applications helps foster consistency across the organization’s IT ecosystem. This ensures applications are synchronized, and the right data is readily available – not tied up in informational silos.  
• Consistent Services. By ensuring the right data is available when needed, organizations can greatly improve employee productivity. It also grants organizations greater confidence that service standards won’t be undermined by poor data quality.
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Slow ServiceNow Instance Performance Could be Due to Over-Customization

 Slow ServiceNow instance performance is a thorn in many organization’s IT service management (ITSM) strategies. Poor ServiceNow performance can cause bottlenecks that impede an organization’s scalability.

A leader among ITSM vendors, ServiceNow is a highly customizable tool – a key factor driving its popularity. Organizations can tailor the tool to meet their specific demands, adding custom functionality via custom-built code, applications and APIs.

However, customization – or rather, over-customization – is often at the heart of slow ServiceNow instance performance. 

ServiceNow Customization – Don’t Overdo It

As organizations add more and more custom functionality, ServiceNow instances become increasingly difficult to manage. 

In the case of upgrades or implementing new features, organizations need to extend resources to ensure the custom functionality remains compatible. When the resources required are sourced internally, this can delay time-to-value as DIY ServiceNow integrations take, on average, 470 hours. When sourced externally, the burden of cost is financial. 

Additionally, custom integrations can have a direct impact on ServiceNow performance. Organizations are often tempted into the DIY approach to building custom integrations, particularly for integrations that transfer limited amounts of data. 

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Service Management Data Integration: A Guide

 Service management data integration helps unsilo enterprise and customer data, granting service management professionals a comprehensive view of the right information.

Service-management requires consistent and accurate data. But this consistency is difficult to achieve when disparate tools lead to information silos – and the implications are huge.

Not having the right data available, among the right people, at the right time can undermine the integrity of an organizations data-driven decisions.

Gartner estimates that 97% of business decisions are based on data of unacceptable quality. Further reports indicate flawed data costs companies an astounding 20% of their revenue.

Two leading drivers of poor data quality are unintegrated shadow IT and siloed applications. 

A Symantec study showed that 1,516 cloud apps are in use by the average enterprise, but CIOs believe that only 30-40 cloud apps are in use by their enterprise. This means many unused apps could be generating useful data that is disconnected from the enterprise.  

Forbes Insights found that only 34% of executives have achieved a single view of the customer with aggregated customer data. In addition, 52% of executives say that their siloed apps impede a single view of the customer.

The lack of a holistic view of enterprise and customer data can severely impact an organization’s service management strategies and processes. 

The solution? Data integration.

What Is Data Integration?

Data integration means getting the right data from there to here—so that the data can ultimately be used to offer better service and inform business decisions.

Through better data integration, organizations can enable mass data synchronization between a service-management application (like ServiceNow, Jira or Salesforce) and other endpoints—either in batch updates, or dynamically in real-time.

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A Guide to IT Service Desk Integrations and ServiceNow

 IT Service Desk integrations connect the employees and solutions involved in IT support to other relevant areas of the organization.

Integrating the IT service desk with the wider enterprise is becoming increasingly necessary as organizations evolve their multi-tier IT infrastructure with new solutions, applications, and systems.

Such sophisticated IT ecosystems demand integrated workflows that connect the various systems and applications seamlessly, to improve collaboration, operational transparency and data availability, as well as boost employee productivity.

As such, users of IT Service Desk and ITSM solutions such as ServiceNow often pursue IT Service Desk integrations to break down data silos.

• See also: ServiceNow Integration Use Cases that Improve Operations, Alignment and More

What is an IT Service Desk?

An IT Service Desk is a component of ITSM. While ITSM is a broad framework encompassing the entire scope of service delivery, IT Service Desks focus on managing and supporting specific technical issues or customer requests.

Leading ITSM platforms such as ServiceNow provide IT Service Desk solutions.

What is an IT Service Desk Integration?

An IT Service Desk integration is a technological solution for connecting service desks to the broader enterprise. They consolidate data and processes, enabling automated workflows across multiple systems and creating a unified service ecosystem.

With a unified service ecosystem, organizations create a single source of truth, reducing the potential for errors and delays in service delivery, and making it easier for relevant stakeholders to access the information and data they require to support users.

IT Service Desk integrations can be focussed around data integration (feeding IT Service Desk data into an external repository) and system integration (synchronizing multiple service desks, or a service desk with an external solution).

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ServiceNow Integration Use Cases that Improve Operations, Alignment and More

 

To get the most value out of ServiceNow, a number of ServiceNow integration use cases should be pursued to encourage greater alignment between IT and the rest of the organization.

Such ServiceNow integrations are essential in optimizing processes, improve employee productivity, and deliver maximum value to customers.

This blog highlights the top 5 ServiceNow integration use cases that improve operations, alignment and more.

Top 5 ServiceNow Integration Use Cases

1. ServiceNow to Reporting, Analytics and BI tools

While ServiceNow has some reporting capabilities, many organizations find them limited:

• Users can only analyze data within the Now Platform. They cannot combine ServiceNow data with other sources for reporting and analysis, which prevents the organization from getting a complete view of its business data.
• The default reporting feature does not easily handle data-heavy reports. Running reports/analytics on large volumes of data can cause system overload, leading to slow queries and instances. Performance degradation delays reports and impacts other features of the Platform.
• ServiceNow reporting does not support historical trend analysis – users can only analyze the current state of instance data. Tracking historical metrics demands extensive manual input.

Due to these limitations, organizations choose to integrate ServiceNow with dedicated reporting, analytics and business intelligence tools like Tableau or Power BI to perform advanced reporting and analysis.

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