Implementing a service management solution

Ever implemented a new service management tool?

Those of you who have ever implemented a new service management tool the old-fashioned way probably are aware of the challenges involved. It’s not just about installing a new application and handing over the user instructions to your dear friends who work at the service desk. It’s about process definition, requirements definition, functional designs, technical designs, programming and customization of the application involved, uploading data and integrating with other applications or data sources, endless testing and bug-fixing and – finally – training your IT staff… Just shortly before go-live… squeezed in the remains of your project’s budget and just before the quickly approaching deadline.

So, once you’ve overcome the initial implementation project and have managed to go live with your new service management solution, you might just find that not all the choices you’ve made were the best options available. And you might find some ‘black holes’ in the processes you’ve defined, where tickets seem to be sucked into to be never heard from again. As a result, your IT specialists start to moan, your IT manager doesn’t really look very happy and the service levels to your end-users might drop.

Oops…

All while you had the best intentions imaginable… and you put in so much time and effort… and your company spent a bundle on consultancy to really make this work.

Fast-track implementation using best practices

So: some smart guys in the business came up with some very good ideas to prevent disastrous or simply costly and time-consuming implementations of ITSM tools: fast-track implementation using best practices! Perfect idea! Now you could implement your ITSM tools based on a solid setup that came with the application you’d purchased and you merely needed to tweak that to fit your own specific processes. Less time and money involved and higher quality implementations. Well done!

But still room for improvement. So, the next brilliant idea was to come up with additional process models and standardized methods – on top of your service management application – that exactly defined how an incident should be registered and how you should handle standard changes. Eureka! Now you could simply review the standard process and tweak that for all the non-standard stuff that is specific to your own very special organization. And – as a result – tweak the standard setup of your service management application. Even less time and involved and higher quality results! (Not always cheaper, though, as these models come at a price but that’s not the issue here).

But now, there’s even a simpler, even quicker, more effective and cheaper way to implement your new service management application which will deliver even more value to both your IT organization and your end-users. It prevents you from having to define your own processes; it lets you skip the definition of your tooling requirements and writing the resulting functional and technical designs for your new system. And it prevents you from having to spend a fortune on tooling consultants who need to customize that already very expensive platform you just bought.

But it’s coming…

How? Simply by providing the best predefined setup of a service management solution ever created and putting that into the most user-friendly interface you can find in the market today. Which in turn prevents your users from diverting from the standard processes for handling requests, incident, problems and the like. By combining generic processes based on best practices and a

supporting toolset which is perfectly aligned you can really save on time and money and it allows you to create real value for your users. Because now, you can skip stages in your project like process definition, requirement definition and tooling customization. You can save time on testing. And you can focus on the important stuff like defining your service catalogue (always a challenging thing), training your staff and – most importantly – to really start to increase the maturity levels of your service organization.

So, if you came this far in reading this blog, you probably want to know what this service management miracle is called. It’s called 4me (formerly ITRP). You might not have heard its name before. And you won’t find ‘4me’ in the Google SERP when you search on something that could remotely have something to do with service management. And it’s not in the Magic Quadrant yet. But it’s coming… I’m convinced. It’s simply the next logical step in implementing your new service management solution. So: get on board the 4me train and start to benefit from the decades of hands-on experience of its creators and the organizations who are using it – either large or small. You’ll be amazed how fast you can have it up and running.