ITSM stands for IT service management. It encompasses all services and measures required to ensure the best possible support of business processes within a company through in-house IT. In detail, this involves tasks such as the development, provision, management and improvement of IT services. In sum, ITSM is the management that bundles, coordinates and controls technological as well as process and people-oriented IT services. All the measures and methodologies used in ITSM allow you to optimize the work of your IT specialists in the provision of services.
This involves an interaction between the performing side and the receiving side. An important characteristic of service is that it is an intangible good. For example: If a friend feeds you with a banana, this is not a service. However, if he helps you to bring a heavy purchase home, it is a service.
the IT department offers to its customers (the term here includes software, software complexes, computers, programmers, consultants, i.e. all and everything that belongs to the term information technology). Starting up a computer, launching a program, creating a special application, repairing something related to computers or programs, setting up new processes with IT usage or improving already existing ones - all this belongs to the field of IT services.
All parties involved - the service provider and the service recipient - should be satisfied through optimized and structured processes. All business processes and services should have a metric and be measurable so that the workflows can be continuously optimized. For example, the quality of service by which a supermarket cashier or the entire supermarket is measured is based on the length of the queue and the time to service. As you can see, every business process has a large number of complicated and not so obvious metrics - these need to be identified, analyzed, optimized and structured.
Today, the application of ITSM in customer service is very often referred to as the help desk. Here, tickets are used to help identify the customer's concern and deliver it to the right service employee as quickly as possible. The ticket contains all important information and is only closed when the customer's request has been processed.
Einer der größten Vorteile eines Help Desk im IT-Service Management besteht in der Steigerung der Produktivität in ihrem Unternehmen. Die webbasierte Problemverfolgung, Ticketverwaltung und automatisierte Risiko-Erkennung sowie andere interner Softwarefunktionen bieten die Möglichkeit Risiken und auftretende Probleme schnell zu erkennen, zu verfolgen und vor allem zu lösen.
In short:
The help desk simplifies and automates service requests, reduces the support effort and supports a team in providing a good service. Tickets are always routed to the right person to ensure a quick response for the customer - this is ITSM in customer service.
A company usually operates with complicated internal processes. Here, different structural units meet each other - for example:
Today, highly developed ITSM systems are able to integrate everything that is hidden behind such terms, objects and measures into automated processes. The more highly developed an ITSM system is, the greater the level of automation of business processes. Even the most complex and complicated business processes can be recognized and controlled in all their complexity.
ITSM and BPM: Sophisticated systems for the automation of business processes based on ITSM methods form the class of BMP systems (Business Process Management Systems). Sometimes, in this context, there is also talk of platforms for controlling business processes (BMP platform). The most highly developed universal systems can be used both as a service desk and as a BMP. Nevertheless, in the interest of simplifying the interface and management mechanisms, they are divided into two classes.
The IT Infrastructure Library (ITIL) is a collection of processes that provide a framework and best practices for building an ITSM solution. With this, companies can increase the efficiency of services and at the same time reduce the costs for service management if they adhere to the recommended ITIL processes. For this reason, the IT Infrastructure Library can be seen as a kind of tool for the introduction of ITSM in companies.
ITIL offers many benefits for IT and its business. ITIL enables companies to be more agile and to apply other best practices and frameworks in a complementary way. ITIL acts as an activator for efficient IT service management.
