Anyone running an IT department knows it’s critical to ensure IT has the right tools in place to manage operations, projects, services and resources in the most efficient manner possible. Not only does this help with resource drain but streamlined processes and communication help keep everything running smoothly and projects on track for success.
What you may not know is that there are codeless work management solutions that bring tickets, projects and integrations together on a single platform.
If your goal is to streamline processes and open up communication and transparency throughout your organization, one way to achieve this is by having an integrated platform that combines ITservicemanagement (ITSM), projectportfoliomanagement (PPM) and integration and automation (iPaaS).
Doing so can provide a comprehensive solution that enables effective resource capacity planning, improved communication between various teams and overall enhanced transparency into the work being done both inside IT and with various departments throughout your organization.
WORKING BETTER TOGETHER
Having ITSM, PPM and iPaaS on a single, codeless platform ensures that processes are streamlined from beginning to end. By combining ITSM, PPM and iPaaS within one solution, teams can complete tasks quickly without needing to move between multiple different software or platforms. This not only speeds up service delivery but also contributes significantly to cost savings due to reduced man-hours spent managing resources.
Additionally, when these tools are on a codeless platform you can democratize workflow and integration building so IT resources aren’t bogged down with requests. This means you can cut down on your integration backlogs while still maintaining visibility, security and governance over the connections and automations being built outside of IT.
And by allowing technically inclined employees in groups like HR, marketing or facilities to integrate and automate their own processes and software – you increase transparency into the work being done throughout your organization. This transparency allows stakeholders to make better informed, data-driven decisions about strategy, cutting down on the silos that can exist within larger businesses. And groups outside of IT will be happy to not have to put projects on hold while they wait out backlogs and resource constraints.
TRANSFORMING SERVICE AND PROJECT MANAGEMENT AT THE CITY OF MADISON
At the city of Madison, the TeamDynamix platform is being used to support digital transformation initiatives with great success.
The team implemented TeamDynamix ITSM with PPM – focusing on self-service to kick off the city’s IT service delivery transformation according to Abigail Ferguson, customer success manager for the city of Madison’s Information Technology.
“We are seeing the same resource constraints other cities are,” she said. “We are understaffed at times and need to focus on higher-value implementations. So, anything we can do to empower our users to find the resources they need for self-service is a must for us.”
Like many other businesses and organizations – the demand for service has gone up exponentially over the last few years as IT now has to support better digital experiences and a “service anywhere, anytime” mentality, even within the public sector.
To address the growing demand, the city of Madison is taking a proactive approach and combining project portfolio management with ITSM using a single platform through TeamDynamix, “This is going to help us really get a sense of what projects align with our strategic goals. We can see what projects align with our service catalog that exist today and take a more proactive approach with our customers and other agencies,” Ferguson said.
This single platform approach for ITSM and PPM is also going to help the city identify what projects should be high priority and what projects can be turned down or scheduled for a later time, “In government, you can’t always say no – it’s more of a ‘we can do that later,’ so we want to be able to support our staff and our citizens the best we can by prioritizing the work,” Ferguson said.
When it came to making the switch to TeamDynamix, improved communication and transparency were big factors. Both are things citizens were asking for when it came to doing business with the city.
Ferguson said the legacy ticketing system they were using only provided people “bare bones” updates on the status of their tickets, “It was a black hole. They’d get these updates just at the start of the ticket and at the end when the ticket was complete,” she said. “We had a lot of complaints about that. Our customers wanted transparency, they wanted buy-in, they wanted to have a stake in their request and to be able to provide feedback to us.”
So when it came to switching to TeamDynamix, the culture was already in place to move forward and embrace a more transparent approach to service management and delivery.
“The IT customer portal specifically has been an ongoing selling point for us to get buy-in internally,” Ferguson said of the new portal launched with TeamDynamix. “As we’ve started to implement [TeamDynamix] we’ve had good feedback from our help desk on what would be better for customers to submit through the portal or resolve through self-service.”
And it’s this readiness for change that’s led to the successful implementation of the new ITSM system and continues to power the organization as they better processes throughout IT and beyond.
“It’s been a journey of enabling folks to feel like they have the right to the knowledge that we all have had – nothing is secret anymore,” Ferguson said. “Our customers want to be able to participate, and every time we get feedback from our customers our user experience gets better and better, and we’re doing our jobs better.”
AUTOMATE IT: WHY INTEGRATION AND AUTOMATION MATTERS FOR SERVICE MANAGEMENT
The benefits of a one-platform solution for ITSM and PPM are enhanced even more when you can include an integration component. By combining iPaaS (integration platform as a service) with ITSM and PPM on a single platform, you can automate complex and simple tasks and connect disparate systems throughout your organization.
Employees no longer need to spend time on repetitive, mundane tasks like password resets before working on bigger projects. All of these, and more, can be automated with workflows using iPaaS.
And with a codeless iPaaS platform, you get the added benefit of anyone being able to use these tools – not just IT. By allowing lines of business to create their own workflows you can free up your IT resources to work on larger projects and eliminate the logjam when it comes to integration within your organization.
If you want to see how more organizations are supercharging their service management throughout their organizations, read our latest e-book: Automate IT – A Playbook for Supercharged ITSM.
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