Cloud Computing concept
IT can be one of the biggest time sinks a company faces and for many SMBs it can also be a costly undertaking when staffing levels are restricted.
PCs, mobile devices, business applications and Cloud-based ITSM can all improve efficiency and productivity and help level the playing field against large enterprise operations.
However, small and midsize (SMB) businesses can often get stuck in a rut spending time on IT issues rather than income-generating activities which grow their own companies.
This is the view of Matt Schvimmer, a general manager at IT service management software specialists ServiceNow.
“In the world of small business, these folks have really tight budgets and don’t have a lot of people to expertly manage their IT resources,” Schvimmer said.
One of the many hats that business owners end up wearing often includes IT manager, a situation which can led them to neglect other vital aspects of their business like customer service or sales generation. It can also mean they give the least attention to their own IT operations because they’re not experts.
It is here that the Cloud can help.
Cloud-based IT Service Management
ServiceNow Express, which launched late last year, brings Cloud-delivered IT service management (ITSM) to SMBs – something which has previously only been considered an option for larger enterprises.
ITSM refers to a process-based system of delivering, managing and servicing IT resources and services and some of its many benefits is that it helps streamline the problem-resolution process.
Using ITSM allows businesses to quickly identify problems and fix them with repeatable best practices—no more frantic Googling or starting from scratch when issues arise. It also provides much-needed visibility into IT environments.
ServiceNow Express automates IT incident and change processes, moving service tickets along toward a speedy and successful resolution. More importantly, it helps free administrators from the most inefficient of IT management tools: email.
Ditch the IT Inbox
“It’s amazing that email is the work system for a lot of these companies,” said Schvimmer. Email is inherently unstructured, he argues, making it a poor substitute for structured, repeatable, and automated approaches to IT management. “Without visibility into IT requests and incidents, IT teams struggle to prioritise and assign work to the right expert, resolve bottlenecks, and provide timely responses to employees,” he added.
ServiceNow Express also provides asset tracking, creating an interactive single system-of-record for a business’ complete IT environment. Overworked IT staffers are no longer required to load spreadsheets to keep tabs on a company’s devices.
For small businesses with dedicated IT teams, visual task boards let managers assign and manage work with drag-and-drop ease. Finally, single-click reporting keeps business leaders apprised of the impact of their IT investments with eye-grabbing visualisations.
ServiceNow Express provides more than 150 report templates as well as pre-configured workflows to help businesses get their ITSM initiatives underway. Self-service and knowledge management capabilities further help lighten the load for IT workers. The company claims that, taken altogether, its service can slash the time it takes to resolve issues by 20 per cent.
As trusted ServiceNow partners, Technosys are on hand to help your business implement an ITSM solution which can be uniquely tailored to meet your company’s specific needs.
Technosys can help your business by delivering Cloud-based service management software that’s fast to deploy, simple to configure, and built for the SMB and midmarket. We provide guidance and support to integrate Express with both Okta Single Sign-on and LDAP, allowing you to connect with customer’s LDAP servers.
If you’d like to find out how we can help your business implement a ServiceNow Express solution, get in touch.
