ITSM 101 - What is ITSM and why do you need it?

[Dawn Jurek]

Is your organization running IT like the airline counter after a canceled flight?

Are IT service requests from users like the crowds of passengers that descend on the one or two agents behind the counter, jostling for position in line?

Is your IT infrastructure in constant need of maintenance like the aircraft that caused the flight to be canceled in the first place?

If this sounds familiar, it may be time to implement an IT Service Management solution that helps you take control of your IT services and infrastructure. 

The IT Service Management solution offered by ServiceNow helps you wrangle all the wayward service processes running throughout your enterprise and turn them into efficient automated processes that run on a single system of record in the ServiceNow Nonstop Cloud.

 

In this installment of our NOWSupport best practices series, we take a quick tour of the applications that make up ITSM, and provide you with resources to learn more, including our Getting Started with ITSM video playlist on our NOWsupport YouTube channel.

What is ITSM?

Information technology service management (ITSM) is a strategic approach to designing, creating, delivering, supporting, and managing information technology services within an organization. ITSM helps organizations meet their business goals by aligning IT services with the business to ensure that the right people, technology, and processes are in place to successfully handle day-to-day operations as well as special challenges. ITSM reduces IT costs and risk, and improves flexibility, service quality, and customer satisfaction.

What is ITIL?

ITIL stands for Information Technology Infrastructure Library, which is an integrated, process-based best practice methodology for managing IT services and aligning them with the needs of a business.

What is ITSM on the ServiceNow platform?

The ServiceNow platform aligns with the ITIL methodology to support ITIL adoption and IT operations through core applications that work together to automate service management within your organization, providing end-to-end visibility into your business services and IT environment through a single system of action. This allows you to eliminate chaos and gain control, make smarter decisions, and get quick results. 

The ServiceNow ITSM core applications are Incident, Problem, Change, Service Catalog, and Configuration.

In addition, other applications—such as Surveys and Benchmarks—support the ITSM core by providing customer feedback and allowing you to compare key performance indicators of your company against those of other ServiceNow customers.

 

See the videos below for an overview of these applications:

What is incident management?

 When a business service is interrupted, users of that service submit incidents to report the issue and seek resolution. Incident management is the ITSM process aimed at restoring service operation as quickly as possible and minimizing business impact.

What is problem management?

When multiple users submit similar incidents to report a service interruption, you want to get to the root cause of the issue to prevent it from recurring in the future. Problem management helps you find and resolve the root cause of related incidents.

What is change management?

 The purpose of change management is to control the lifecycle of all changes, enabling beneficial changes to be made with minimum disruption to IT services. Changes are usually made to fix an issue—for example, to reboot a non-responsive mail server—or to maintain or upgrade hardware or software.

What is a service catalog?

 A service catalog is an ordering system for IT products and services that an organization offers its employees, customers, suppliers, and others. It facilitates request management by controlling who has access to which goods and services. Through the service catalog, users can order goods and services for themselves and others, select options, and track orders. Underlying workflows automate approvals and route requests through fulfillment stages. Get an overview here:

What is a configuration management database (CMDB)?

Effective incident, problem, and change management requires that you have access to information about the various configuration items—or CIs—in your IT environment. Each CI is a uniquely identified component, used to deliver a service for which changes are controlled. The CMDB stores information about each CI, for example, where and how it’s used, how it’s configured, and how it relates to other CIs, up- and down-stream. Learn more about the CMDB and CIs in our blog post and video below:

CMDB 101 - What is a configuration management database and why do you need one?

For more information

Be sure to check out our Customer Success Center, where you can find best practices for ITSM, and more.

To learn more about ITSM in ServiceNow, check out all the videos in our Getting Started with ITSM video playlist on our NOWsupport YouTube channel, starting with this one:

• IT Service Management (product documentation)
• Incident Management (product documentation)
• Problem Management (product documentation)
• Change Management (product documentation)
• Configuration Management Database (CMDB) (product documentation)
• Service Catalog (product documentation)
• Benchmarks (product documentation)
• Assessments (product documentation)
• Survey Management (product documentation)
• Quizzes (product documentation)
• Change Advisory Board (CAB) workbench (product documentation)