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Transition From Reactive to Proactive IT Four Ways ITSM Solutions Help Create a Proactive Enterprise

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Table of Contents

Why an Organization Needs to Be Proactive

Approach #1: Improve End-User Satisfaction

Approach #2: Anticipate and Predict Issues Before They Become Problems

Approach #3: Anticipate and Prioritize Workload and Staffing Requirements

Approach #4: Gain Insight to Predict Future Trends

Conclusion: A Proactive Approach to ITSM Innovation

About SunView Software

Many IT departments today may seem like a fire department, reactively fighting “fires” to keep the business running. This leaves little time for teams to get to the root of the problems and take the steps necessary to prevent them. This “break then fix” mentality of service management can lead to burnout among help desk staff, frustrate customers, and inevitably hinder the organization’s ability to focus on more strategic business goals.

By integrating new innovative tools, organizations can begin making the shift towards a proactive model of ITSM rather than one that’s reactive. Artificial intelligence (AI), predictive analytics and machine learning (ML) support the service desk by offering innovative, proactive problem solving, where issues are identified and resolved before ever getting to the help desk. Additionally, tickets can be resolved faster and end user satisfaction can be improved all while reducing cost and complexity. In this eBook, we will look at some customer use-cases that examine four ways AI-powered tools are helping organizations take a more proactive approach to improve IT service management.

“When 67% of service desks spend the majority of their time firefighting, simply keeping the lights on seems to keep them busy enough and steal time away from looking at new service improvement technologies.” —SDI1

Why an Organization Needs to Be Proactive

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Customer satisfaction remains one of the most important differentiators for successful businesses today. A study by McKinsey found that 70% of buying experiences are based on how the customer feels they are being treated. With new AI-based tools, organizations can now anticipate problems before they occur and provide more efficient customer service by automating routine help desk inquiries.

It’s not uncommon for an organization’s help desk to be understaffed and overworked. Prioritizing the most objectively unhappy customers first enables the help desk to be more proactive in their approach to resolving issues and improve overall customer service.

In order to address the most unsatisfied customers, the help desk staff can reference the incident grid to filter by sentiment and investigate the conversations of the top-most assigned tickets. Then, with machine learning and Natural Language Processing (NLP), the system can accurately gauge the sentiment in the conversation between the end-user and the help desk technician, while also informing the help desk how the sentiment is trending. The staff user can pinpoint which end-users are the most unhappy and cross references with Estimated-Time-Effort (ETE) to assign a resolution priority; thus efficiently resolving the ticket and improving user satisfaction.

Approach #1: Improve End-User Satisfaction

Prioritizing Incidents and Tracking Sentiment

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It’s a common scenario: An organization is growing, yet its IT department is not approved for additional budget or resources. Regardless, there is grow-ing demand for the help desk staff to resolve an increasing amount of inci-dents while also keeping end-users happy. The help desk is overloaded with tickets for password resets, connectivity issues, and other common problems; and end-users aren’t engaging in the self-service portal for low-level incidents.

Chatbots are a great way to reduce help desk overload. A chatbot is a virtual chat agent designed to simulate conversation with human users on the self-service portal. It naturally engages end-users like a real help desk operator and quickly finds and delivers answers from the knowledge base to solve low-level problems. Organizations who have implemented chatbots have seen significant customer service gains, as they have increased customer satisfaction and eased the help desk ticket workload.

“By 2018, more than 50% of organizations will implement significant business model changes in their efforts to improve customer experience.”—Gartner2

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In the past, predicting issues before they become problems took a great deal of energy from an organization’s staff. Yet now this can be automated through the use of predictive analytics, which is the use of data, statistical algorithms, and machine learning techniques to identify the likelihood of future outcomes based on historical data. In the world of ITSM, predictive analytics can proactively detect tickets and predict Service Level Performance (SLA) violations before they occur.

By embedding predictive analytics into the reporting of an SLA, an organization’s service desk manager can identify if network performance is trending toward non-compliance. A rapid and elevated SLA warning enables the service desk to determine if there is cause for concern based on current trends so they can manage changes accordingly. This helps to minimize or even prevent disastrous SLA breaches.

Approach #2: Anticipate and Predict Issues Before They Become Problems

“Reporting and analytics in ITSM tools are a top frustration for IT executives. They are also considered the top area IT executives want to innovate and improve in.”—The Service Desk Institute (SDI)3Prediction Analytics for Incidents

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Help desks and customer service representatives are under increasing pressure to do more with less resources. As a result, help desks need to predict project workloads, staffing, and other resource issues.

Now, an intelligent resource system can automatically, and accurately, anticipate project workload, staffing, or resource issues before they occur. The system uses organizational data and historical staff records to determine the best ticket assignments and anticipates resource hiring.

An intelligent ticket routing system ensures the organization’s ticket assignment workload is optimized for maximum efficiency. Additionally, the system can also proactively check, sort, and prioritize incidents based on how much estimated effort is predicted by the system. This allows the help desk staff to quickly see the estimated work-effort involved so they can quickly resolve easy issues, elevate priorities, and plan their days accordingly, thus improving service-speed and efficiency.

With predictive graphs, management and staff can rapidly identify trends where workload may impact departments, such as how many tickets will be created by teams and departments, and which ticket types will be created. Knowing this upfront can help the IT organization take proactive measures to plan and strategize for the future.

Approach #3: Anticipate and Prioritize Workload and Staffing Requirements

Project Workload and Staffing Projection Analytics

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Help desk managers are often challenged to improve ticket response time and closure rates. Predictive insights can provide a view into future trends via analysis of the organization’s historical system and ticket data, such as future workload, close rate, or SLA violation probability. With predictive analytics that build out predictive graphs, IT staff can easily gain insights into future trends and KPIs.

An ITSM tool with incident prediction allows the help desk manager to pull data related to specific incidents on the predictive dashboard, including tickets closed. By understanding ticket trends over a given period of time, it is easier to assess KPI progress, and modify tactics and strategy accordingly.

For example, ticket resolution times can be averaged by time period and/or attributes. Once base-line behavior patterns and trends are established, team leads can isolate anomalies to better predict outcomes. With this projection data, the help desk manager can realign and/or request additional resources to ensure the department and the company can fulfill its SLA obligations.

Approach #4: Gain Insight to Predict Future Trends

Incident Prediction Analytics with Granular Insight toStatus, Assigned to, Time, and Priority

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Forward-thinking IT leaders are using new ITSM technologies to predict trends and engage customers better, solving key challenges before they turn into wildfires. Moving from reactive to proactive IT involves implementing new solutions that incorporate AI, machine learning, and predictive analytics. This is not only helpful, it’s quickly becoming essential in order for the modern enterprise to be successful.

SunView Software is spearheading a shift from reactive to proactive IT. Our award-winning platform, ChangeGear, was the first to incorporate an AI framework purpose-built for ITSM.

Instead of solving symptoms, ChangeGear uses machine learning to predict root problems before they happen. This is the next generation of ITSM.

Sources

1. The Service Desk 2017 & Beyond, Produced by Howard Kendall & Daniel Wood, Service Desk Institute

2. https://www.gartner.com/newsroom/id/3072017

3. http://www.apmdigest.com/self-service-and-self-help-it-not-fulfilling-potential

Conclusion: A Proactive Approach to ITSM Innovation

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About SunView Software

The proactive, intelligence-driven IT department is powered by advanced AI automation. Intelligent new tools drive higher levels of performance and engagement to support the modern digital workplace. Your IT team can now be proactive and focus on initiatives that are strategic and important to your company.

At SunView Software we make the intelligent, proactive enterprise a reality for your company. Our ChangeGear ITSM solution helps you be agile and responsive to the needs of your employees, manage the change associated with new initiatives and drive business goals that are important your company’s management team.

Many enterprises partner with SunView Software to achieve these transformational benefits. A few of our customers include Polycom, Nelnet, Houston Methodist, Iowa State, and Henrico County Public Schools.

Contact us today to discuss your next generation ITSM solution

info@SunViewsoftware.com

1-813-840-4027