Automating ITIL With a Digital Platform

Introduction

IT Service Management (ITSM) is an approach IT organizations use to deliver value to their customers through IT services. It involves designing, delivering, managing, and improving IT services to meet the needs of customers and business stakeholders. One of the most widely used frameworks is the Information Technology Infrastructure Library (ITIL), which provides a set of best practices for ITSM.

IT Service Management (ITSM) is an approach IT organizations use to deliver value to their customers through IT services. It involves designing, delivering, managing, and improving IT services to meet the needs of customers and business stakeholders. One of the most widely used frameworks is the Information Technology Infrastructure Library (ITIL), which provides a set of best practices for ITSM.

ITIL in Summary

The importance of ITIL in today's tech-driven business environment cannot be overstated. ITIL, a globally recognized collection of best practices for managing IT services, is crucial for aligning IT services with business needs. ITIL can provide the following business benefits.

• More predictable and reliable service delivery
• Ensures optimal resource utilization
• Aligns IT services with business strategy
• Effective management of risk
• Continual service improvement

Using the ITIL Role in ServiceNow

This blog post will explore an example of using the ITIL role in ServiceNow. When users experience an interruption or reduction in the quality of an IT service, such as email, or a problem with local hardware or software, like a network printer malfunctioning, they log incidents in the ServiceNow Service Desk application to request help from IT.

Incident management is the ITSM process to restore service operations quickly and minimize business impact. There are several ways users can report incidents on the ServiceNow platform (1) by sending an email message to the email address issued for their instance, (2) by calling the service desk, or by requesting help through self-service.

Issues and Their Root Causes

A mature organization will create and associate a problem or change request with an incident. For example, if more than one incident appears to have a common underlying cause and you need root cause analysis to identify it, creating a problem is the way to go. Here, multiple users reporting issues with desk phones could point to a problem with a network or the IP phone server.

Suppose the root cause analysis exposes an issue requiring an IT infrastructure change. In that case, a change request is generated to introduce beneficial change to the organization with minimum disruption to IT services. Suppose, in this example, that one server needs a software patch. When the change is completed and the change request is closed, the problem is closed, and all related incidents are resolved.

ServiceNow ITIL Home Page

ServiceNow users with the ITIL role are often called fulfillers because they handle incidents and related tasks, such as problems and change requests, moving them through the IT service management process. Not all incidents are escalated to problems, and not all problems require change requests for resolution. The default, the ITIL home page, contains reports commonly used by fulfillers.

You can personalize the ServiceNow ITIL home page to meet your own needs. Users with the ITIL role have access to the whole suite of core ITSM applications, allowing them to work on incidents, problems, and changes and to access and update information in the CMDB, a key component of ITSM because it contains information that's critical to delivering good service.

ServiceNow Service Desk

The Service Desk application is available in the base system. A Service Desk employee would likely spend a lot of time in this app handling incidents and investigating problems. On a typical day, an ITIL user would perform the following tasks related to incidents.

• Identification and classification
• Initial support
• Investigation and diagnosis
• Resolution and recovery of the service or workaround
• Incident closure, ownership, monitoring, tracking, and communication

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An ITIL might also create and update problem records and change requests to implement beneficial changes in a controlled fashion, order items from the service catalog on behalf of someone requesting a service, or work on requests that must be fulfilled through the service catalog.

Conclusion

In conclusion, ITIL is more than just a set of ITSM practices. It is a comprehensive approach to managing IT services that can benefit businesses. By implementing ITIL within ServiceNow, organizations can improve service delivery, increase cost efficiency, manage risks, and ultimately enhance customer satisfaction.

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