Everything you need to know about ITSM automation

By Acacia Kooij on July 14, 2022

Automation has been a major trend for IT departments for quite some time – and it’s only going to get more relevant. In fact, Gartner predicts that, by 2025, 70% of organizations will implement structured automation – up from 20% in 2021.

But how does automation relate to ITSM? And how can your IT department make the most of it? Here’s everything you need to know about ITSM automation:

What is ITSM automation?

Let’s start by getting our terms straight. ITSM (IT Service Management) is the set of systems and processes organizations use to improve the way IT services are delivered to end-users. ITSM automation means automating some of these processes to improve overall efficiency and reduce manual work for service desk employees. Simple as that. Some examples of processes that can be easily automated are creating and tracking incidents and providing automated answers to simple requests via a self-service portal.

By automating easy tasks like password resets, you enable IT professionals to focus on higher level issues and more demanding requests. This can decrease service desk calls by more than 40% and reduce end-user down-time.

What are the benefits of ITSM automation?

As well as making life easier for service desk employees, ITSM automation also has several benefits for your organization, including:

Improved customer experience

Your customers expect a seamless, personalized experience with your services. But they also expect it to reflect the positive experiences they have with B2C technology in their daily lives. Chatbots and conversational AI with Natural Language Processing (NLP) can answer customers’ straightforward questions by analyzing their written texts and interpreting their meaning. This means customers don’t have to spend time searching for an answer or waiting for a response from IT. And the conversations between your customer and the chatbot can already provide a lot of helpful insights for IT, so you can get straight to work on the incident.

Find out what chatbots can do for your service desk.

Smoother incident management

When a customer logs a request, it’s important that it gets to the person with the right skillset to help the customer solve their problem. AI makes the process of assigning incidents to the correct person easier by identifying the properties of incidents and service requests within a specific category, based on information contained within the knowledge base. It can also provide service desk employees with suggestions for other fields in the incident and service request forms, making them easier to complete.

Discover the benefits of service desk automation in this blog.

Fewer repetitive tasks

ITSM automation also means you can reduce the number of simple, repetitive tasks that your service desk employees have to perform on a daily basis. By automating easy tasks like password resets, you enable IT professionals to focus on higher level issues and more demanding requests. This can decrease service desk calls by more than 40% and reduce end-user down-time.

Are password resets draining your IT department? Learn how to save time and money by automating them in this blog.

How to get started with ITSM automation

All of this sounds good, but where should you begin when it comes to automating your ITSM processes? And which tasks should be prioritized? Here are a few tips:

Look at the kinds of requests your service desk gets most frequently, day-to-day. Go down the list and, for each item, ask: Does resolving this request add value for the organization? If the answer is yes, you then need to ask: Is it an easy fix? If so, then this item is a prime candidate for automation.