ITSM Views from a Vendor, with Yuval Pecht from Samanage
What exactly is your job?
I am the Director of Product Management at Samanage, and I love every minute of it. I manage all of our product updates whilst having the privilege of engaging with our customers on a daily basis in the Samanage Community. This is where we get to talk about cool feature requests, answer any questions, and just generally geek out about IT service management (ITSM).
What is the best thing about working in IT Service Management?
The agility. There is never a dull moment. Implementing the right ITSM solution for your business along with beneficial processes can deliver great value to an organization. ITSM is a journey that has many cool destinations and I’m along for the ride.
What do you think is the most important element missing from traditional ITSM? And why?
The thing that I find is consistently missing in traditional ITSM is the understanding that ITSM isn’t just about about IT. Service management processes and application can be expanded and implemented throughout the enterprise to manage service relationships everywhere.
What do you think is the biggest mistake that people can make in ITSM, and how can it be avoided?
Becoming complacent and getting settled on one thing. That could be a tool, a process, or even a vendor. ITSM is ever-changing, and if you aren’t willing to grow and change with it, you will be left behind living a world of “but we’ve always done it this way.”
What one piece of practical advice would you give to somebody working on the Service Desk?
Share your knowledge outside of the IT department. You probably have a deep understanding of service, processes, and resolutions, and there are likely many other departments in your business that could benefit from learning from the IT perspective when it comes to providing great service. Take the time to start a conversation with other departments, gain a better understanding of their service challenges, and provide them with insights and tools that they can potentially use to become more efficient. This not only benefits them, but you, because the more efficient they can be on their own, the less they need to rely on you, enabling you to spend more time on activities that create business value.
What one piece of practical advice would you give to the CIO of a company with regards to ITSM?
Look past the metrics and the frameworks – they are only a small a part of the overall equation. Spend time measuring the performance of your service organization to get a deeper understanding of what their focuses are on a day-to-day basis and what challenges they are facing. If possible, benchmark your organization’s performance against your peers. This will help you to identify opportunities to improve your performance.
If you could change one thing about the ITSM industry as a whole, what would it be and why?
The idea that ITIL is the only beneficial framework – it isn’t the end-all-be-all of ITSM, even though it can be very helpful. Even with an ITIL certification, ITSM is about getting out there and taking in as much experience as possible. Just because a process is laid out in a book doesn’t mean it’s the most effective source to solving problems. ITSM is really about rolling up your sleeves, learning from others, and developing process in real-time.
What do you think the ITSM trend to watch will be in the next 12 months? And why?
The enterprise service desk. Every department that provides a service in the organization – whether that’s IT, Human Resources, Facilities, Finance, Marketing, or any other department – is a service organization and needs the ability to track, assign, approve, and process requests. They need the ability to measure their service levels against any agreed SLAs. And, instead of each department doing it their “own way,” they will look to the IT department to leverage their solutions and ITSM best practices for managing their own service needs. I believe that in the next 12 months, ITSM will really start to take the lead and increasingly cross the boundary outside of IT.
Where do you see the IT Service Management industry in 10 years time?
One thing is certain when it comes to ITSM and that’s change. The role of IT will evolve and grow, and IT will become a strategic partner to the organization and will own the “business processes.” The role of IT will be around integrating technologies that are used by the organization and making them work together to the benefit of the wider organization.
Finally, what would be your 5 tips for success in ITSM?
- Be dynamic. Changes happen and you should always be prepared.
- Collaborate and think more about what will help departments outside of IT.
- Develop a team that has more than just technical skills – it’s all about the people.
- Measure your organization’s performance by benchmarking and staying on top of the KPIs that make it easy to show executives your successes.
- Understand business processes and identify ways for you to add value to these processes and the wider organization.
