Many managed service providers (MSPs) rely on their ticketing system to help run their business smoothly. Amplified by mounting expectations and demands coming from employees and customers alike, it’s safe to say there’s an increasing dependency on such software. The growing trend has made traditional management processes no longer operational, while technology-enabled capabilities become essential to driving companies’ efficiency and reliability.
As such it’s paramount for MSPs to reimagine the ways an IT service management (ITSM) software can be used to best serve your unique needs. For the uninitiated, ITSM refers to the activities around the building, planning, managing, supporting and implementing IT services. Essentially, the role of ITSM is to streamline, manage and support all IT-related data and functions to create value for the entire company.
An MSP without an ITSM ticketing system is holding itself back.
Strategic changes, testing and communications that aren’t effectively executed can lead to significant service and business disruptions. However, by leveraging ITSM technology correctly, MSPs can equip themselves deliver better service and handle hurdles seamlessly.
How can the right ticketing system help MSPs?
ITSM aligns business IT services and processes with company objectives. The critical importance of ITSM stems from the core objectives of supporting your organization's more significant strategic goals. Three specific ways the right ticketing system can help your MSP business achieve said goals are by driving efficiency, realizing cost savings and achieving digital transformation.
#1 Drive efficiency
One of the most prominent benefits of leveraging a ticketing system for your MSP is that it streamlines and simplifies your support team’s operations.
With traditional methods, your customer support agents have to sift through customer databases, various email inboxes, activity logs, etc., which can be tiresome and time consuming. When you deploy an ITSM ticketing software, it eliminates this inconvenience and centralizes all your ticket statuses, customer data, labels, tags and priorities in one place. It also brings together different communication channels such as live chat, emails, and phone into a single platform, making it easier for your support team to manage.
ITSM helps your business develop a well-rounded IT strategy and ultimately simplifies the overall IT services. As a result, your business limits and mitigates the risk of downtime, outages and any other potentially devastating IT-related incidents.
Leveraging ITSM in your company enables you to cope with changes effectively by focusing on repeatable and standardized processes. That way, your IT teams can gauge and identify potential issues that quickly result from changes like upgrades to networks.
With proper ticketing systems in place, you can minimize downtime considerably, which means greater staff productivity.
#2 Cost savings
ITSM software allows you to leverage available resources to their fullest capacity. Because ITSM ticketing systems aim for greater efficiency and standardization, implementing such software in your organization can help effectively scale up your business operations while saving a significant amount of money.
The automated capabilities and features that ITSM software offers can reduce your number of manual tasks as well as the time your team spends on resolving issues. Furthermore, an ITSM solution also improves integration and assimilation among divisions. This, in turn, leads to seamless communication and easy sharing of information across business units.
The right ITSM solution can also help you minimize your technician labor costs. When implemented correctly, helpdesk management platforms reduce non-billable functions by generating tickets automatically. A robust ticketing system also provides in-depth data insights, enabling you to analyze trends, make well-informed and targeted cost-saving decisions. Automated workflows eradicate the need to have costly manual processes while making your business operations more compliant, secure and efficient.
Along with helping companies cut down their costs, ITSM solutions improve individual agent productivity by including best practices and capabilities for ticketing that ensure seamless service delivery.
#3 Digital transformation
While it might seem subtle in terms of overall change, the adoption of ITSM software and associated best practices have become critical enablers for digital transformation. The fact is that the new services, products and enhanced customer engagement mechanisms are dependent on technology. IT service support and delivery capabilities play an integral role in successfully transforming businesses digitally.
In traditional companies, IT offers capabilities for operational support and business enablement. In this digital age, enterprises rely on ITSM for its significant contributions toward creating an impact on business performance and helping enhance innovation.
An ITSM solution enables you to make a smooth, efficient transition when perfecting digital processes. It provides cutting-edge technologies that empower your employees with the right capabilities and insights for proactive decisions across various fronts. Not merely about just reducing the number of tickets, ITSM tools also focus on improving the customer journey through customer-oriented business processes and operations.
ITSM coupled with robust technology solutions can help you address the common questions and concerns, like:
- How to prioritize functions? What are the IT components prepared or require optimization to scale your business functions without service disruptions?
- Where can I find data-driven insights about my organization? How can you leverage the data to solve expected and current IT issues?
- How can I optimize cost-effectiveness and resource distribution? How to allocate resources and time to resolve mission-critical tickets while decoupling dependency on the limited workers?
- When and where should I make improvements? Intelligent balancing between nearshore, offshore, and onshore teams based on various parameters such as a ticket's severity or complexity represents a considerable improvement in cost reduction and efficiency.
Next steps: C2 MSP
A good ITSM solution provider will be able to help you answer all these questions and more. C2 MSP, for example, is an all-in-one ITSM cloud solution developed for IT professionals to save time and increase productivity, allowing you to focus on your business by centralizing all your needs in one simple to use tool.
Combining flexibility and customization, C2 MSP gives you the power to successfully manage your processes and improve your operational efficiency allowing you to reduce your costs and retain your customers. Perfecting your ITSM system is critical to providing dependability, transparency, agility, and most of all, value to your clients. The right partner can help outfit your MSP with the services and solutions it needs to grow. Join our partner program to learn more!
Guest blog courtesy of Sherweb. Read more guest blogs from Sherweb here.
