The role of technology in business is more important than ever. There is new pressure on IT and financial resources to help other departments, such as Human Resources, Facilities and Customer Service, automate their business processes. Additionally, tech-savvy end users demand self-service for everything they do.
Traditionally, companies have used manual forms or purchased focused, one-off tools uniquely designed to automate specific functions driven by separate business requirements and funding streams. Unfortunately, these Business Process Management solutions are often disconnected from the business, require extensive customization, and are too expensive to fit within the budget constraints of a single organizational unit. Not to mention the burden on IT to acquire, maintain and support multiple point solutions.
The fact is that most organizational units are interested in automating similar workflow activities. For example, receiving a request from an end user, assigning that request to a team member, getting approvals, tracking and reporting on progress, etc.
At the same time, organizations are trying to reduce costs and looking for innovative ways to get more out of their current systems.
Responding to the Demand
How does an organization respond to the demand for business process automation solutions without breaking the bank or placing an undue burden on IT resources?
A single solution that is:
- Agile enough to meet the rapidly changing demands of today’s business
- Flexible enough to meet the needs of various organizational units, their processes, and their users
- Secure enough to maintain confidentiality between data from different organizational units
- Simple enough to deliver value in a short time and without customization
- Extensive enough to integrate with a variety of department-specific tools
Beyond that
IT service management solutions that are based on the ITIL (IT Infrastructure Library) framework are a perfect match for non-IT business functions. ITIL is a set of guidelines that advise on how to run IT as a business. These are vague and generic guidelines that can be easily translated to other organizational units.
All organizational units provide some type of service. For example, Facilities provides janitorial services, office equipment, and security. All service providers receive requests, manage approvals, require metrics, and following a process will likely help keep the business running smoothly. ITIL has helped IT move from constant firefighting to more careful planning, better communication, and structured service delivery. Leveraging standardized best practices to help non-IT organizational units “run like a business” certainly doesn’t hurt.
Non-IT Business Process Uses
facility management
Human Resources
External customer service (Call centers)
· Accounting
Security
Legal
sales tracking
Management of HIPAA patients
· Training
Marketing
· Project management
Starting
Many organizations that have extended their ITSM solution to other departments began the journey with a service catalog. The service catalog demonstrates that business services can be automatically requested and tracked. Presenting business services in a simple and familiar structure to users encourages them to apply formally.
If you’re having trouble demonstrating how an ITSM solution can be extended to non-IT business processes, create a sample business service catalog to get started. Stock this catalog with services from various departments, such as orderable office furniture, name change requests, and keyboards and mice. Demonstrate to other organizational units the various functionality and intelligence that can be configured to route requests to the appropriate teams based on automated workflow. For example, the process used when there is a New Hire request. The new hire requires office space, furniture, telephone and computer equipment. The compliance process involves the coordination of tasks among multiple groups, including human resources, facilities, telecommunications, and IT.
Without automation, the onboarding process will be chaotic.
Imagine the ability to request office space for a new hire within a service catalog, automate routine fire alarm maintenance checks, and report on trends within your external customer service department, all in one environment. process controlled.
Benefits
Leverage once-traditional ITSM functionality (such as ticketing, service catalogs, self-service portals, change management, approvals, knowledge management, service level agreements, and workflow) for service management that non-IT companies using standardized best practices makes a lot of sense operationally and financially.
- Achieve a better return on IT investments – Extending a single service management solution across all organizational units has a much lower total cost of ownership.
- Justify budget spending – Allow different business units to share the cost of a single solution
- Improve the quality of service – Deliver faster response to end users/customers through self-service, automation and knowledge sharing
- Improve internal communication – Share knowledge and connect end-to-end processes across multiple departments, such as human resources and facilities.
The marked similarity between IT and non-IT processes, from submitting a request, accepting the request, verifying entitlement, collecting approvals, fulfilling the request, and verifying compliance Successful with full audit trails, monitoring and reporting, it makes the extension of the right IT Service Management Solution for non-IT processes a no-brainer.
Better processes, fewer manual errors, and automation will lead to lower costs, improved employee morale, and much happier customers.
In conclusion
For businesses to excel in today’s increasingly competitive environment and remain agile amid constant change, organizations must automate processes wherever possible. At the same time, IT is being pushed in a multitude of directions and helping non-IT units with business process automation is not at the top of the priority list. Presenting a solution that consolidates all the requirements of various organizational units, is simple to deploy and scale, and makes process automation available where it was previously unavailable, can prompt IT leadership to move a “shared services management solution.” towards that priority. list.