The IT Infrastructure Library has established a set of best practices and an operational framework to assist organisations in providing efficient and reliable IT service management processes. Key components of an ITIL-based IT Service Desk include:
Incident Management
Incidents are the issues that business users face daily when applications and services do not work the way they are designed to. Incident resolution often involves resetting a password, finding a workaround for a software problem or adding paper to a printer tray. The ITIL framework is designed to streamline incident management.
Problem Management
A problem very often starts as an incident and is only re-classified to problem status after the severity of the underlying issue is established. An example of a problem is a server outage that affects the entire organisation.
Change Management
Change within an IT organisation is not without risk. ITIL is designed to assist the business in organising change functions and creating an operational framework to eliminate risk often associated with change, without sacrificing business efficiency.
Ticketing
The managing incidents, problems and change must be carefully prioritised to ensure that the organisation’s support teams balance urgent requirements with long-term projects. Ticketing within the ITIL framework is designed to organise and prioritise tickets, allowing support teams to focus on completing critical tasks on time.
Service Request Management
Not all support tickets are designated as an incident a problem or a change request. ITIL processes have included Service Request management as a way to differentiate support queries allowing the support staff to focus on areas of responsibility and expertise.
Service Desk Conclusion
A Service Desk is a business tool. It is designed for use across the organisation by all business units. As such, it is not for the exclusive use of the IT department. A Service Desk is tasked to do more than ensuring IT services are delivered, it also improves customer satisfaction by enabling the organisation to implement its business plan. The next article will discuss the critical differences between a Help Desk and a Service Desk.
If you have any questions about this article or would like us to contact you, give Ryan a call at abacon IT on 072 601 2858