ServiceNow and ITIL Best Practices
ServiceNow, the leading ITSM platform in the market, was built using ITIL best practices. That means that when you implement ITSM with ServiceNow, you are automatically injecting ITIL best practices into your operations.
ITIL is a process-based framework that provides guidance for creating and operating an effective service desk that effectively communicates with the user community. This article will highlight some key ITIL processes that are inbuilt in ServiceNow.
Incident Management
Incident management is the process of identifying, managing and restoring any disruption that happens in the service. This process is an essential component of ITIL and involves escalating procedures to resolve issues quickly.
Problem management, on the other hand, involves finding a permanent root cause to recurring incidents in the service. This prevents them from reoccurring in the future, as per ITIL practice.
Incidents are categorized and prioritized by impact, urgency, priority, and resolution time. They are then routed to technicians most qualified to handle the issue.
Problem Management
Problem Management is an ITIL process that involves investigating the root cause of incidents to ensure they are resolved quickly and completely. It is a critical part of restoring IT service and mitigating the business impact from incidents.
The Problem Management process is triggered in two ways: reactively, by incident reporting; and proactively, using trending and historical information to identify potential Problem cases. The former can be as simple as a gut feeling or a formal Continual Service Improvement process, while the latter is more sophisticated.
IT teams use Problem Management to identify problems and track their resolution in a single system. They can also document solutions and workarounds in the knowledge base, and perform trend analysis and periodic service configuration reviews to minimize disruptions and prevent future problems.
Change Management
Change management, as the name suggests, is the process of introducing changes to the IT infrastructure. This can involve the introduction of new hardware, software, interfaces, databases, documents, and procedures and processes.
It is important that the change be rolled out in a manner that doesn’t negatively impact other IT operations and business processes. The ITIL change management process provides a standardized, repeatable approach to managing requests for changes with minimal disruptions to IT services and business operations.
ServiceNow’s change management platform follows the ITIL standard workflow almost to a T. It also includes a variety of performance analytics tools that enable IT teams to view their processes over time, identify vulnerabilities, and troubleshoot problem areas. Its automated risk assessment tool, for example, calculates risks automatically after configuring criteria.
Service Catalog
Service catalogs are a great way to organize and deliver services while aligning them with business goals. However, many service catalog initiatives fall flat or fail to deliver expected ROI due to a number of avoidable pitfalls.
In order to build a successful service catalog, start with defining your boundaries and establishing the workflows that support each service offering. This will help you create a single source of truth for all end users and improve the efficiency of your service desk.
Once you have defined your boundaries, you need to categorize all the services that are offered by your IT department. You need to do this in a way that makes it easy for end users to find and request the services they need.
Knowledge Management
Knowledge management is the process of capturing and storing knowledge about your business to help solve problems quickly, enable self-service, and improve collaboration. It is a part of ITIL’s Service Transition process and is verified by the Consortium for Service Innovation (CSI).
A strong knowledge management practice allows support agents to spend less time on requests, provide consistent customer experiences, and help teams continually improve. It also enables employees to troubleshoot issues faster, resulting in better employee retention and improved productivity.
ServiceNow Knowledge Management is a component of the Now Platform that enables agents, customers, and employees to easily access knowledge base articles through their portal. These articles can be categorized, reviewed, and approved by different team members. It also includes dedicated workflows for retiring and publishing articles.
