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What is ITSM?

IT service management (ITSM) is a strategic approach to providing IT services that focuses on the processes an IT team uses to design, deliver, support and manage IT services. ITSM helps shift the focus away from just IT systems and towards the end-to-end processes for managing IT services.

ITSM covers end-users, infrastructure, and services using the IT Infrastructure Library’s (ITIL) best practices framework to optimize IT services throughout their lifecycle. ITIL’s latest edition contains 34 practices, which you can adapt to your organization’s specific needs.

By ensuring the right technology, processes, and people are in place to support service delivery, ITSM improves services and helps achieve overall business objectives.

ITSM Benefits for an Organization:

• Improves employee efficiency by providing clear information on available IT services and how to utilize them
• Allows quick adoption of new technologies and methodologies
• Enables prompt response to IT incidents and disruptions

ITSM Benefits for IT teams:

• Provides guidelines and best practices for automating workflows to increase IT productivity
• Shortens the time between detecting an incident and resolving it through established procedures
• Increases accountability by defining roles and responsibilities within the IT organization
• Enables generation of actionable insights from analytics to continuously improve IT performance and service delivery

As your organization adopts more interconnected technologies, informed decisions around increasingly complex software licensing, maintenance, and system integrations become critical. A robust ITSM approach can provide the visibility and control needed to manage a modern digital environment.

Jira Service Management is a leading ITSM tool designed to help organizations optimize their IT service management. It is built on a powerful platform to provide real-time visibility and organization for all service requests and issues.

Key capabilities of Jira Service Management:

• Centralized request portal for end-user self-service
• Email and chat channels for submitting service tickets
• Customizable service catalog with SLAs
• Configurable workflows to match IT processes
• Assignment rules for automatically routing issues
• Dashboards and reports to monitor performance
• Integration with other systems like messaging, inventory, etc.

Jira Service Management organizes requests into service projects and allows customers to access help through multiple channels – a help center, email, chat, or embeddable widget. Let’s walk through a common example of how Atlas Bench can be used to streamline ITSM processes: reopening a closed user account.

Understanding the Request Process Flow

The first step is gathering requirements and defining the optimal process flow for the service request. Reactivating a closed account involves members from several teams like the help desk, security, and IT support.

For cross-functional requests like this, Jira Service Management recommends creating a company-managed project. These projects require some configuration by an admin but provide more standardization. Teams that work autonomously can use team-managed projects with more flexibility.

Documenting the detailed procedure for addressing the request enables more efficient processing and prompt customer service. The process should be standardized as much as possible, with allowances for variations in specific cases.

The workflow for reopening a closed user account would typically involve these stages:

1. Receive and validate the account reactivation request, ensuring it meets requirements. Utilize automated verification processes where possible.
2. Due to security considerations, forward the request to the IT security team for identity verification.
3. Assign an available help desk agent to work on the customer request. Move to a waiting status if more information is required from the customer.
4. After verification, reopen the user account and resolve the request.
5. Close the request after resolution and gather feedback from the customer to improve service processes.

This workflow aligns well with the default options provided in Jira Service Management. Configuring the platform to match your organization’s processes will optimize request handling.

Configuring Jira Service Management for the Service Request

To get started, an admin will create a new ITSM-template service request project called “Customer Support” in Jira Service Management. Prebuilt templates allow rapid setup with default configurations for common project types.

Key elements to configure include:

Request Types – these define the forms and contents of different user-initiated tickets. For reopening accounts, a request type called “Reactivate Account” with an appropriate description can be created.

Workflows – these control the status progression of a request or issue from creation to resolution. The default ITSM-template workflow will work well here.

Queues – requests are organized into queues for assignment and prioritization. A separate high-priority “Account Reactivation” queue can be set up. Sample placeholder issues added to this queue will demonstrate how it functions.

Setting Up the Service Portal

To enable user self-service, Jira Service Management automatically creates a service portal for each project in the help center. The admin can customize the portal to convey important information and announcements to end users.For reopening accounts, the portal can be configured to:

• Provide a brief welcome message and description of services offered
• Upload a custom logo image for the portal
• Add announcements around availability, maintenance windows, new features etc.

Configuring Email Request Channels

In addition to the web portal, users can submit tickets via email. The admin just needs to provide or generate an email address for the “Customer Support” project to enable this channel.

Adding Team Members and Customers

Once the project configuration is complete, appropriate team members and customers can be added.

To handle account reactivation requests:

• IT help desk agents are added and assigned a “Service Desk” role.
• Individual users and organizations are added as customer accounts.

Now when a customer emails their request to reopen an account, it will automatically create a ticket in the “Account Reactivation” queue for prioritized assignment to an available help desk agent.

The agent can view status and details in the Jira Service Management portal and communicate with the customer as needed until the issue is resolved. Finally, the request can be closed and feedback collected to improve processes.

By centralizing all service requests into one system, Jira Service Management enables seamless collaboration and efficient management of IT services. The platform is built to be flexible and scalable to organizations of all sizes and needs.

Expanding Beyond a Single Service Request

While the example above covers one type of service request, the same principles can be applied to optimize your broader ITSM processes with Jira Service Management. Let’s explore some additional capabilities:

Service Catalog

The service catalog provides a customer-facing catalog of available IT services and solutions. Details like descriptions, pricing, SLAs etc. can be configured for each catalog item. Customers can browse the catalog or search for services via the Jira Service Management portal.

Multi-Channel Routing

Incoming requests from various channels like phone, email, chat, social media and more can be automatically routed to the appropriate teams and queues. Intelligent assignment rules determine priority and service level requirements.

Change Management

Changes to systems and services can be managed through predefined workflows for assessment, approvals, scheduling, rollback etc. This ensures standardized, low-risk change implementation.

Release Management

Jira Service Management coordinates cross-functional activities for new software releases. Environments, deployments, workflows, approvals, issues and tasks can all be managed in context of a release.

Asset Management

IT assets and inventory like hardware, software, contracts, accessories, etc. can be managed within Jira Service Management for tracking usage, financials, maintenance, licenses and more.

Knowledge Management

A central knowledge base helps agents access solutions to common requests and issues faster. Articles can be public or internal only. Customers can also self-serve through knowledge base search in the portal.

Reporting and Analytics

Built-in reports and dashboards provide visibility into request volumes, backlogs, resolution times, agent performance and more. Data can also be exported to external BI tools for further analysis.

Realizing the Full Potential of Jira Service Management

Adopting Jira Service Management enables your organization to transition to a modern, metrics-driven approach for managing IT services and assets. But technology alone is not enough; realizing Jira Service Management’s full potential requires an optimized service management culture and processes.

Our experienced consultants can provide guidance and best practices tailored to your organization’s needs across:

• Service strategy – Defining service portfolio, offerings and capabilities aligned to business needs
• Service design – Designing and documenting end-to-end service delivery processes and SLAs
• Service transition – Developing the tools, metrics and knowledge management to support service delivery
• Service operation – Improving day-to-day operations, monitoring and issue resolution
• Continual improvement – Identifying improvement opportunities through ongoing assessments

With Jira Service Management, we can help assess your current ITSM maturity, create a roadmap to reach your target state, provide training and change management, and maximize the value of your investment.

Let’s have a discussion about your organization’s specific ITSM challenges and how we can help you overcome them. Jira Service Management offers a flexible, user-friendly platform that can be tailored to your needs. Combined with our expert guidance, it provides a solid foundation for optimizing IT service delivery and transforming service management capabilities.