As an IT support agent, a system administrator or IT Operations Manager, your work is constantly evolving. You must balance the needs of your users with those of the business at large, while also keeping up with new technologies, protocols and standards that can make all your jobs easier or harder (or both). And you're probably not alone in this struggle: many other IT professionals are facing similar challenges every day. Luckily, there are tools available to make the task of one of your main priorities, incident management, even easier for your IT team.
Incident management is one of the most important components of IT operations
An incident is any event that disrupts both technical and business processes within the company, ranging from the individual user to even the organization. In incident management, the goal is to restore systems to normal as soon as possible in a way that maintains service quality and performance.
#1. Define a clear process
The first step to improving how you respond to incidents is defining a clear process for resolving them. This way, everyone knows what they need to do when an incident occurs. A consistent process to handle incidents will help you save time. Having a process in place means that you’ll be able to stay organized and make sure everything is done the same way, every time. You can also set up alerts for when an incident occurs so that you don’t miss anything important.
An effective incident management process should outline:
- The steps of troubleshooting an issue for different types of incidents (IT, Security, Facilities, HR, etc.)
- The steps of resolving each type of issue
- The role of each party involved (support agent, I&O engineers, CTOs)
- Tools necessary for resolution (collaboration tools, ITSM, Remote Control, IT Monitoring)*
*When choosing the right tools for the job there are a few key tips to keep in mind to ensure your incident management is proactive. Be sure to select a remote support solution that is integrated with your ITSM solution for a better technician and end-user experience. Your response should also leverage multi-experience support for end-users (think: self-service portal, self-help, chatbot, MS Teams integration). According to HDI, the average cost of a ticket resolved through self-help is only $2, but if a ticket is escalated to the service desk that cost per ticket increases to $18.incident. In this case, implementing Self Help is a major tool in saving both time and money!
Once your process is outlined, you can then share the key points with all technicians and end-users across all channels for faster resolution of future events.
#2. Create an Incident Queue To Track Incidents in One Place
The second way to save time is by using a IT Service Management solution for all your events. ITSM Solutions are great because they allow you to easily track all your events in one place. This means that if someone has an event, you can use the ITSM solution instead of email or text messages so that everyone working on the event will know about it and be able to work together.
We recommend using a cloud-based ITSM Solution that will let everyone on your team see what’s going on at any given time. If someone needs help with something or needs more information about an upcoming project, they won't have to wait around until someone else gets back into their office - they'll already know what's going on!
Bonus points to you if the ITSM solution allows is both desktop and mobile compatible for both your support team resolving an incident and end-users replying to and submitting tickets.
#3. Automate monitoring and alerting
When choosing the right platform for your IT incident management strategy, it’s important to select one that helps to both predict and prevent downtime. This enables teams to focus on value delivery and innovation that drives business outcomes, resulting in higher employee engagement and a better customer experience, increased productivity, and improved resiliency.
Proactive monitoring and AIOps will help you identify the root cause of a service failure or downtime even more quickly and accurately. Plus, being able to predict the possibility of an event within the next day is a crucial tool in avoiding an incident. With AIOps you can prevent an incident from ever occurring through predictive analytics or Critical Business Services. Because of this, incident monitoring should be one of the first steps in your incident management strategy.
Start saving time today
As you can see, there are several ways to save time with IT Service Management. The key is choosing the right technology for your organization and implementing it in a way that fits your workflow. Once you have this in place, it will be easier for you to manage incidents as they arise and resolve them faster—so you can get back to work!
