itSMF Switzerland - Blog #Service Management

6 ways AI can enhance the performance of your ESM (ITSM) team

Wed, 30 Oct 2024 07:00:00 +0100

Reading time: ~ 5 min.

These days, responsiveness and agility in IT landscape are key factors for the success of businesses. «Old school» ITSM tools can be considered valuable, but they find difficult to suit in the best way the expectations and needs of users as well as the increasing complexity of environments.

This is where Artificial Intelligence (AI) arises from IT landscape with its transformative power to change in a revolutionary way our approach to IT services management.

Just figure that your helpdesk team can rely on AI powered solutions supporting it in one of the most challenging role: understand immediately the requests (tickets) got from users, even when they're described in a poor way.

Are you able to visualize solutions provided just before that issues can escalate, with a minum downtime and little frustration? And if your enterprise can take advantage of ITSM tools that can learn and adapt continually, becoming way effective interaction after interaction?

ITSM (or even better ESM) can take advantage of the real potential of AI. In our today post, let's focus on the power of artificial intelligence in ITSM tools and in particular on Atlassian Intelligence.

What is Atlassian Intelligence?

Atlassian Intelligence is an AI-powered virtual assistant that is available within your Atlassian Cloud tools (Premium and Enterprise): it enhances the quality of team collaboration and the efficiency of work as well.

Atlassian Intelligence can be used to:

generate content
summarize information
support search
suggest solutions

It has been launched in December 2023. It can analyze data of your team providing an effective support across many Atlassian products as Confluence, Jira Service Management, Jira Work Management,...

Let's check out how Atlassian Intelligence can re-shape the workflow of your team taking a look at these six examples.

The triage of customer request with the help of AI

You just can type (in natural language) a description of the user issue.

Atlassian Intelligence gives a suggestion about the most suitable request type: in this way the ticket can be assigned immediately to the team in charge. As a result, you manage the tickets more quickly and with a higher level of customer satisfaction.

If you look at the screenshot below, you notice that a user reported a problem connecting to Wi-Fi. What the agent has to do is simply typing this into the description on the request screen, marking the text and then clicking on the AI button to get the suggestion:

You can update the user with the information and then go on chatting with AI to get the right solution.

The use and upgrade of knowledge base

We all know how it is critical for an organization to have an up-to-date and upgraded knowledge base: but its maintenance is not effortless.

The analysis of the conversation between customer and agent when the ticket is closed (solved) can provide interesting information that can be re-used in future. AI can track and suggest the most important parts to put into knowledge base content.

This is time-saving for the efficiency of agents performance and in the meantime makes sure that you don't lose precious information that can improve the quality and effectiveness of the available solutions in your knowledge base.

Let's assume that an agent solved a password reset issue and closed the ticket: AI will check the conversation and extract the content useful to create a knowledge base article about «How to reset a password».

The ease of ticket summarization made by AI

Let's assume that we get a long and complicated ticket titled as «The compliance with DORA regulation is needed» and its description is particularly verbose.

We have to summarize it, a task that is high time-consuming. The AI «ticket summary» feature generates an excerpt of the ticket, with highlights on the most relevant details and action items.

AI can help to speed up the management of the issue, dispatching it to the person in charge of.

You just need to select the text, then press the «AI» button and choose the feature «summarize writing».

AI provides you a suggestion of summary that can be used to fill the description:

Tailor-made reply to customer with the help of AI

It is no mystery that customer service needs to provide useful answers according to the context, with the right «tone of voice» and this can be very time-consuming.

AI can support your team suggesting the right tone adjustment for the text on a reply. This is made possible by a feature that checks your answers and then offers different tone adjustment suggestions (for example, empathetic in case of frustrated users; informative, if you need to reply to knowledge-seeking users).

Let's take a look at this image to figure out how the AI can suggest to an agent the way the text of the answer can sound empathetic:

With the help of AI, you can get new useful suggestions to revise the answer:

The help of natural language search to improve performance

There is no need to remember how can be frustrating using search tool that are not able to collect and give back easily search results that match our requests.

With the help of natural language your colleagues can take advantage of the power of this revamped search feature, just typing a phrase as «find similar network access issues solved last month». They get the relevant aswers in a smart way improving the performance in terms of resolution time.

The consistency and efficiency of virtual agents

Imagine that a virtual assistant joins your ESM (ITSM) team supporting your colleagues. This support agent can operate 24/7/365 giving answers to (frequent asked) questions, prioritizing and categorizing tickets as well as solving easy issues.

With the help of natural language processing, the virtual agent can understand the requests it gets from users and then suggest useful responses. This will unburden your colleagues and improve the performance in terms of First Call Resolution.

Let us assume that a user is in need of resetting his/her account password. The virtual agent will help him/her to set a new password, step by step, without involving your colleagues during the process.

Let's take a look at this scheme to better understand how the process can be managed by the virtual agent (in this case, Atlassian Intelligence):

With the help of virtual agent, ESM (ITSM) teams can focus their efforts on solving challenging issues, as well as seeking trends and warding off problems.

AI can facilitate data analysis, in particular when it comes to check them and find new insights; it makes possible to adopt data-driven decisions and enhance the performance of service desk operation.

If you want to keep you up-to-date and know more on this topic, don't forget to subscribe to our newsletter: you will get exclusive contents on Enterprise Service Management topics provided by our leading industries experts.

SUBSCRIBE TO OUR NEWSLETTER

Need to know more about it?

Click on one of the options below to enter in the itSMF Enviroment and for being updated the way which is best for you.

Subscribe to itSMF Newsletter

DISCOVER OUR EVENT CALENDAR

Get the benefits of Membership Program

Our sponsors

A special thanks to our Advanced Sponsors:

How-to manage the HR processes according to an Enterprise Service Management approach

Mon, 19 Aug 2024 10:11:36 +0200

Reading time: ~ 5 min.

The enterprise service management approach to manage the HR processes

In our today post, we’re taking a look at the typical human resources processes to be carried out when new hire joins a company. The onboarding of colleagues can be flawless if we manage it according to an Enterprise Service Management approach instead of the old-school way.

Let’s say «no more» at a bunch of inefficient bustles around different departments, as well as phone calls, delays and all the hassles that come up when we fail to manage the communication, the sharing of knowledge, expertise and basic tools (as access card…) adopting an ESM effective onboarding process.

The enterprise service management approach on HR processes can be the turning point on the company strategy to improve its employer branding status. Let’s dig deep to find out all the benefits we can get from this new approach to human resources management from the perspective of an IT (or widely, Enterprise) service manager.

Enhancing the HR processes management through ESM: the benefits from company and new hire point of view

From a new hire point of view, a great onboarding experience through a modern approach to HR process management can:

boost the potential of retention;
improve the personal engagement;
improve the working performance;
increase the employer branding.

From a business perspective, we can get:

better cultural fit between the company and the employees;
better business success over time.

We have to keep in mind that HR processes – and in particular on/offboarding – managed according to the old-school way can:

be tricky
lead to errors
take considerable time

To match in the best way the needs of new hires and management, we should focus on a forward-looking solution provided by the ITSM (or better ESM): a ticketing system.

Think about the ticketing system as a kind of hub where you can collect and track all the service requests. No more need to send e-mails, get into phone calls or maybe worry about messages that can get lost.

On the ticketing system, taking advantage of a great designed UI that provides a superior quality user experience everyone can interact at a glance. All the stakeholders can focus on the same resources and understand easily what is happening (and has happened), checking the informations and data in one place.

ITSM (or ESM) tools can help HR processes management: from the seamless onboard to the effortless offboard

With the help of an enterprise service management application your new colleague could log-in into this user-friendly platform as soon as the contract has been signed and submit the request of the work tool or items.

The ticketing system makes possible to save time and gains efficiency, granting to you and your new hire to check the the request status updates in real-time. This means that even the smallest trouble will be immediately located and quickly addressed.

We should keep in mind that this efficiency can be reached even during the offboarding process management. The settings of the ticketing solution can be arranged to manage the automated workflow triggered by the notification of us manage the automated workflow triggered by the resignation notification.

The ITSM tool can easily coordinate the return of tools (i.e. smartphone, computer,...) preventing the loss of any item. At that time, the platform can help to collect the feedback of the resigning colleague, setting up an integrated exit interview on the ticketing system. This can help to improve the onboarding process and global UX of the next new hires.

The enterprise service management approach: one platform to manage efficiently the processes

Companies can clearly take advantage from the implementation of an enterprise service management solution that uses only one platform, without the need to install and maintain a lot of different systems as well as provide education to the end users (that have to deal with many different UI).

The enterprise service management solution supports you on manage the service requests from all the departments of your company (not only HR, but also facilities, IT, procurement,...) increasing the efficiency.

Tools as Atlassian jira Service Management are the turning point for teams that want to analyse request trends and find room for improvement thanks to data and reporting, optimizing the processes and managing in an effective way the allocation of resources. Not only the resolution times will be shortened and the processes will become easier but also the communication will be more effective and transparent between all the stakeholders.

Let's take a look at this scheme to better understand the improvement of processes quality and efficiency we can get from the adoption of a ticketing system:

This scheme describes the interactions of HR with the other departments via the requests to manage the onboard of new hires.

The roadmap to the adoption of an efficient ESM approach to manage the HR processes

Let's resume in this ending part of our post all the steps we should follow and focus to avoid the risk of adopting an outdated ticketing system that doesn't match the enterprise service management vision.

First of all, we need to make a self-assessment of our current situation. ITIL4 provides us the guiding principles to setup a robust framework for our self-assessment:

Focus on value: check which are the pain points on on/offboarding processes. These can help us to outline and locate inefficiencies, bad time cost performances, waste of resources and frustrations on the employees experience.
Set a point of departure: we can't implement a whole modernisation in a breeze. We first need to understand which can be the quick wins where the enterprise service management solution (automation) enhance the quality of processes. The high-volume and repetitive tasks offer some room to get improvements (i.e. card access request, laptop provisioning).
Support collaboration and transparency: engage all the stakeholders across the departments (HR, IT, facilities, etc.) and ask their support during the assessment and implementation phases, adopting an enterprise service management perspective. We should commit on making clear which are the benefits and goals to everyone, thanks to an open communication and transparency.
Follow an iterating progress valorizing feedback: we need to consider that the implementation of the ticketing system should follow an iterative approach, gathering feedbacks from the stakeholders and using a data-driven approach to improve the quality of processes.
Define our roadmap and implementation strategy: the roadmap should make easier and smoother the transition to our new system. We can define our roadmap and implementation strategy to support successfully the transition to our new ticketing system according to these sequence of steps:

a. Identify our pain points (slowness of the onboarding process, approvals,...). Set SMART objectives and define the expected outcomes that can lead the way of the implementation.

b. Engage the key stakeholders and get their commitment to support the implementation of the enterprise service management solution, making clear to them which are the benefits and give attention to their concerns.

c. Choose a ticketing system that ensures the best match between organisation needs, budget and options of scalability. We should take into consideration the cloud-based solutions to take advantage of their deployment and maintenance simplicity.

d. Evalute an initial small-scale implementation to resolve the first problems. Apply and check the results from KPIs as resolution times, employees satisfaction evaluation. Collect all the feedbacks and valorize them in a cyclical way of implementation that leads to the enhancement of the processes quality.

Final considerations on the implementation of an enterprise service management solution to the HR processes management

We have to keep in mind that the successful implementation of our enterprise service management solution to the HR processes management lie on:

initial small-scale implementation, with a smooth launch;
scaling following a gradual approach, with the help of a well focused scope, feasible timelines and proactive and transparent management of expectations vs reality (results of implementation).

It has to be said that the choice of the best fitting ticketing system for our organisation is crucial. We can take into consideration popular apps as Jira Service Management, Jira Work Management, Freshworks, Zendesk an ServiceNow: all provide robust solutions and features as well as great scalability.

To evaluate the best product for our company we can adopt parameters as ease of use, integrations and obiouvsly budget too. Don't forget to focus on new hires and seasoned colleagues alike, as we want the first ones to develop professionally as well.

Choosing the right ticketing system to improve the HR processes management can be the starting (and turning) point leading to the implementation of a wider enterprise service management approach on our organisation across the departments.

If you want to keep you up-to-date and know more on this topic, you can join and meet us during our next Proximity Forum 2024 in Zurich.

You will have the chance to listen to the speech held by Magnus Sundset (Eficode) as well as to take part at the open topic final Round Table on the enterprise service management: join us now!

Need to know more about it?

Click on one of the options below to enter in the itSMF Enviroment and for being updated the way which is best for you.

Subscribe to itSMF Newsletter

DISCOVER OUR EVENT CALENDAR

Get the benefits of Membership Program

Our sponsors

A special thanks to our Advanced Sponsors:

La sostenibilità di ecosistemi nativamente integrati e "no code": itSMF Svizzera al PM Forum di APM-Ticino

Wed, 08 Nov 2023 11:15:47 +0100

Reading time: ~ 6 min.

La sostenibilità di ecosistemi nativamente integrati e «no code»: itSMF porta la sua expertise al PM Forum di APM-Ticino

Nel contesto del PM Forum organizzato dal partner APM Ticino – con un fil rouge dell'intera edizione 2023 incentrato sulla sostenibilità dei progetti e dei prodotti/servizi realizzati per loro mezzo – itSMF Svizzera ha portato la sua esperienza tangibile in tal senso.

Da tempo, l'Associazione ha basato il suo concetto di «Service Management» in chiave sostenibile, scoprendosi una realtà che abbraccia tale paradigma in tempi non sospetti, ben prima che la tematica diventasse di moda, finendo sulla cresta dell'onda.

L'intero evento nazionale 2023 di itSMF – svoltosi nello scorso mese di marzo a Lugano – è stato organizzato attorno al concetto «carbon neutral», ovvero, stimando il consumo di CO2 in ogni componente organizzativa, dai trasporti, al cibo, all'utilizzo delle varie infrastrutture.

Alla conclusione di questa valutazione – quale contropartita ambientale mitigatrice – la nostra associazione ha acquistato tramite tecnologie NFT e blockchainla piantumazione di alberi in Amazzonia, a compensazione totale delle emissioni calcolate di CO2.

La sostenibilità all'interno della funzione IT e
del portafoglio applicativo scelto

Volendo calare il concetto di sostenibilità all'interno della funzione IT e la sua capacità di fornire servizi di qualità garantendo un certo grado di performance, la «velocity» aggiunge in modo intrinseco le prestazioni alla conformità, rispetto alle regole di settore o di governance strategica aziendale, e il grado di innovazione tecnologico.

itSMF – con le sue esigenze di diventare un'associazione 100% sostenibile al suo interno, in una logica di gestione ottimale dei propri processi di business – ha sfruttato le chiavi di integrazione nativa e sviluppo «low code» come estensione avanzata della logica «no code».

Le chiavi della sostenibilità si possono indentificare nei seguenti macro punti:

nel progetto per realizzare il piano strategico;
nella tecnologia impiegata;
nella sostenibilità della infrastruttura su cui è sviluppata;
nella sostenibilità delle innovazioni tecnologiche a supporto ("No Code");
nel valore aggiunto derivante dall'integrazione nativa della soluzione tecnologica;
nel disegno ed attuazione di processi integrati ad impatto ambientale ridotto

Ecco uno schema con alcuni degli applicativi dell'ecosistema Zoho utilizzati in modo strettamente integrato da itSMF:

La sostenibilità in pratica ed orientata al business

Come dettaglio e spiegazione del punto 3 di cui sopra, va sottolineato l'impegno attivo di Zoho, l'ecosistema applicativo utilizzato, come filosofia e strategia di business aziendale, per i temi ambientali, in particolar modo:

📘 risparmio di acqua;

📘 riduzione di CO2;

📘 zero sprechi (logica Lean);

📘 efficientamento energetico;

📘 approvvigionamento sostenibile (supply chain e sourcing).

A quanto menzionato sopra va aggiunto un ulteriore abbattimento dell'impatto ambientale, mediante l'Onboarding/Enrollment totalmente digitale ed automatizzato dei dati di ingresso dei nuovi lead, basato su un sistema CRM centrico come unico repository di tutte le informazioni aziendali (riduzione spazio disco).

Va inoltre considerata la massimizzazione delle partecipazioni online e remote sia nell'organizzazione degli eventi che nella gestione operativa a favore della presenza fisica (ancora indubbiamente necessaria per progetti molto complessi) e lo sviluppo della metodologia di lavoro asincrona e di condivisione di informazioni (nativamente supportata dalla piattaforma Zoho). Non da ultimo, bisogna citare l'azzeramento dei più impattanti processi cartacei, sia di Onboarding/Enrollment che di affiliazione/fatturazione.

Un altro aspetto trasversale e nativo della piattaforma Zoho – a tutto quando già evidenziato sopra – è la disponibilità dell'informazionedove serve, quando serve e in modalità cross-applicativa.

Per concludere, I'integrazione applicativa di processo contribuisce alla sostenibilità ambientale secondo i seguenti inconfutabili fattori critici di successo:

✅ aumenta l'efficienza di processo, riduce tempi di lavorazione, mantiene lo staff sul business;

✅ riduce le discontinuità di processo e i consumi (energia, risorse ambientali, spostamenti);

✅ minimizza la duplicazione delle informazioni ed il conseguente consumo di energia.