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Delivering Better Service Experiences with AI-Powered Agents

Fri, 04 Feb 2022 16:56:44 Z

For the last two years, it’s an understatement to say we’ve witnessed big shifts in the relationship between most employees and their work environment. Many of us saw our work experience transform seemingly overnight into predominately a digital one as working from home became the ‘new normal.’

While this shift brought many advantages to employees, such as much shorter commutes (a walk down the hall), more flexible work hours (more ‘honey do’ opportunities) and lower costs (only need ‘above the waist’ outfits), it’s also raised many challenges for organizations. For example, many IT teams either accelerated planned initiatives or quickly developed new plans to support this huge increase in remote work. One IT director shared they felt they had ‘squeezed seven years of transformation into a few months’ when the pandemic hit. And surveys from research firms such as Gartner revealed most companies will continue to allow remote working at least part time going forward.

On the other side of this transformation, many employees likely had to quickly learn more than they thought they ever needed to about the inner workings of tools like Zoom, Teams, Slack, Webex or VPNs since they became critical to staying online and productive. With all this rapid change, It wasn’t surprising many service desk teams saw increases in incidents of one third or more as they worked to support employees making the shift to remote working. Many teams rose to meet these challenges such as the support manager I recently asked how they were able to handle over a hundred-fold increase in people they needed to support literally overnight. Their reply was a modest but impressive one - “I don’t know how we did it – we just did.”

Interactive Report: AITSM: How AI is Redefining IT Service Desk Automation

Better outcomes with Automation and AI

To help during these unprecedented times, many teams augmented their efforts to deliver services with automation and workflow engines. IT teams leveraged these engines to speed up resolutions and request fulfillments, removing manual steps while improving service quality. While delivering impressive results, the expectations on service teams to deliver even better digital experiences has only grown. The good news? The universe of available technologies and solutions to meet these rising expectations has grown as well.

One promising solution area is the addition of Artificial Intelligence (AI) to service management processes to deliver better experiences. The use of AI in our consumer lives has become commonplace with Siri or Alexa just a short phrase away to help us with an answer to a question or recommendation for something we want. Bringing a similar experience to our workplace world is one of the promises of AI augmenting service management teams, especially when AI is teamed with Natural Language Processing (NLP) and Natural Language Understanding (NLU).

One example of how this can work is the password reset request. For many service teams, resetting passwords may account for over a third of incoming calls. While it’s a routine task, it’s still an important one, especially to the employee who needs help getting back to work. This is one example where an AI powered service or agent on its own could help employees easily and securely reset their password to quickly get back to work. There are many more examples showing how AI agents can help reduce call volumes with full auto-resolution of issues and incidents, while delivering the digital experiences employees have come to expect in their workplace.

The probability of good employee experiences is dramatically increased when an AI agent is combined with the ability to better understand the context and meaning of what is being asked rather than just looking for keywords to determine which predefined path should be followed. Take this example of three requests:

I can’t connect to Workday.
How do I submit an expense report into Workday?
Is next Monday a workday?

While each request includes something about ‘workday,’ the context and meaning of ‘workday’ in each is different. One is about application connectivity, the second is about process and the third is a question about the company calendar. Add in the fact there are several ways employees can ask the same question and you have the recipe for potential confusion and frustration. This is where adding NLP and NLU helps an AI agent better parse and understand what is being asked and how to best respond, including needed clarifying questions. These Conversational AI agents deliver more natural conversations between themselves and employees. Delivering outcomes that are as good if not better than what employees have now is one key factor toward the successful adoption of Conversational AI agents by employees. Combine the capability for agents to learn from each interaction and the likelihood of lower call loads and better experiences increases further.

One additional consideration is the integration of Conversational AI agents within the IT Service Management (ITSM) context. This makes it easier to log and keep track of all the activities and actions from these agents, helping improve governance while also providing data for trend analysis for potential corrective actions or changes. One more benefit? Your IT team still gets the credit for the work these agents do on your behalf.

I like to think of these agents as a component of your IT Co-Pilot, augmenting your team’s capabilities to be more efficient and consistent in delivering high-quality services and outcomes. Departments beyond IT, such as HR and Facilities, can also benefit from more self-service automation, as Conversational AI agents can be included as part of your Enterprise Service Management strategy.

By automating much more of the routine yet important responsibilities, Conversational AI agents promise to help free up more time so your teams can better focus on the key initiatives you’ve wanted to do, delivering better experiences and better outcomes all around.

To learn more about how Conversational AI agents can improve the service delivery experience, join this upcoming webinar.

HDI Support World Live: Being ‘Live and In-Person’ Was Wonderful

Fri, 19 Nov 2021 17:33:20 Z

Last week, close to 800 IT professionals met in Orlando, Florida at HDI’s Support World Live conference. HDI events are always wonderful for catching up on trends, new innovations and best practices.

HDI described this conference as one that “brings together a diverse group of experts, practitioners, thought leaders, and solution providers, all united around a singular focus: to energize and empower service and support pros to make a real difference in their careers and organizations.” This event was no different, reflected in this year’s theme of “Where Smarter Service Starts, And Better Business Begins.”

Great to Be Back Together Again

I also feel HDI conferences are great, but even more so this time — not just for me but for all attendees. After speaking with many attendees, this year’s unofficial theme became clear: “It’s great to be back together again.” I want to thank the HDI event team for working hard to ensure a safe environment. We could safely share elbow bumps, have the occasional handshake and enjoy the chance to see so many smiles without needing to always cover up the lower half of our faces — although many attendees were very good at showing their smiles through their eyes while wearing their mask.

Three Short Success Stories

It was clear everyone was excited and happy to be together in-person after the last 18 months we’ve all been through. It’s no exaggeration that there were plenty of stories and examples of people and teams persevering through these unprecedented times. There were many stories I was fortunate to hear, including the following three:

The service desk manager for a healthcare organization who strives to ensure the well-being of his team, providing not just equipment and training but also support for flexible work practices, such as saying it’s ‘ok’ to turn off cameras during calls when he recognized many people were ‘Zoomed Out’ and needed a break. This manager did share one silver lining from the challenges since last year. The situation provided more context and material for their PhD dissertation, including an analysis on why too many meetings are not good for you nor your productivity. Personal note: I look forward to reading their completed dissertation.

A support leader for a manufacturing firm who is refocusing their team on having a solid foundation of core processes and services they can build on for more advanced capabilities or new innovations. They were also looking for an easier and more timely way to bring in data from multiple tools to make it easier to tell and share how well the support team was delivering more and more value to the organization, as well as making it easier to find process improvement areas.

The IT support director for a public service organization whose team had to provide support to more than 100 times as many people literally overnight with a team who had to work through their own challenges working remotely. When asked how they did that while maintaining good support and service levels, their response was, “I don’t know how we did it; we just did it.” I felt their response was representative of the spirit of everyone who was at Support World Live.

Jam-Packed with Content and Keynotes

Of course, the conference was jam-packed with content to help IT teams adopt, adapt and implement proven service management approaches and best practices to help ‘tune-up’ their operations and realize better outcomes faster. This year’s event offered several pre-conference workshops, more than a dozen case studies, and over 60 workshops and sessions covering topics like:

Maximizing Performance
Modernizing Service Management
Networking
Optimizing the Support Organization
Pursuing Service Excellence
Revolutionizing the Customer Experience
Building and Leading a World-Class Culture

The conference also featured three keynotes that I always find to be very interesting. Keynotes are something I think and talk about after a conference, especially because of the different perspectives the speakers have when it comes to addressing challenges in IT.

One keynote that stood out this year was presented by Carla Harris on “Intentional Leadership: Currency, Change, & Creating A Powerful Presence” on Tuesday morning. Carla shared eight ‘pearls of wisdom’ from her career and experiences: Authenticity, Building Trust, Clarity, Creating Other Leaders, Diversity, Innovation, Inclusivity and Voice. Her session was extremely well received by everyone who experienced it. Her pearls of wisdom surfaced in many conversations throughout the rest of the conference. I heard many times how attendees were going to go back and have others watch her session. It’s still available for playback because it resonated so well.

HDI “Celebrating Excellence” Awards

One last item I want to highlight are the HDI Celebrating Excellence Awards. Each year, HDI's awards are given to the individuals, teams and organizations who have enhanced their service management and support organizations through exceptional leadership and vision, the integration of best practices, stakeholder involvement, business alignment, and achievement of the highest standards of quality and customer satisfaction.

This year we were excited the City of Seattle was a finalist for the Best Use of Technology award. They greatly improved their operational efficiency and governance when they made IT asset management an integral part of their service management practice. Improved outcomes included effective charge backs, as well as making every city employee accountable for their assigned assets and the quality of actionable asset information throughout the asset lifecycle. Feel free to read their story to learn more of their approach and results.

2021 Support World Live was a wonderful opportunity to meet and speak with other IT professionals. I was delighted to have spoken with as many attendees as I did. We all learned something new and helpful from these conversations — which will resonate with us until we meet again.

A ‘Friendly Ghost’ Fixes IT Issues Before You Notice

Thu, 14 Oct 2021 21:49:03 Z

Here in North America it’s that spooky time of the year again, Halloween. As always, children look forward to this late-October holiday, the chance to dress up in costumes to go door-to-door and amass large hauls of candy treats, leaving their parents to deal with any later ‘tricks’ from associated sugar highs.

In addition to the sweet tradition of ‘trick or treat’ it’s also a time when we think of witches, goblins and things that ‘go bump in the night.’ It reminds me of similar traditions and stories around the world.

For example, Poltergeist doesn’t just refer to a scary movie from 1982. In Germany it refers to particularly disruptive spirits making loud noises or moving things around a house, seemingly on their own. The desire to ward off Poltergeists might have given rise to another German tradition, Polterabend, where wedding guests break porcelain to bring good luck to a couple’s marriage. There are some origin references where the Polterabend tradition dates back to pre-medieval times when throwing pottery shards was thought to help drive off evil spirits and Poltergeists.

While things happening on their own makes for a key plot device in a scary movie, it doesn’t have to be scary in the IT world. New advances in automation — coupled with Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Machine Learning (ML) — are helping IT management solutions act more like friendly Poltergeists, ‘bumping’ things in helpful ways to deliver results such as fixing issues and potential problems before anyone notices. These next-generation automation capabilities promise to augment the capabilities of your service desk teams to deliver better outcomes that pleasantly treat your employees vs unplanned, disruptive tricks.

Examples always help me understand a new concept or solution. Let me share three examples how new automation capabilities could make it easier for IT teams to deliver better IT outcomes and end-user experiences (ghost-story imagery optional).

Someone to Watch Over Me

Do you always have to wait for employees to contact you about application issues? For example, let’s say Sharon has an application on her laptop that keeps crashing on her. It’s annoying, but Sharon doesn’t think it’s bad enough to contact IT since it crashes ‘only’ occasionally and she can just restart the offending application to keep working.

Instead, what if there was a bot checking for application crashes that could see Sharon’s crashes and alert the IT service desk. An IT agent could then contact Sharon and ask if she’d like some help to remediate her application issues. Rather than living with the annoyance from spotty crashes, Sharon would be pleasantly surprised by the unexpected help to make her work experience better.

Feels Like Something Was Holding Me Back

Do your employees sometimes call you complaining their laptop is running too slowly to get their work done? Let’s assume Paul is one of those employees whose laptop has been running slower and slower, until he finally calls the service desk about it. Your analyst spends some time with Paul to troubleshoot and finds the disk on Paul’s laptop is near capacity and needs to be cleaned up to free up some disk space.

But what if there was a bot checking regularly for things like limited free disk space? Like with Sharon’s issue, a bot could alert the service desk, but what if the bot could take some additional corrective action on its own — such actions as cleaning up Paul’s disk to immediately free up capacity before his laptop’s performance suffers? The bot could also alert Paul his laptop needs more free disk space — plus alert the service desk about Paul’s need. In the meantime, Paul can keep working without performance issues.

Who Opened That Door?

Do you have employees who sometimes open up a security vulnerability unintentionally? This third and final example is about Sam whose firewall is off.

Like in the previous two examples, a bot could be checking firewall status for several devices and see Sam’s firewall is off. Again, a bot could alert IT and also turn the firewall back on automatically, plugging a potential security hole. The bot could also message Sam about his firewall being off and prompt him for an IT service request if he would like some help should he have a specific need for his firewall to be off.

Taking the Service Experience to the Next Level

These three examples illustrate just some of the promise of next-generation IT solutions to help the IT service desk deliver better experiences and outcomes all around. You can probably come up with your own examples how you could radically improve the relationship with all employees by fixing issues and incidents before anyone notices. The technology has been expanding the ‘art of the possible’ to make these types of results a reality.

The Ivanti Neurons solution delivers these types of proactive capabilities, including deploying squads of automation-powered bots ready to catch and fix IT issues before anyone notices. Dozens of bots are available out-of-the-box to help IT teams get started quickly. Several IT teams have taken the next step of creating their own bots, sometimes incorporating PowerShell scripts, to meet specific needs and requirements.

One additional key capability is integration within the IT Service Management (ITSM) context. This makes it easy to log and keep track of all the activities and actions from these squads of bots, helping improve governance while also providing data for trend analysis for potential corrective actions or changes. One more benefit? Your IT team still gets the credit for the work bots do on your behalf.

I like to think of these squads of bots as a component of your IT Co-Pilot, augmenting your team’s capabilities to be more efficient and consistent in delivering high-quality services and outcomes. By automating much more of the routine yet important responsibilities, these bots help free up time so your team can better focus on the key work you’ve wanted to do, delivering better experiences and better outcomes all around.

And by the way, no need to smash your good porcelain to encourage good experiences from your ‘friendly’ IT Poltergeist.

A Question of When vs If: The Need for Your Security Incident Management Plan

Wed, 08 Sep 2021 22:11:07 Z

Should all incidents be treated the same? Seems like a simple question, but the answer can have big implications.

Think about an employee who contacts the service desk, complaining they can’t log onto their email. If the issue is due to a ‘stale’ password, dropped connection or configuration issue after an update for the email server, then the impact on the organization can be quantified to the lost productivity for the impacted employee or employees. But if the outage is due to some malicious activity and the email outage is the first indicator of a larger security breach potentially affecting more mission critical applications, data or infrastructure, then the impact to the organization can be very far reaching.

The Service Desk as IT’s Front Line for Security Incident Responses

For most service management teams, incident management is focused on resolving incidents quickly and getting employees back up and running again. That practice works for most incidents, but as with the above security breech example, security-related incidents should be handled differently because of the higher potential risks and impacts. Even with dedicated security teams, the service desk will be IT’s face to the organization’s employees and the front line when a security incident occurs, so it needs to be an integral part of a coordinated response. Throw in the fact that service teams often act as the hub for communication and coordination during major incidents and the case becomes even stronger.

Since the worst time to plan for how to deal with a major security incident is in the middle of one, service teams need to proactively plan and prepare for how to handle security incidents. Otherwise, as one IT director said, “You’re trying to build the airplane while on final approach.” Given the increasing frequency and threat of security-related attacks, for most organizations it’s a question of “when” the next major security incident will occur, versus the question of “if.”

Your Security Incident Management Plan

One suggestion for service teams developing their Security Incident Management (SIM) plan is to do so in coordination with not just other IT teams, but ideally also with other departments that may potentially need to be involved. Why? Because a major security incident may have business impacts well beyond the scope of the immediate IT issues, such as legal responsibilities, privacy risks, and governance questions. That’s not to say everyone should be involved with each security incident, but a response plan should be comprehensive in dealing with and mitigating risks from a wide range of potential impacts.

When you start developing your SIM plan with your extended team, define the roles and responsibilities for involved team members. Think about leveraging models like RACI (Responsible, Accountable, Consulted, Informed) to help map out these roles and responsibilities based on type and scope of security incidents. Find and agree on the touch points for each team, not just for the Security team. Don’t wait until a breach occurs to determine who needs to approve specific actions; make it part of your SIM plan, along with response times and alternative approvers so requests don’t “hang” during critical moments and are instead automatically routed for timely approvals.

Also think about what data and information you need to capture during an incident. This can help in the moment when trying to figure out the incident scope and response, but also afterwards when things settle down and you’d like to evaluate and improve your response.

Similar to pilots preparing for a flight, one tactic IT teams use are checklists for what needs to be done, including for operational tasks like isolation, shutdown, recovery, and testing for different types of services, applications, devices, assets, and CIs. They also leverage automation tools as much as possible to remove as many manual steps, checks, notices, and approvals as they can, reducing the risk of things “falling through the cracks” when in the middle of a security response, as well as ensure additional levels of governance.

Once you complete your SIM plan, train and regularly practice the plan with your staff. Train them to quickly identify and confirm possible security incidents. Use practice runs to check the thoroughness and effectiveness of your procedures, including mitigation and recovery, looking for areas to improve.

SIMilar Position as Your Disaster Recovery Plan

One IT directory thinks of their SIM plan similar to their Disaster Recovery (DR) plan—"it’s good to have it ready but you hope you don’t need to use it.” But should you encounter a major security incident and need to activate your SIM plan, be sure to invest time soon after the incident to determine how you would improve your response. Plan to review the incident before memories fade, and gather the data and information collected during the incident.

During a review with the response team, investigate and determine the background for the incident. Answer the “news reporter’s” questions of “Who, What, When, Where, How and Why” for the incident. Keep in mind some of the answers and information may be needed for future legal proceedings.

Also evaluate your organization’s overall response. Analyze and grade how quickly threat identification, mitigation, and recovery happened. Gauge the effectiveness of current defenses and training, look for areas to improve, and apply lessons learned to be better prepared for the next threat.

For major incidents, prepare a report for the executive team along the lines of an “After Action” report used in the military. Summarize some of the key findings from your review, including an analysis of the speed and effectiveness of the response. Don’t forget to include possible financial and legal implications your extended team can provide.

Sample Questions to Begin Your Post-Incident Review

Here are some sample questions you may want to consider asking in your review. There are more questions you may have, but these are meant to help you get started as you work to improve your response to security incidents:

What type of incident was it?
How was the incident first detected?
Was the severity initially gauged correctly?
How well did the response plan work? Any steps not followed? What steps helped? What steps didn’t help?
Was response leadership clear? Was it effective and timely? Does anything need to change?
Any data or insights that could have helped?
How well did the security infrastructure work? Are there improvement opportunities in vulnerability management?
Was communication among teams effective and timely? What worked well? What didn’t work well?
Any other teams who should have been included? At what stage?
What could be improved to handle the next incident? For all types of possible security threats?

Forewarned is Forearmed

Security breaches and incidents, or at least attempted ones, are bound to occur given today’s changing threat landscape. But being forewarned is forearmed. IT service teams—along with the rest of IT and the larger organization—can be better protected and prepared, with well-documented plans for a coordinated team that’s ready to respond to and mitigate the risks from future security incidents.

SouthStar Bank Fixes IT Issues Before Anyone Notices

Fri, 02 Jul 2021 12:00:01 Z

I recently had the pleasure to talk with Jesse Miller from SouthStar Bank about some amazing IT results they were delivering. Southstar Bank, headquartered in Moulton, Texas — about midway between San Antonio and Houston — is a community bank specializing in residential mortgage, real estate and construction lending, operating 15 full-service branches in rural and urban communities across the Central Texas region.

Jesse is an IT Specialist based near Killeen, Texas, and has been with SouthStar Bank for nearly six years. He handles the service desk and endpoint management sides of IT operations, as well as some server administration responsibilities. “We’re a smaller IT staff and I wear a lot of hats, which is typical in the world of community banking.” Jesse shared how he and this team had to really step up to keep everyone productive when COVID forced everyone to work remotely, and he needed a way to realize more 'shift left' results to free up the IT team to focus on key initiatives needed by the bank.

Ivanti Neurons Helps Fix Issues Before Anyone Notices

Jesse and team already had good IT management practices in place and already been delivering solid results with their Unified Endpoint Management (UEM) and IT Service Management (ITSM) solutions. But they wanted to make sure they had the resources, access and tools needed to “shift left” faster. For example, not having to escalate nearly as often to higher support levels, but instead discovering and fixing potential issues before things break or anyone notices.

According to Jesse, Ivanti Neurons with its automated workflows is something he and the IT team didn’t know they needed when they needed it. Jesse had attended a virtual webinar and realized how useful it could be to them meeting the challenges from COVID, such as supporting many employees working from home for the first time.

Jesse and team have since realized how Ivanti Neurons truly augments their current solutions — “literally fixing issues before anyone notices,” Jesse said. “Ivanti Neurons has made us more efficient and effective — and has enabled us to do things we didn’t think we could do.”

Jesse explained that it took about 20 minutes to really get up and going with Ivanti Neurons from the time he requested it. “Then the connectors portion was really basic and easy to use,” he said. “I wanted to start getting my data and start watching it flow, including ingesting data from everything else you can use from outside of Ivanti to start pulling in that stuff. That’s the first thing I really started to do to gain greater visibility.”

He continued, “When the pandemic hit, the security front became a huge challenge, and we knew it would be when we had to place many employees out in a space they’ve never been before. How do I pull up on my tablet something I can employ to help folks working from home for the very first time — where I can hit an ‘actions’ button and step through ‘Problems 1 through 5’ I know they’ll encounter and resolve them proactively before employees even know they had them. Those are the kinds of capabilities we were looking for.”

Delivering a “Community-Bank Experience” to All Employees

Jesse said the intelligence delivered by Ivanti Neurons “is as close to real time as you’re going to get.” He added, “We don’t need to interrupt an end-user and their day. We’re giving them a better quality of life. We pride ourselves on that as a community bank; we want to deliver that kind of community experience to employees and customers. It’s what we’re really hoping to accomplish for ourselves and everyone.”

Jesse said every IT department is on a different journey, with different management solutions and use cases across the board. “Concerning Neurons,” he said, “you don’t start with climbing Mt. Everest. You start with areas you’re confident you can conquer, but that you can also test and evaluate and then determine where you can scale from there. And that’s the best part of Neurons. It’s easy to scale.”

He concluded our talk with “How did I not have Neurons earlier? I’m not willing to give it up. I feel other IT departments should definitely give it a shot.”

Watch Jesse’s Complete Interview

Do you want to catch the rest of Jesse’s story? Check out our recorded session The Best Time to Fix an Incident is before it Happens. Jesse talks more about his and the team’s experiences and outcomes, including how they’ve improved the management of all their devices, including remote ones, as well their security posture. You’ll hear how Southstar Bank employees now have better experiences and fewer IT worries, unless it’s the occasional cat walking across their keyboard — at least until there’s an automated workflow that deals with that.

ITSM and ITAM: Great Together, Like Peanut Butter and Chocolate or Gin and Tonic Pt. 2 of 2

Fri, 04 Jun 2021 13:00:00 Z

As mentioned in Part 1 of this blog series, IT Service Management (ITSM) and IT Asset Management (ITAM) make a great combo to support IT’s overall plan to maximize operational efficiencies and improve service delivery experiences, while also optimizing compliance and cost.

Part 1 covered two use-case examples: 1) Empowering Users with Self-Service; and 2) Faster, Better Incident Resolution.

This post discusses the remaining three use-case examples: 3) Tackle Problem Assets with Proactive Management; 4) Effective Change Management; and 5) Complete Lifecycle Visibility.

3. Tackle Problem Assets with Proactive Management

Correlating asset information with incident and problem management helps you assess why certain devices consistently fail. By doing so, you can manage the overall risk proactively versus trying to fix each device as it fails, adding unnecessary costs and downtime in the process.

Let’s say Karen, an IT Manager, is preparing for the next vendor negotiation and standardization initiative. By looking at problem data and analyzing the associated device information, Karen finds certain types of devices are failing at a 30% higher rate than other models. Diving further into the asset information, including purchase history and warranty coverage, she determines it no longer makes sense to fix these device types going forward and instead makes a switch and standardizes on a different type of device to keep users productive.

Karen also looks at incident and problem data to assess which hardware still has value beyond its initial lifecycle. Her analysis shows that rather than adhere to the market standard of three-year hardware refresh cycles, she can initiate an extension to four years, enabling the organization to gain more life out of existing devices.

Simply making a few key changes to procedures and device standards can create savings and optimize costs across the enterprise. Had Karen taken a traditional approach, she would have only seen problems coming in through the service desk and looked at call resolution to determine how long it took analysts to solve a particular user’s problem.

By creating “one system of truth” — one repository where information is collected, filtered against and analyzed, you can correlate results and make more informed decisions. This way, you know if a problem impacts the wider organization and can trigger actions proactively to remedy the issue while checking into the hardware contracts, licensing information, etc. Having the insights to know the exposure and risks involved to draft a clear remediation plan can turn a problem into an opportunity.

4. Effective Change Management

According to research from EMA, 32% of surveyed organizations achieved IT operational efficiencies through improved insights. (“Reinventing ITSM,” EMA, 2019).

Making asset information available as part of the Change Management process helps ensure changes are more effective and successful, partly by identifying potential risks up front as well as making the process more efficient.

For instance, with more asset insight readily available as part of the review cycle, the Change Advisory Board (CAB) can review and answer key questions such as:

Are appropriate licenses available and properly allocated, including desired and needed versions?
Are any additional software packages, drivers, or hardware add-ons required, and are needed licenses also available?
Are the hardware configurations acceptable or do they need to be enhanced with more memory, connections, capacity, or storage to cover unplanned incidents or failures?

Where resolution times are critical, having more complete asset information can also speed emergency change requests. Let’s assume a server running a business-critical application crashes and must be replaced quickly. The incident response team can check the asset inventory immediately to see if there’s a replacement server readily available. Once one is found, the team can initiate an Emergency Change with complete information on the replacement server, including its exact location, where it needs to go and any necessary software and add-ons.

5. Complete Lifecycle Visibility

It’s no secret that many organizations still use spreadsheets to track their hardware and software, noting purchase information and linking the device to the initial user who requested it. Full visibility of what assets are in the environment, where they are and how they are used — all without cumbersome spreadsheets — is vital for service desk analysts to do their job efficiently, with quicker resolution times on incidents and problems.

However, many IT organizations often only verify an asset’s location once a year — and some organizations only every five years. (“Navigating through the Complexities of the Fixed Asset Management Function,” Ernst & Young).

Consider a temporary-staffing company that provides temp workers with devices at the start of an assignment. Across different job roles, devices will be switching hands, changing locations and demanding access rights at an exploding rate. If IT carries out a manual inventory audit, these user changes would either be poorly tracked, or not tracked at all — posing a significant security risk and not providing IT with much-needed visibility into a device’s health and performance.

Organizations benefit from ITSM and ITAM processes and tools that are unified:

Organizations can perform real-time scans and reconcile user and location information.
This enables the service desk to resolve incidents much faster, improve customer experiences, and enable more self-service.
Not only is it vital from a service-and-support perspective to know at all times where all organizational assets are, but also from a security standpoint, where lost or stolen assets can jeopardize data integrity.

It’s also critical to manage assets throughout their entire lifecycle by tracking performance data, issues, fixes, patch information, contracts and licensing to ensure software and hardware investments are running at optimal performance and not impacting employee productivity. Complete lifecycle visibility through unified ITSM and ITAM is often the missing piece of the IT puzzle for many organizations.

Catch Our Webinar Replay

Check out our recorded webinar Why IT Service & Asset Management Are Better Together. Our presenters share more insights for solving business problems proactively with ITSM and ITAM. You’ll also hear some true stories, such as why mysteries make for good night-time reading but not so much when it comes to network routers.

ITSM and ITAM: Great Together, Like Peanut Butter and Chocolate or Gin and Tonic Pt. 1 of 2

Tue, 01 Jun 2021 17:08:51 Z

Actor 1: “Hey, you got peanut butter on my chocolate.”

Actor 2: “Well you got chocolate in my peanut butter.”

This 1970’s ad campaign of “Two Great Tastes that Taste Great Together” put Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups on the map.

Know what else makes a great combo? IT Service Management (ITSM) and IT Asset Management (ITAM).

Historically Separate Disciplines

Traditionally detached disciplines, ITSM ensures timely delivery of essential services and support for the enterprise, while ITAM discovers and tracks the hardware and software assets for those services and optimizes the overall value, costs and compliance across the asset lifecycle.

These two practices are typically implemented in separate areas of the organization with different business objectives and goals, yet their processes and data are highly interrelated. When IT is structured along operational silos, gaining visibility and automating manual processes across the IT landscape becomes a real challenge. Separate teams, tools and objectives limit information and data sharing and isolate ITSM and ITAM from one another.

In contrast, ITSM and ITAM closely aligned and integrated means many activities and processes become more automated, efficient and responsive — with fewer things “falling through the cracks.” IT teams gain greater insight and are better positioned to implement more proactive practices that increase service levels and efficiency at lower cost.

Benefits of Combining ITSM and ITAM Processes: Five Use-Case Examples

This blog and its upcoming Part 2 companion post cover five use-case examples where combining ITSM and ITAM processes, data and insights can be part of an overall plan for IT to maximize operational efficiencies and improve service delivery, while also optimizing compliance and cost.

The first two use cases discussed below are: 1) Empowering Users with Self-Service; and 2) Faster, Better Incident Resolution. The Part #2 post covers the remaining three: 3) Tackle Problem Assets with Proactive Management; 4) Effective Change Management; and 5) Complete Lifecycle Visibility.

1. Empowering Users with Self-Service

IT service desks often lack the visibility into what software applications are available and how they’re being used. This hobbles the effort to fulfill self-service requests quickly, plus organizations end up purchasing more software, creating unnecessary spend and compliance issues. With unified ITSM and ITAM processes, you can reclaim or re-harvest unused software to cut costs and optimize existing asset performance.

For example, let’s say Jane, a sales manager, needs Microsoft Visio but doesn’t have the application and can’t afford to lose several days waiting for the purchase and installation of the software:

She tries to launch Visio, but access is denied
Traditionally, she would call the service desk to make the request
The support desk analyst would send a task to the purchasing department, which would order a new software license after waiting to get approval for the purchase
IT would send a confirmation to Jane
The IT technician would perform a manual lookup of the device and the user and initiate the Microsoft Visio installation — now several days after the initial request.

Let’s now assume ITSM and ITAM are working together, accelerating software-request processes for users via self-service:

When Jane submits her request for Microsoft Visio, the system checks and identifies that Visio licenses are available, yet unused
The Visio application can then be assigned to Jane, and through endpoint management processes, installed automatically in compliance with entitlement
The service management solution documents and tracks the process, notifies Jane and closes the software request

The whole process finishes in minutes instead of days, empowering users and freeing the service desk to focus on other strategic projects.

2. Faster, Better Incident Resolution

Businesses stay productive and employees stay satisfied when the Service Desk can resolve incidents more quickly and effectively. Consider Michael, an employee who contacts the Service Desk because his laptop doesn’t charge or shut down properly:

If the Service Desk has visibility into the complete asset record of the laptop, they can see it was acquired only a few months earlier and is still under warranty
With this asset visibility, the analyst handling the incident can choose to do a warranty replacement rather than spend resources trying to fix the laptop internally
The analyst can also check the asset repository for an available loaner or replacement laptop so Michael can keep working
When the faulty laptop is returned, any software licenses associated with the device can be reclaimed for re-use by other employees

This simple laptop example shows how the business could benefit from leveraging asset information for faster resolution times, increased employee satisfaction and lower support costs without sacrificing quality. With greater hardware and software information, analysts can more quickly identify possible causes for other types of common incidents, such as lower performance or application crashes, which could be due to insufficient RAM or conflicting software versions. Plus, logging all the steps and actions assists in analysis or in audit requirements later on.

Learn More in the Companion Blog

You’ll find three more use-case instances of how ITSM and ITAM are better together in Part 2 coming soon.

Catch Our Webinar Replay

Check out our recorded webinar Why IT Service & Asset Management Are Better Together. Our presenters share insights for solving business problems proactively with ITSM and ITAM. You’ll also hear interesting true stories such as what a cookie monster has to do with potential IT security threats.

Service the Everywhere Workplace

Fri, 09 Apr 2021 15:00:01 Z

Drive outcomes with insights

What if you could give employees reliably great experiences while improving outcomes across your organization? You’ve got it with Enterprise Service Management from Ivanti. It arms you with insights and actions that let you dramatically reduce resolution times and give you more time for the cool stuff you love to do.

Add value to your assets

Ivanti’s Enterprise Service Management delivers visibility across your entire asset portfolio, enabling you to optimize asset performance and value over entire lifecycles. No more lost, unknown or risk-prone assets. No more buying what you already have. The result: more efficient and secure IT, and more business value from your Ivanti investment.

Superpower your productivity

Turbocharge your IT and other departments with the power to resolve issues quickly and automatically, even before employees notice. Start delivering the great experience employees expect and love and drive the IT transformation you've wanted.

Empower everyone

Great service management starts with IT but reaches all across your organization, giving users the benefit of more productive, personalized and enjoyable connected experiences everywhere.

Just Released: 2020 Gartner Magic Quadrant for ITSM Tools Recognizes Ivanti a Leader

Mon, 12 Oct 2020 20:13:40 Z

We’re in the early autumn season here in the northern hemisphere, with the weather getting cooler and the nights longer. That growing chill in the evenings encourages staying inside and reading by a fire for enjoyment and enlightenment. But even if you’re an early planner who already has their fall reading list mapped out, there’s one key report you should move to the top: the new 2020 Gartner Magic Quadrant for IT Service Management Tools, just published and ready for you to view.

If the Gartner Magic Quadrant report is new to you, here’s a quick overview. Gartner analyzes the top vendors in the ITSM market every year and evaluates each vendor on its ability to execute and the completeness of its vision. It’s important to note the Magic Quadrant is not a direct evaluation of individual tools but is a helpful resource and starting point to help IT organizations identify possible solutions.

Get started today by reading the Magic Quadrant for ITSM report for Gartner’s analysis of the top vendors in the IT service management marketplace, including Gartner’s:

Overview and vision of the ITSM landscape
Strengths and weaknesses of each vendor
Guidance when seeking an ITSM solution

Check out the visual summary of the 2020 Gartner Magic Quadrant for ITSM 2020:

Ivanti on the Gartner Magic Quadrant

We at Ivanti are excited to be named a new leader in this year’s report! Our team is proud of the progress we’ve achieved in this year’s Magic Quadrant report, continuing our multi-year run of improving our Magic Quadrant position. But we’re most proud of the benefits we’ve helped our customers realize as they use Ivanti solutions to automate and improve their service delivery, business outcomes, and user experiences. Our modular design and cloud-optimized system have made it easier for teams to select and deploy the functionality they need now and in the future.

Over the past year since the last Magic Quadrant report, we’ve released several notable enhancements to make life easier for IT service management teams by speeding resolutions and helping them discover, optimize, and secure IT assets. These enhancements include our always-on, automation-powered Ivanti Neurons for Healing bots; automated diagnostic and specialist-level remediation workflows; Virtual Support Agents; automated phone interactions; and integrations to thousands of cloud-based applications. And we’ll continue building on our vision for modern ITSM that delivers better user experiences and business outcomes.

Nayaki Nayyar, Ivanti Executive Vice President and Chief Product Officer, recently commented:

“In our view, to be named a Leader in the Magic Quadrant for ITSM Tools is a significant milestone in Ivanti’s history and a true testament to the execution of our product vision and strategy. Ivanti is transforming IT service management with the Ivanti Neurons platform that enables organizations to autonomously discover, heal, secure, and service from cloud to edge with automation bots, as organizations try to address the explosive growth of devices, data, and remote workers.”

We see the Gartner Magic Quadrant report as a trusted resource to help IT leaders select tools to meet their specific needs. We invite you to access the full report and see what Gartner has to say about the ITSM market and its top vendors.

Ivanti Neurons Workspace: Deliver Faster Resolutions Without Disrupting Your Customers

Tue, 18 Aug 2020 10:44:04 Z

When was the last time an IT conversation reminded you of the movie “Casablanca”? That happened to me recently when I was talking with another IT professional about Ivanti Neurons. We discussed how Ivanti Neurons will make life easier for IT by delivering more self-servicing, self-healing and self-securing experiences. He agreed Ivanti Neurons would be a big help reducing incidents but then said, “We’ll always have tickets.” Ok, maybe this isn’t on the same level as “We’ll always have Paris” but cue the Casablanca flashback.

He was correct, of course. End users will still have issues IT will need to resolve. But add rising expectations for better customer-service experiences, ideally resolving incidents without any disruption or escalation delays, and the demands on the first-line team keeps growing.

Helping the first-line team do more on their own is one outcome Ivanti Neurons Workspace delivers. IT teams using Ivanti Neurons Workspace are finding it’s helping them become more efficient and effective, and greatly reduce escalations by safely providing first-line teams with the required tools for more first-call resolutions, using automated tasks pre-defined by specialists, so they can resolve incidents faster and easier, and deliver great experiences to end users.

Ivanti Neurons Workspace augments IT teams by providing—in a ‘single pane of glass’—the real-time device and end-user insights provided by Ivanti Neurons for Edge Intelligence, with automation-powered bots for pre-defined actions, and also full remote control functionality for those times when IT just needs to reach out and take control.

Offering examples always helps me understand a new solution. Let me share a few where Ivanti Neurons Workspace has delivered better IT outcomes and end-user experiences.

“I was misinformed”

How often does your team start working an incident by asking the end user a bunch of questions to figure out what’s going on? Often the end user may not know the answers, or your analyst must guide them through the steps, especially now since ‘just stopping by’ isn’t an option these days. Or your analyst needs to use several tools to discover what’s going on, and you have a recipe for an engagement that may take a while before the end user is back to work and the analyst can move onto other tasks.

The ‘After’ picture with Ivanti Neurons Workspace is much easier. First-line analysts have immediate access to key IT information on users and their devices, such as:

All associated devices for the user
Device state, including running processes and services
Active Directory status
Group memberships
Incident history by user or device
Installed software, applications, and patches
Network status
Application connectivity

All this information and more is presented to an analyst in one screen, sometimes faster than if the analyst had the device in front of them. Add in the ability to ‘drill down’ into specific attributes, all without bothering or asking the end user to do anything. Your analysts will be a big step ahead in figuring out what’s going on and understanding the end user’s experience.

“Round up the usual suspects”

Quick insight is the first step to resolving incidents. Most incidents aren’t unique, so there are likely common actions a specialist could take to resolve incidents and requests. Ivanti Neurons Workspace safely provides many of these specialist-level actions to the first-line analyst within the context of an incident without providing full access. Such actions include:

Resetting passwords
Unlocking accounts
Changing or assigning group memberships
Flushing the DNS
Updating drivers
Stopping processes and services

These actions employ the same automation engine as used with Ivanti Neurons for Healing so the underlying workflows can likewise be updated, extended, or created anew to provide more automated actions to augment first-line analysts. If an incident isn’t one the first-line analyst can resolve, it can be escalated to a specialist with all the actions and diagnostic information logged.

One example is repairing a device encountering too many crashes or BSOD (Blue Screen of Death). Okay, one crash may be too many, but several is obviously too many. Either way, having the BSOD dump files helps IT diagnose the cause. A workflow in Ivanti Neurons Workspace could reach out to the device, get the needed files, compress them, and send them in an email to IT, all without bothering the end user or doing a remote session. The end user keeps on working while IT analyzes the dump files.

“Play it, Sam”

The extensibility of Ivanti Neurons Workspace means IT teams will be able to automate more and more diagnostic and remediation activities and make them more easily and safely available to first-line analysts. Your specialists can develop the automated actions the first-line team needs to resolve more issues on their own, turning escalations into first-call resolutions.

And with fewer escalations, specialists will have more time to conduct other investigations and innovations. Take the earlier BSOD example. Specialists could use Ivanti Neurons to see if other similar devices are having too many BSODs, identify those devices, analyze their dump files (again, without bothering end users), and see if there’s a common cause, like a device driver that needs updating. Oh, and that driver update? That can be automated with Ivanti Neurons Workspace as well.

“I think this is the beginning of a beautiful friendship”

Ivanti Neurons Workspace, along with the rest of the Ivanti Neurons solutions, promises to make IT more efficient and effective. Some IT teams are already seeing results such as:

Deeper device and user insight in real time
Faster issue resolutions
Fewer escalations
Quicker identification of problem trends
Greater security compliance

And delivering more “Shift Left” outcomes and exceptional user experiences.

Learn more and see Ivanti Neurons Workspace in action here. Hopefully it’ll be the beginning of a beautiful friendship.

Your Personal IT Assistant: Ivanti Cloud

Fri, 01 May 2020 20:51:53 Z

For many IT organizations, widescale remote working brings new requirements for supporting both end-users and assets. This is stretching resources and capabilities for many IT teams as they adapt to this change without compromising quality or security.

Until recently, the office was the traditional hub of connectivity—not just to business systems, but also among employees. But interaction and collaboration between employees now require technology at many touch points: your laptop, home internet connectivity, collaboration tools such as Microsoft Teams, as well as business critical applications.

With many devices, applications, and variables all requiring remote monitoring and support, traditional IT departments are facing new challenges. A reactive approach to IT issues (finding solutions, testing, and implementing them) has always been time and resource intensive, not just to IT but to end users and ultimately the business.

Increasing the service desk’s capacity and capability traditionally meant increasing headcount, tool sets, training, and sometimes all three at once. Each dimension has their own challenges and complexities when trying to maximize these investments, not to mention the financial implications. A comprehensive approach also should ensure productivity, business continuity, security, compliance and resource optimization. Needless to say, there is no one right approach.

The Need to Shift Left

Service desk teams, the first line of support, often escalate incidents when they can’t resolve the incident themselves. Even after escalating incidents to an already busy second or third line queue, these teams often require several other tools to diagnose and resolve incidents. Tools such as inventory or endpoint management tools, security solutions, all bringing their own associated configurations, installs, and individual profiles to manage users and assets.

However, escalating incidents to second or third line teams often means more delays, complexity and costs. Take for example this typical service desk incident. An end-user is unable to send emails and can’t find anything in the self-service portal to fix it themselves, so they call the service desk. Once taking the call, the first line service desk technician remotely controls the user’s device—using operating system tools to analyze the problem. If the analyst can’t resolve the incident, they escalate it to the second line. The second line analyst remedies the incident by clearing Outlook temporary files and checking connectivity.

It has long been a strategic goal to shift left for most (if not all) organizations, reducing the resolution time and costs of Incidents. In the previous example, it would have been faster and less costly if the first line technician had an automated process to identify, diagnose, and resolve the email incident once it was detected. A recent poll by SDI and Ivanti found that between 61-70% of IT incidents were resolved by first line support and between 11-20% incidents were escalated to second line support, showing there are improvement opportunities.

A shift left approach, as shown below, is the idea of bringing a resolution much closer to the end user, quickly, and efficiently.

The advantages of a shift left approach are well understood:

Reduces unplanned work
Minimizes escalations
Enables teams to be more proactive
Frees practice managers to focus more on key projects

One key requirement is giving IT teams the right tools, driven by automated processes, to enable more shift left outcomes.

Ivanti Cloud Assistants: “Do a lot more for a lot less”

Ivanti Cloud is helping organizations reduce the time it takes first line teams to resolve incidents and reduce escalations to second line teams. Ivanti Cloud recently introduced new self-healing capabilities, such as automated bots that continuously monitors more than 60 key areas (and growing) out-of-the-box. First line staff quickly find they have their own new personal IT Assistants, helping them 24x7.

With Ivanti Cloud, your first line staff will always know what to do next, detecting and resolving issues before they escalate or morph into a growing number of IT tickets. One benefit is you’ll find it easier to eliminate redundant hardware purchases before allocating more budget to something because you couldn’t easily locate it.

Speaking of not locating devices, do you know what devices on your network are unmanaged or unused? Lost devices and assets can open unknown security vulnerabilities. Ivanti Cloud is helping IT teams better understand their current security risks present in real time. When it comes to mitigating security risks, timely information is always at a premium, especially when combined with the actions required to get the job done quickly.

Here are some examples in these areas where Ivanti Cloud can benefit IT teams and organizations:

Security and Compliance

Can you see if devices are being overloaded with non-business approved applications that could impact their performance? Now ensure user devices aren’t in breach of software policy, violate terms, or even contain malware. Automate the identification and removal of blacklisted applications to meet security and compliance mandates.

Resource Optimization

Do you have the insight of virtual machines or licensable software that is not being used? Now automate their removal or provide alerts to the right teams to remediate.

Monitor logon performance for end users or servers, identifying when times may be too long, then remediating and automatically raising an incident. Discover application or device issues that would normally not be reported by users.

User Productivity

Can you get an alert of a laptop that has a near full or failing hard disk? Something a lot of end users are unlikely to be aware of disk issues until it’s too. Now IT can be alerted and have a ticket automatically created with all the necessary details to address the issue before it becomes a problem.

Business Continuity

Can you spot connectivity issues with key and critical business solutions such CRM tools, internal applications or any SaaS application? Ivanti Cloud can continuously monitor defined websites for latency and reachability to make you aware should they fall below defined thresholds.

Ivanti is truly making proactive IT the new norm by identifying problems before the end user is aware and impacted, but also automatically suggesting and implementing resolutions.

A Boost to Your ITSM Solution

Ivanti Cloud integrates with Ivanti Service Manager and other ITSM solutions to ensure all issues and resolutions are logged throughout, ensuring no identified issue, resolution or change occurs without a ticket being logged with the resolution too!

Ivanti Cloud’s shift left approach proactively works to avoid users having to raise tickets and incidents with the service desk. Coupled with widespread remote working, users can no longer walk over to IT for a remedy which could have left them potentially out of action and having to wait to receive a replacement device in the most extreme case.

Since Ivanti Cloud makes it possible to identify and resolve issues remotely without user interaction, the end user may not even be aware of a remedy being applied to an issue before it caused any perceived issues. That’s a better outcome that everyone will appreciate.

Help for the Data Center

Ivanti Cloud also brings capabilities that help manage and monitor Data Center operations. Ivanti Cloud offers Patch Intelligence, allowing detailed discovery and analysis of patching requirements and status.

Visually engaging real-time metrics makes it easier to ensure services continuity and provide insight into security status, including status of SSL certificates or even present an overview of your Security Health as seen below:

Ivanti Cloud, the "always on IT" solution, gives the insight, the visibility and the remedy that can be applied automatically. Providing business continuity whilst also increasing security and governance within the data center and maintaining user productivity all in one, securely hosted solution that supports multiple Operating Systems with remote control abilities and with zero infrastructure requirements.

All Incidents Aren’t the Same: Time for Your Security-Incident Management Plan

Mon, 14 Oct 2019 22:02:21 Z

Should all incidents be treated the same? Seems like a simple question, but the answer can have big implications.

Think about an email outage that causes a few users to contact the service desk, complaining they can’t get to their email. If the outage is due to a configuration issue after an update for the server, then the impact on the organization can be quantified to the lost productivity for the impacted employees. But if the outage is due to some malicious activity and the email outage is the first indicator of a larger security breach, then the impact to the organization can be very far reaching.

The Service Desk: IT’s Security-Incident Front Line

For most service teams, incident management is focused on resolving incidents quickly and getting employees and users back up and running again. That approach works for most types of incidents, but as with the above example, security-related incidents should be handled differently because of the higher potential risks and impacts. Even with dedicated security teams, the service desk will be IT’s face and front line when a security incident occurs, so it needs to be an integral part of a coordinated response. Throw in the fact that service teams often act as the hub for communication and coordination during major incidents and the case becomes even stronger.

Since the worst time to plan for how to deal with a major security incident is in the middle of one, service teams need to proactively plan and prepare for how to handle security incidents. Otherwise, as one IT director said, “You’re trying to build the airplane while on final approach.” Given the increasing frequency and threat of security-related attacks, for most organizations it’s a question of “when” a major security incident will occur, not a question of “if.”

A Security Incident Management (SIM) Plan

One suggestion for service teams developing their Security Incident Management (SIM) plan is to do so in coordination with not just other IT teams, but ideally also with other departments that may potentially need to be involved. Why? Because a major security incident may have business impacts well beyond the scope of the immediate IT issues, such as legal responsibilities, privacy risks, and governance questions. That’s not to say that everyone should be involved with each security incident, but a response plan should be comprehensive in dealing with and mitigating the risk from a wide range of potential impacts.

When you start developing your SIM plan with the extended team, define the roles and responsibilities for each involved team. Think about leveraging a RACI model (Responsible, Accountable, Consulted, Informed) to help map out these roles and responsibilities based on type and scope of security incidents. Find and agree on the touch points for each team, not just the Security team. Don’t wait until a breach occurs to determine who needs to approve specific actions; make it part of your SIM plan, along with response times and alternative approvers so requests don’t “hang” during critical moments.

Similar to a pilot preparing for a flight, create checklists for what needs to be done, including for operational tasks like isolation, shutdown, recovery, and testing for different types of services, applications, devices, assets, and CIs. Leverage automation tools to remove as many manual steps, checks, notices, and approvals as you can; it’ll reduce the risk of things “falling through the cracks” when you’re in the middle of a security response.

Once you have your SIM plan, train and regularly practice the plan with your staff. Train them to identify possible security incidents. Use practice runs to check the thoroughness and effectiveness of your procedures, looking for areas to improve.

SIMilar to Your Disaster Recovery Plan

Your SIM plan is similar to your Disaster Recovery (DR) plan—it’s good to have it ready but you hope you don’t need to use it. But should you encounter a security incident and need to activate your SIM plan, be sure to invest time soon after the incident to determine how you would improve your response. Plan to review the incident before memories fade, and gather the data and information collected during the incident.

During a review with the response team, investigate and determine the background for the incident. Answer the “news reporter’s” questions of “Who, What, Where, When, How and Why” for the incident. Keep in mind that some of the answers and information may be needed for legal proceedings.

Also evaluate the overall response. Analyze and grade how quickly threat identification, mitigation, and recovery happened. Gauge the effectiveness of current defenses and training, look for areas to improve, and apply lessons learned to be better prepared.

For major incidents, prepare a report for the executive team along the lines of an “After Action” report used in the military. Summarize some of the findings from your review, including an analysis of the speed and effectiveness of the response. Don’t forget to include possible financial and legal implications that the extended team can provide.

Sample Questions

Here are some sample questions you may want to consider asking in your review. You may have more, but these are meant to help you get started as you work to improve your response to security incidents:

What type of incident was it?
How was the incident first detected?
Was the severity initially gauged?
How well did the response plan work? Any steps not followed? What steps helped? What steps didn’t help?
Was response leadership clear? Was it effective? Does anything need to change?
Any data or insights that could have helped?
Was communication among teams effective and timely? What worked well? What didn’t work well?
Any other teams that should have been included? At what stage?
What could be improved to handle the next incident?

Forewarned is Forearmed

Security breaches and incidents, or at least attempted breaches and incidents, are bound to occur given today’s threat landscape. But being forewarned is forearmed. Service teams—along with the rest of IT and the organization—can be better protected and prepared, with well-documented plans for a coordinated team that’s ready to respond to and mitigate the risks from future incidents.

Meet the Ivanti Crew at Service Management World 2019

Tue, 01 Oct 2019 19:03:20 Z

We’ve just had the Autumnal Equinox. (Fun fact: derived from the Latin “aequus” for “equal” and “nox” for “night”). So it must be time to get ready for the HDI Service Management World conference, November 9-13, 2019, at the Omni Resort at ChampionsGate in Orlando, Florida. Our crew is looking forward to being there and hope you’ll stop by and see us at booth #201.

This year’s conference promises to be a jam-packed event, focused on helping you adopt, adapt, and implement proven service management approaches and best practices to ‘tune up’ your operations and realize better outcomes faster. This year’s Service Management World offers several pre-conference workshops, over a dozen case studies, and more than 55 workshops and sessions. I’m especially interested in topics like:

Combining frameworks and methodologies to maximize effectiveness
Delivering value through service management
Exploring newer frameworks and methodologies
Refining your asset management, problem management, change management, and knowledge management strategies
Advancing shift-left and self-service
Using advanced analytics and acting on the insights gained
Articulating value propositions and communicating it to key stakeholders
Overcoming political and practical challenges to service management

Don’t forget to check out the four keynotes at the conference. I often find the keynotes to be very interesting, and think and talk about them after a conference, especially because of the different perspectives the speakers have when it comes to addressing challenges in IT. Do plan on attending one, two, or all of the keynotes if you can; you’ll be glad you did.

Be sure to add Kevin J. Smith’s session to your schedule:

A New Service Management Partnership: Humanity and AI, Session 205, on Tuesday, November 12, at 11:45 am. (Olympic Room)

Kevin always shares some keen insights in his sessions. Join him to learn how IT and service management are poised to change in the next 10 years as AI and automation play a larger role, and how people and AI can partner and make each other better.

You’ll also be glad you attended our Solutions Spotlight talk:

Overcome Your Tier 1 Support Challenges, on Tuesday, November 12, at 12:45 pm.

This session will be worth the 20 minutes of your time to hear how you can improve your Tier 1 support capabilities through knowledge sharing, self-service, automated workflows and AI, among other helpful tools. If you’re not careful, you may pick up some tips and tricks to help you supercharge your Tier 1 support results, and possibly an Amazon Echo in the drawing.

Make New Connections

Conferences are always a great opportunity to meet new people. With so many service management experts coming together, Service Management World is no exception; it’s the perfect time to make new connections.

Plan to not only attend sessions, but also take the opportunity to introduce yourself to the speakers after their session, at lunch, or at one of the receptions. They enjoy meeting new people, hearing stories from the trenches, and learning how new technologies or initiatives are doing. These introductions could be the start of new relationships and ongoing dialogs that last years.

It’s also a great opportunity to meet and network with other service management professionals. I find the conversations at meals range over many interesting topics. Like you, most attendees look forward to learning what other IT teams are doing, as well as lessons learned. Try to meet as many other attendees as you can. It’s very possible that you’ll learn something new and helpful from these conversations.

Learn About New ITSM Innovations

We invite you to visit Ivanti in the exhibition hall. Ask us about our proven ITSM, ITAM, and Automation solutions and what we’re doing to make it easier to resolve issues faster and keep your employees happy and productive. We’d be thrilled to show you our AI-powered virtual support assistant that brings self-service even closer to your users. Let’s talk about how including IT Asset Management, Enterprise Automation, and integrated Voice response can shift your service desk to the next level. And we’d be happy to share examples of other teams who’ve used our ITSM solution, with its 13 Pink Verified processes, as well as our Unified IT solutions to supercharge your operations for IT and the rest of the business.

Stop by booth #201 to say ‘hello’ and see what else we’ve been working on to automate your business, and enter to win an Amazon Dot, Echo, or Show to help automate your home! We look forward to meeting you at what promises to be another informative and enjoyable conference!

Just Released, 2019 Gartner Magic Quadrant for ITSM Tools

Wed, 04 Sep 2019 20:23:03 Z

It's getting close to the end of summer here in the northern hemisphere, so there’s not much time left to get through the rest of your holiday reading list. But even if you still have that best seller left to go before season’s end, there’s one key report you should move to the top of your list: the new 2019 Gartner Magic Quadrant for IT Service Management Tools, just published and ready for you to view.

If the Gartner Magic Quadrant is new to you, here’s a quick synopsis: Gartner puts out an analysis of few vendors in the ITSM market every year, where they evaluate each vendor on their ability to execute and on the completeness of their vision. It’s important to note that the Magic Quadrant is not a direct evaluation of individual tools—that evaluation is done in Gartner’s accompanying report, Critical Capabilities for ITSM Tools. Taken together, we believe, these two reports are helpful resources to aid organizations define their requirements, determine their maturity level, and select possible solutions that match their needs now and in the future.

Get started today by reading the Magic Quadrant report for Gartner's analysis of various vendors in the IT service management marketplace, including their:

Overview and vision of the ITSM landscape
Strengths & cautions for each vendor
Guidance when seeking an ITSM solution

<< Access your copy of the full report here >>

Check out the visual summary of the Gartner Magic Quadrant for ITSM 2019:

Ivanti on The Gartner Magic Quadrant:

Ivanti further cements its position in the Challengers quadrant in this year’s report. Our team is proud of continuing positive progress we’ve achieved in this year’s Magic Quadrant, more than a 5-year run of improving our Magic Quadrant position. But, we’re most proud of the benefits we’ve helped our customers realize as they use Ivanti solutions to automate and improve their service delivery and operational support. We believe, our modular design and cloud-optimized system have made it easier for teams to select and deploy the functionality they need, now and in the future.

In the past year since the last Magic Quadrant report, we’ve released several notable enhancements to make life for IT service management teams and their users better and more engaging. Capabilities like our always-on AI-powered Virtual Support Agent, enhanced dashboards and reports, more automation capabilities, integrated phone interactions, and ready integration to over 1,000 cloud-based applications. And we’re not stopping here but continuing to build on our vision for modern ITSM and Unified IT.

Ian Aitchison, Ivanti Senior Product Director for ITSM, recently commented on our approach and results: “Our continued focus and investment are reaping rewards. We balance innovation in close partnership with our customers while supporting the principle that modern ITSM tools should be easy to purchase, simple to implement and offer a clear path for all organizations to mature in service management. While others in the ITSM market may be remaining stagnant, Ivanti is clearly on the move.”

<< Read the full report here >>

Gartner, Magic Quadrant for IT Service Management Tools, < 29 August 2019 >, < Rich Doheny, Chris Matchett, Siddharth Shetty >

Gartner does not endorse any vendor, product or service depicted in its research publications, and does not advise technology users to select only those vendors with the highest ratings or other designation. Gartner research publications consist of the opinions of Gartner’s research organization and should not be construed as statements of fact. Gartner disclaims all warranties, express or implied, with respect to this research, including any warranties of merchantability or fitness for a particular purpose.

Meet the Ivanti Team at HDI 2019

Tue, 26 Mar 2019 19:51:14 Z

We’re the early days of spring and also in the middle of March Madness, so it must be time for the annual HDI Conference & Expo!

Ivanti will be at HDI on April 9-12, Booth #707

We’re looking forward to being there and hope you’ll stop by and see us!

The theme for this year’s conference is “Get Ready For the (R)Evolution of Support and Service Management” and it promises to be an energizing and empowering experience for service and support professionals. HDI 2019 will offer over 120 workshops and sessions, covering topics like:

Process Improvement
Change Management
Employee Engagement
Service Management Optimization
Organizational ROI
And much more….

Don’t forget to check out the five keynotes at the conference. I often find the keynotes to be very interesting. They are one of the things I think and talk about after a conference, especially because of the different perspectives the speakers have when it comes to addressing challenges in IT. Do plan on attending one, two, or all of the keynotes if you can; you’ll be glad you did.

You’ll also be glad if you attend Ivanti’s Solution Spotlight session:

Overcome Your Tier 1 Support Challenges on Wednesday, April 10 at 1 pm.

This session is well worth 20 minutes of your time to hear how you can improve your Tier 1 support capabilities through knowledge sharing, self-service, automated workflows and AI, amount other helpful tools. If you’re not careful, you may pick up some tips and tricks to help you supercharge your Tier 1 support capabilities.

Industry Awards

Don’t miss the Thursday evening celebration, not just because of the entertainment, but for the HDI Celebrating Excellence Awards.

Each year, HDI's awards are given to the individuals, teams, and organizations that have enhanced their service management and support organizations through exceptional leadership and vision, the integration of best practices, stakeholder involvement, business alignment, and achievement of the highest standards of quality and customer satisfaction. Come and show your support for the finalists and winners for this year’s awards.

We’re very excited that Service Corporation International is one of the HDI Award finalists. Recently SCI had to answer the question if they could count on their support processes and systems to hold up during a natural disaster. Come hear how they were able to keep their service desk up and running through not just one, but two hurricanes back-to-back. If you miss them at the HDI conference, you can still hear their story here from a recent online event.

Make New Connections

Conferences are always a great opportunity to meet new people. HDI is no exception since it’ll bring many service management experts together. Plan to not just attend sessions but also take the opportunity to introduce yourself after the session, at lunch or at one of the receptions. Speakers enjoy meeting new people, hearing stories from the trenches and learning how new technologies or initiatives are doing. These introductions could be the start of new relationships and ongoing dialogs that last years.

It’s also a great opportunity to meet and network with other ITSM professionals. I find the conversations at meals range over many interesting topics. Most attendees are like you and look forward to learning what other IT teams are working on and lessons learned. Try to meet as many other attendees as you can. It’s very possible that you’ll learn something new and helpful from these conversations.

Learn About New ITSM Innovations

We invite you to visit the Ivanti booth in the exhibition expo. Ask us about our proven ITSM solution and what we’re doing to make it easier to resolve issues faster and keep your employees happy and productive. We’d be thrilled to show you our AI-powered virtual support assistant that brings self-service even closer to your users. Let’s talk about how including IT Asset Management, Enterprise Automation, or integrated Voice response can take your service desk to the next level. And we’d be happy to share examples of other teams who’ve used our ITSM solution, with its 13 Pink Verified processes, as well as our Unified IT solutions to supercharge your operations for IT and the rest of the business.

Stop by booth #707 to say ‘hello’ and see what else we’ve working on for you. We’re looking forward to meeting you at another informative and enjoyable HDI conference!

Meet the Ivanti Team at Pink19

Mon, 04 Feb 2019 23:59:48 Z

The annual Pink Elephant conference, Pink19, is right around the corner! It will take place on February 17-29 at the Bellagio hotel in Las Vegas.

We’ll be at booth #402 and hope to see you there! Register now.

This is the 23^rd year of this IT Service Management conference, and the theme for this year’s event is Back to the Future. While you may be lucky and get to ride in a slightly modified DeLorean, you can be sure to get the latest insight on how to achieve service management excellence.

Pink19 features more than 120 sessions, in 12 tracks, with topics tailored for every role. You’ll get the latest on topics such as Lean IT, Agile, DevOps, Organizational Change Management and Business Relationship Management. And you’ll also get the inside scoop on ITIL 4.

Don’t forget the keynotes, including one from Admiral McRaven, former University of Texas Chancellor. In his book, Make Your Bed: Little Things That Can Change Your Life…And Maybe the World, he shares the ten life lessons he learned as a Navy Seal; lessons that can help overcome challenges, including ones we deal with as IT professionals.

Plan Ahead to Get the Most From Pink19

With so many sessions with great content, it can be challenging to decide what to attend. As with many activities, it helps to have a goal for what you want to achieve. You can start by reviewing what projects and initiatives you have underway already or plan to do in the next year or two. Your initiatives could include: increasing automation, leveraging AI-powered virtual assistants, doing more DevOps, improving Governance, or doing a better job at core ITSM processes like Incident Management, Problem Management or Self-Service.

Take some time to rank your initiatives as the ones that will be key to your success in IT. Once you have your list, review the Pink19 agenda and find the presentations that line up with your short list. Highlight those sessions and plan to attend them. If you end being double-booked, maybe you can split sessions with other colleagues who may be at the conference too.

Make New Connections

Pink19 will bring many service management experts together so it’s a great time to make new connections. Plan to not just attend their sessions but also take the opportunity to introduce yourself after their session, at lunch or at one of the receptions. They enjoy meeting new people, hearing stories from the trenches and learning how new technologies or initiatives are doing. These introductions could be the start of relationships and ongoing dialogs that last years.

It’s also a great opportunity to meet and network with other ITSM professionals. I find the conversations at meals range over many interesting topics (and not just about the casinos and shows in Vegas). Most attendees are like you and look forward to learning what other IT teams are working on and lessons learned. Try to meet as many other attendees as you can. It’s very possible that you’ll learn something new and helpful from these conversations.

Learn About New ITSM Innovations

We invite you to visit Ivanti in the exhibition showcase. Ask us about our proven ITSM solution and what we’re doing to make it easier to resolve issues faster, and keep your employees happy and productive. We’d be thrilled to show you our AI-powered virtual support assistant that brings self-service even closer to your users. Let’s talk about how including asset management or integrated voice automation can take your service desk to the next level. And we’d be happy to share examples of other teams who’ve used our ITSM solution, with its 13 Pink Verified processes, to improve operations for IT and the rest of the business.

Stop by booth #402 to say hello and see what else we’re working on for you. We’re looking forward to meeting you at another informative and enjoyable Pink conference!

Here’s Why 2019 Will Be the Year of AI in ITSM

Wed, 09 Jan 2019 23:54:06 Z

The next two years will be exciting for Service Management. We will see the realignment of existing practices as well as a new and strategic contribution from emerging technologies.

First, expect more experienced IT teams to reassess how we leverage best practices and frameworks including Service Management, DevOps, and Agile. With experience comes the understanding that these frameworks and best practices should only be implemented in the context of a strategy for IT and our business. These things are not the strategy itself and should be done in the right roles and in moderation and in the right balance.

Second, we will see Automation and AI accelerate dramatically in the contributions made to Service Management operations. Automation can offload our teams and enable us to focus our talented people on tasks that are more strategic, customer facing, or in advancing our innovation investments. These are key activities our people are uniquely qualified for. Similarly, AI has advanced dramatically in the past five years and can now further offload our teams and improve the customer experience. Intelligent assistants and Bots are now capable technologies when leveraged in the right roles. Automation has now made self-service, Request, and Knowledge experiences much more convenient and richer. But, with all of this advancement, it is important for Service Management teams to take some time to create the following three resources in 2019:

IT strategy refresh and alignment with business strategy
Service Management best practices roadmap
Service Management technology roadmap

These tools can be short and simple but are important exercises for the Service Management team to undertake in 2019. These references then guide how we best leverage resources and technologies in 2019 and 2020. Then, decisions and investments are made in the context of the roadmap and not quickly and without thoughtful planning.

For example, with ITIL 4 releasing in early 2019 it can be an opportunity to improve and optimize ITSM ITIL process models, but the scope of this work should be defined in the Service Management Roadmap, including specific process improvements and timing. Likewise, we should evaluate the current state of ITSM operations and determine how the team can best leverage Automation and AI in 2019. This helps ensure we are deploying these exciting technologies in the right roles and at the right time. Experience has taught us (painfully at times) this should be done incrementally and with time for assessment and feedback. The deployment of Automation and AI in ITSM is no different.

Meeting the Challenge for Excellent Support

It’s no secret that IT teams are being asked to support more applications, make more strategic contributions, and improve customer satisfaction, all without a corresponding increase in budget or resources. Combine that with the increasing demand from employees and customers for better and faster (if not immediate) assistance with IT issues, and it becomes clear many Service Management teams will struggle to meet committed service levels. But this year promises help as proven AI-powered tools join the Service Management toolbox to deliver better support and services to employees while off-loading many routine tasks from IT teams.

What do you predict will be the biggest IT trend in 2019 and beyond?

Transforming the User Experience

One of the first entry points for AI will be handling frontline calls and requests from employees. Chatbots will let employees make requests or ask for help by just having a simple conversation. For example, an employee can just say “I need to reset my network password” or “I need VPN access,” and the bot will automatically log the request, kick off the appropriate workflows, including any required approvals, then provide an estimated resolution time.

Add in a knowledge base connection for “How to” answers or suggestions to common inquiries, it becomes clear how many routine tasks don’t need to be touched by a member of your team anymore. When you combine immediate responses, simple conversation interactions, and always-on help, more employees will have more satisfying engagements with IT. Throw in the absence of filling out forms for every interaction plus the automatic resolution of potential issues before an employee notices, and the picture only improves.

Helping ITSM Teams Work Better

Using chatbots to move self-service closer to the employee will offload routine work from IT teams but it doesn’t have to stop there. AI promises to further automate backend processes, as well as provide IT teams with recommendations to systems issues, sometimes anticipating issues before service disruptions become apparent to IT and the rest of the business. An AI-augmented Service Management solution promises to provide more insight, help identify resolution fixes and create the tasks to resolve the issue, as well as assignments to the appropriate analyst or technician.

Check out the rest of our predictions for Service Management and beyond. Click below to download our white paper loaded with insights from Ivanti’s expert IT Fortunetellers.

Gartner Magic Quadrant for ITSM Tools 2018

Thu, 23 Aug 2018 21:45:27 Z

It's August, which means it's that time of the year again.

No, we don’t mean the last days of summer here in the Northern Hemisphere. We’re talking about the new 2018 Gartner Magic Quadrant for IT Service Management tools has just been published and ready to view!

If the Gartner Magic Quadrant is a new concept to you…

Gartner's Magic Quadrant:

Read Gartner's analysis of the top vendors in the IT service management marketplace, including

Advice When Seeking An ITSM Solution
Gartner's Vision of The ITSM Landscape
Strengths & Weaknesses For Each Vendor

Download the full PDF report here

Here’s the visual summary of the Gartner Magic Quadrant for ITSM 2018:

Ivanti on The Gartner Magic Quadrant:

In last year’s report, Ivanti achieved a milestone when Gartner squarely placed us in the Challengers quadrant. Our team is proud to say this year we continued our progress "up and to the right" with Ivanti now touching the line for the Leaders quadrant. We can talk about what “touching the line” means in your favorite sport but we’re excited by our improvement in the Magic Quadrant and recognition by Gartner for both our execution and vision in the ITSM market.

In the past year since the last Magic Quadrant report, we’ve released several notable enhancements to make life for IT service management teams and their users better and more engaging. New capabilities like our new Virtual Support Agent, the Hub and Bot, enhanced dashboards and reports, and more integration and automation options to other IT tools are just some of the highlights that Gartner recognized. And we’re not standing still as we continue building on our vision for modern ITSM and Unified IT.

“Our continued focus and investment are reaping rewards,” said Ian Aitchison, Senior Product Director, Ivanti. “We balance innovation in close partnership with our customers while supporting the principle that modern ITSM tools should be easy to purchase, simple to implement and offer a clear path for all organizations to mature in service management. While others in the ITSM market may be remaining stagnant, Ivanti is clearly on the move.”

Ivanti Service Manager Now Integrates with 1,000+ Cloud Applications

Mon, 23 Jul 2018 16:16:43 Z

Ivanti Service Manager now integrates with over 1,000 cloud applications, thanks to the Zapier network.

For over twenty years, IT teams know how to use Service Manager to automate workflows that improve service delivery for IT and beyond. But now with Zapier, Ivanti has made it easy for you to connect to other applications, eliminating and automating the manual and burdensome. This relationship will make it even easier for IT teams to improve productivity, staff morale, governance and user satisfaction through automation.

If Zapier is new to you, it’s a cloud platform that provides ready-to-go connectors with over 1,000 cloud-based applications to automate more tasks between apps, all without needing any coding or web development. Service Manager is now listed as a cloud application in Zapier, with connectors available for inbound (Triggers) and outbound (Actions) workflows for other available applications.

With the Zapier integration, Service Manager actions such as creating a new incident can kick off corresponding actions in connected applications. For example, you’ll be able to create an integration in minutes that’ll allow you to:

Send a Slack or SMS message when a new incident is created
Broadcast alerts on Twitter, Facebook or Slack when a major incident occurs
Create an incident from a tweet or other alert with a specific category or service keyword
Open a new incident with Amazon Cloud Watch Alarm
Send and receive notifications through xmatters
Collaborate with development teams with integration to Jira

It’s easy to get started creating your first Zap, or what Zapier calls their connection between two apps made up of a trigger and one or more actions. Whenever the trigger event happens, the Zap automatically makes the associated action event happen.

Can’t wait to get started? It’s straightforward if you’re on Service Manager release 2017.3 or later. And, Zapier makes it easy to get started with a no-cost initial offering for new users, with an upgrade option available once your usage increases beyond the starter level.

Here’s how you can get started (example using Twitter and Service Manager):

Go to the Ivanti Service Manager Zapier page
If you’re new to Zapier, open your Free Account
Create a Zap by clicking the orange "Make a Zap" button at the top of the page
Choose the trigger app you’re interested in, such as Twitter
Select the trigger event you’re interested in from the app, such as a tweet with a specific keyword
Pick Service Manager as the app you want for the corresponding action
Choose ‘Create Incident’ as the action you want
Zapier will ask you for authorization to connect to Service Manager and Twitter
Test the connection to make sure it’s working
Add in any desired filters, such as keywords, and then test again
Name your Zap, turn it on, and you’re up and running

And that’s it – no coding and no fuss. If you want to see Zapier in action, here’s a helpful video introduction of Zapier.

Give the Service Manager and Zapier integration a try and see how easily you can extend your Service Manager workflow to your favorite applications, social media tools, or platforms. And, let us know what cool and innovative Zaps you create!

Get started here. And if you’re experiencing trouble, check out Ivanti’s help document here or Zapier help documents here.

Sounds intriguing? Here’re a few more suggestions to inspire you. Now get Zap-ing!