There is a motion that occurs in the operations of IT today, and it is changing before our eyes. Increasingly, this motion is moving more quickly and in a more synchronized manner across all of the IT organization. These changes are no accident—they are born out of the need to drive the business around the clock and with an emphasis on velocity.  A global marketplace and demanding customers are raising the bar on everything we do as an IT organization.

This new motion requires a higher level of synchronization and unity between the elements of IT and in many cases, ITSM is facilitating and enabling this wonderful new motion.

Service Catalog Is the New IT Ambassador

The model of service requests and service catalog has gained widespread adoption across IT organizations of all sizes. And the reasons for this success are simple—service catalog is easy, fast, and provides immediate gratification for much of what we need to perform our jobs every day.

Due to its warm reception across IT and across the business as a whole, IT has a new face that is being welcomed in organizations including marketing, HR, facilities and finance. Look more closely and we see the powerful engine behind service catalog is ITSM and the service desk. Look even more closely and we can see the backend fulfillment processes for the catalog leverage many functions across IT and rely on workflow automation to help us meet the new standard of speed. Everybody likes fast.

Workflow Automation Coordinates the Actions of IT

Powerful and flexible workflow automation tools are driving many actions across IT every day. 

This automation allows us to perform routine and even complex tasks quickly and consistently. This power allows IT to scale, to operate 24X7 and to drive a higher rate of speed in much of what we do. At the core, this automation allows us to mobilize the assets and resources of IT to better service the business. And yes, ITSM is the architect for much of this automation and the connections that occur across IT as a result. These connections bring to life the synergies between the elements of IT including security, servers, endpoints and more.

Governance and Compliance Brings All of IT Together

IT professionals work with a new level of accountability and transparency every day. This is part of our new reality. Of course, much of this is to the good of both IT and business, but the responsibilities of audit, governance, compliance and their spinoffs are significant. We must follow specific procedures, some of which are captured by COBIT and ITIL, and we must ensure we have the right data in the right condition, while managing the clock against much of the work that is performed every day. Although these actions are very much attached to what we do in IT, these initiatives are visible to the CFO, the CEO and the board of directors. The health and future of the full organization are at stake here and IT and ITSM become trusted stewards in protecting the business.

IT Service Delivery Touches Every Employee

As the business grows more dependent and more enabled by technology, the services delivered by IT and the ITSM team are naturally more vital and touch every worker across the business.  Think about our dependency on the internet, on mobile phones, on laptops, tablets, cloud and corporate systems.  All of this is kept in good health by the IT organization working in concert with the delivery of the necessary services by the ITSM organization.  Services for anything and everything are delivered every day to keep our people at their best.  These services also serve to create the many spokes of the wonderful wheel of IT and connect every team and every individual across the business both virtually and physically.

Technology helps us to do the simple things of course, but increasingly we can harness technology to deliver strategic value and drive the business.  Of course, let’s not forget that should problems arise, the ITSM team is ready with a fix to get us back on track again. This drives the wonderful harmony that can only be created by the talented people of IT and ITSM.

Here we go…

While we enjoy the exhilarating changes occurring in IT today it is important to understand that most of the journey lies yet ahead of us. The business needs IT and ITSM more than ever and the new IT organizations of today and the future are ready to lead, ready to innovate and ready to drive customer success.

This will be fun.