Many organisations are now looking to extend the use of their service management software across many departments, ensuring integrity of information – in other words, one version of the truth.
Often referred to as the platform approach, diverse departments such as the IT service desk, HR/payroll, customer service and facilities use the same software, tailored to their individual requirements while still being part of an organisation-wide system.
We are seeing a marked increase in the demand for this type of requirement reflected in the ITTs (Invitation to tend) and RFPs (request for proposal) we receive.
Joining up services across departments
Over the years, many of our customers have extended their use of the service desk to support other departments and gained varying degrees of business benefit. For example, using a single service delivery platform to manage all IT equipment and software through the IT and facilities departments.
Simply using service desk across other departments provides a range of business benefits. However, further extending the use of the software to support a wider range of processes within the business can yield exponentially higher benefits to the organisation:
- Economies of scale – one system means one license, one set of support infrastructure and just one system to learn for IT and users alike
- Ease of management and support – as well as being easier to support there are fewer integration issues
- Single version of the truth – data integrity is maintained as information is held only once
- Visibility – subject to security controls and permissions, data can be viewed organisation-wide, rather than residing in numerous silos where it is difficult to access
- Traceability – information stored in spreadsheets and circulated via email is often impossible to demonstrate provenance. Tracking the same data and process within a single platform ensures an audited history
- Comprehensive reporting – organisation-wide reporting supports better and more informed business decisions
- Real-time displays - consolidated views of dashboards/wallboards can be supplied across the business
- Consistency and efficiency – operations are streamlined, processes standardised, and the elimination of duplicate handling of data saves considerable time
- Collaboration – staff are trained on the same system enabling closer collaboration between departments and operational units.
Deliverable customer relationship management
Where monolithic customer relationship management (CRM) systems largely failed, taking a platform approach to customer service delivers all of the benefits promised by CRM in a more manageable and cost effective package.
If you are looking to update your service desk or IT/business operations software, taking the platform approach where the system is rolled out across multiple departments makes a very compelling business case.
- Neil Penny is Product Director for Sunrise Software Ltd, and is responsible for setting and communicating the overall product strategy for all Sunrise's Service Management solutions.
