Pragmatic ITIL How Nimsoft Service Desk Makes it Easier than Ever to Leverage ITIL

Pragmatic ITIL How Nimsoft Service Desk Makes it Easier than Ever to Leverage ITIL

Table of Contents Executive Summary... 3 Introduction: ITIL s Payoff Not Guaranteed... 3 Nimsoft Service Desk: Maximizing the Benefits of ITIL... 3 Profit from Deep ITIL Expertise...4 Streamline ITIL Deployment...4 Gain Insights from Comprehensive, Off-the-shelf Reports...4 Harness ITIL Throughout the Organization...5 Conclusion...6 2 Pragmatic ITIL

Executive Summary While the consensus around the benefits of ITIL is virtually universal, the reality is that organizations ITIL initiatives run the gamut both in terms of costs and benefits. Your service management platform can play a huge role in the degree to which you realize the potential benefits of ITIL in your organization. By combining ITIL-based best practices in a solution that is easy to configure and deploy, Nimsoft Service Desk offers a truly pragmatic way to get the most out of ITIL in your organization. Introduction: ITIL s Payoff Not Guaranteed ITIL has become the most broadly adopted standard for service management, and for good reason. By leveraging ITIL concepts in their service desk operations, many organizations have optimized their processes and so realized improved efficiency, speed, and service levels. For anyone who has tried to implement ITIL, however, it is clear that there s a big gulf between understanding the theoretical benefits of ITIL and realizing them in practice. Here are a few reasons this has traditionally been the case: Big up-front commitment. Building ITIL-based workflows and capabilities into your service desk can take considerable up-front investment, both in staff education and in platform procurement. In many organizations, adopting ITIL takes a large process engineering effort as well. Further, organizations have been required to do extensive customization work in order to adapt the service desk platforms to the new processes. The result is that it is not uncommon for ITIL-based service desk initiatives to take six months or more. For anyone who has tried to implement ITIL, however, it is clear that there s a big gulf between understanding the theoretical benefits of ITIL and realizing them in practice. Standard open to interpretation. After investing all the time and money required, your organization still isn t assured of the benefits you re seeking. ITIL is not fully prescriptive; it is a broad standard that leaves a lot of room for interpretation and many different ways to apply to the specifics of your business. Consequently, the results an organization actually experiences can vary dramatically, with some enjoying only marginal gains, if any at all, while others realize significant improvements. Platform certification no guarantee. It is important to note that, even if your organization deploys an ITIL-certified platform, strong improvements aren t by any means assured. In essence, ITIL certification means that a tool can be implemented in a way that supports ITIL. The degree to which a given solution enables and streamlines ITIL adoption and helps your business can vary substantially, depending on the platform deployed. To sum it up: Your results may vary. Nimsoft Service Desk: Maximizing the Benefits of ITIL Nimsoft Service Desk is an IT service management solution that enables your organization to get maximum benefit from ITIL with minimal cost and effort. Nimsoft Service Desk equips you with action-based workflows built on ITIL standards to manage, coordinate, and optimize all aspects of service delivery. With its leading combination of ITIL-based best practices, pre-packaged workflows, and easy configuration, Nimsoft Service Desk helps you reduce the up-front investment typically associated with ITIL initiatives and it boosts the chances of your organization gaining the most benefit from these endeavors. 3 Pragmatic ITIL

Profit from Deep ITIL Expertise Compared to many legacy solutions, which have been retrofitted to align with ITIL, Nimsoft Service Desk was built on an ITIL foundation from the outset of development. In addition, the solution was crafted by ITIL experts who were seasoned service providers in the service management arena. With years of practical experience in applying ITIL principles in customer environments, the team at Nimsoft understands how to apply ITIL efficiently, cost effectively, and scalably. Streamline ITIL Deployment Nimsoft Service Desk has all the core ITIL best practices embedded in the solution complete with pre-built workflows that are fully integrated and available for you to use immediately. Nimsoft Service Desk offers workflows that cover all core service management processes, including incident assignment, escalation, SLA tracking, and more. (See sidebar for a complete list of modules.) Consequently, rather than having to do a lot of customized process engineering, Nimsoft Service Desk enables you to leverage automated, pre-configured processes. These processes represent all the core capabilities your organization requires, right out of the gate effectively jump starting the bulk of the work needed to get your ITIL service desk running. Further, as opposed to other solutions that require labor-intensive custom coding, with Nimsoft Service Desk, your team can use an intuitive point-andclick interface to do the remaining work required to configure the solution to the specific needs of your business. As a result, while it s common for other service desk deployments to take several months, Nimsoft customers can go from kickoff to production in about 4-6 weeks. Nimsoft Service Desk features modules for these critical areas in service management: Incident Problem Request Change Service Asset and Configuration Knowledge Service Level Event* Availability Management * * Available as part of Nimsoft Unified Manager. Leverage a Central Data Model ITIL recommends centralization and cross-referential integration of data, which is key to efficient, intelligent service management operations. Nimsoft Service Desk supports this by having an integrated, unified data infrastructure. The solution features a configuration management database (CMDB) that acts as the central repository for data that underpins all capabilities, including incident management, change management, and more. The CMDB gives your technical team everything they need in one place. Whether your staff is responding to incoming incidents or using the CMDB to help plan changes, Nimsoft Service Desk keeps it all coordinated. Gain Insights from Comprehensive, Off-the-shelf Reports Nimsoft Service Desk offers the comprehensive reporting capabilities that are key to supporting ITIL principles and delivering the information needed to facilitate continual process refinements. The solution features pre-built, customizable reports that cover such areas as ticket volumes, ticket backlog, average incident duration, SLA compliance, and more. 4 Pragmatic ITIL

Featuriing Nimsoft Service Desk and Nimsoft Monitor, Nimsoft Unified Manager delivers complete capabilities for coordinating service delivery and for monitoring the entire IT infrastructure. This solution enables organizations to gain unrivaled efficiency and control in IT management. Harness ITIL Throughout the Organization Through its ITIL support and comprehensive, integrated capabilities, Nimsoft Service Desk enables you to fully leverage process efficiencies across your organization. Following are just a couple examples of how Nimsoft Service Desk has been proven to support broader IT and business initiatives: IT governance and compliance. The IT team at a retailer needed to support a host of tasks to ensure compliance with the Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard (PCI DSS). The retailer integrated Nimsoft Service Desk with this effort, automating the standard s change requirements, for example initiating password changes and server patches. Nimsoft Service Desk helped to streamline compliance efforts by automating the initiation of ongoing tasks, approvals, and workflows. Further, by centrally capturing configuration snapshots, logging, and assignments, the solution made compliance reporting, tracking, and auditing far faster, more accurate, and more efficient. 5 Pragmatic ITIL

HR support. Like many other organizations, a large financial institution used separate systems for change management and employee on boarding. After deploying Nimsoft Service Desk, the organization was able to centrally manage all the IT functions associated with these various processes. Now, for example, if an HR manager signs off on a new hire, they can submit a request directly in the solution s online interface, which can trigger all associated IT tasks, such as setting up an Active Directory account, configuring a new PC, and so on. Conclusion The potential upsides of ITIL can be significant, but, for many organizations, the up-front commitment and investment required to adopt ITIL can outweigh the benefits realized. By packaging ITIL-based workflows in an easy-to-use IT service management platform, Nimsoft Service Desk enables support organizations to practically, efficiently, and cost effectively get the most from their ITIL initiatives. Learn More To learn more about Nimsoft Service Desk and how it can help your business: Sign up for a free trial of Nimsoft Service Desk at the following url: http://www.nimsoft.com/free-trial Visit the Nimsoft Service Desk page: http://www.nimsoft.com/ solutions/nimsoft-service-desk About Nimsoft Nimsoft provides integrated, modern IT management solutions for more than 1,000 enterprise and service provider customers globally, including 1&1, CDW, SoftLayer, SunGard Availability Services, Sur La Table, TriNet, and Virgin America. The company s Nimsoft Unified Manager is an industry-leading solution that helps organizations easily monitor and manage IT services in increasingly complex business environments. Nimsoft products integrate with existing solutions at any point from the data center to the cloud, and are available on a pay-as-you-go basis. For more information, visit www.nimsoft.com. North America Headquarters U.S. toll free: 1 877 SLA MGMT (752 6468) 1 408 796 3400 United Kingdom +44 (0) 845 456 7091 Norway & Northern Europe +47 22 62 71 60 Australia +61 (0)2 9236 7216 Brazil +5511 5503 6243 Singapore +65 64328600 New Delhi +(91 11) 6656 6667 Email: info@nimsoft.com Web: www.nimsoft.com Germany +49 89 208039-645 Mexico City +52 (55) 5387 5406 Mumbai +(91 22) 66413800 Copyright 2011 CA. All Rights Reserved. One CA Plaza, Islandia, N.Y. 11749. Nimsoft is a trademark or registered trademark of Nimsoft Inc. All other trademarks, trade names, service marks, and logos referenced herein belong to their respective companies. nimsoft-sd-itil-wp-2011-09-17