As state and local governments look to modernize aging IT infrastructure and offer more self-service to residents in this digital age, it’s becoming clear that successful digital transformations rely on a solid IT Service Management (ITSM) foundation – a foundation that will form the backbone for a broader use of service management best practices. The combination of a clear ITIL framework and a flexible, no code, easy-to-use ITSM platform is essential for any organization striving to meet the needs of its end-users with both limited budgets and resources.
Historically, IT leaders would need to dedicate a full resource, or even several, to the ITSM platform – whether it was to build out workflows and automation, to create new departmental service applications or to modify the self-service portal. Today this can be avoided by leveraging no code platforms that do not require a full-time admin (TeamDynamix is an example).
The Importance of Investing in ITSM Software that Employees Love
In Oklahoma City, Business Systems Manager Dusty Borchardt credits well-defined processes and a solid ITSM for the city’s success in the modernization of the IT Service Desk.
“The feedback we’ve gotten is that everyone loves TeamDynamix,” Borchardt said. “This is the first IT Service Management platform we’ve implemented that everyone loves to use.”
With about 100 people providing IT service for more than 5,000 city employees, the IT department needs to work efficiently. TeamDynamix has allowed them to do so by streamlining the delivery of IT service through automated workflows.
“TeamDynamix has brought simplicity to our operations,” Borchardt said.
Using tools within the platform, Oklahoma City IT staff have created a self-service portal linked to an expanding knowledge base. City employees can find answers to common problems and frequently asked questions within the knowledge base, and if they can’t resolve their own issue, they can submit a service request through the portal. Based on the nature of the problem they describe; their request is routed automatically to the appropriate IT team for a response.
“Our goal is that use of the self-service portal will continue to grow, reducing our call volume and emails to the IT service desk,” Borchardt says.
Automated workflows also ensure that important tasks aren’t overlooked when IT staff are busy. For instance, when new city employees are hired, there are many steps in the onboarding process. With TeamDynamix, the entire workflow can be initiated with a single service request that is routed to the various departments automatically. The same is true for requesting purchases and managing IT contracts.
In addition to automation and a self-service portal, Borchardt and his team have benefited by gaining deeper insight into IT operations through reporting. Using dashboards and reports, IT leaders can identify trends and patterns that help them make more informed decisions. For example, they can see how much time a task is taking, or which service categories are getting the most requests and allocate their limited resources more effectively.
Using TeamDynamix has helped Oklahoma City’s IT support teams realize their vision for using industry best practices to improve the delivery of IT services.
“We adopted the ITIL framework more than 15 years ago. We’ve had effective processes in place for a while, but we haven’t had a decent toolset to manage them until now,” Borchardt said. “TeamDynamix works better than any system we’ve had previously.”
Maximizing Efficiencies Through Enterprise Service Management
It’s a similar story in Avondale, Arizona where the city government is working hard to modernize and serve citizens effectively with limited staff and budgets. Here, CIO Jeff Scheetz said their Enterprise Service Management (ESM) approach plays a critical role in helping multiple branches of government work better together.
The government for the City of Avondale consists of 14 departments serving nearly 100,000 residents. Its use of TeamDynamix (TDX) began within the IT department, which was looking for a better way to support employees’ use of technology through ITSM.
“Before, people would have to call or email our help desk with their service requests,” says CIO Jeff Scheetz. “However, now with the portal, IT has been able to create workflows and automations, rather than managing the many email and tickets requests. The workflow ensures that the requests are handled efficiently and provides additional reporting capabilities. Before, it was hard to prioritize tasks without a full view of what was going on.”
When other city departments saw how the platform helped improve the delivery of IT service, they realized they could streamline their own processes using TeamDynamix. The Human Resources department is currently onboarding TDX to manage its service delivery, and Facilities and Finance are coming on board as well.
Scheetz and his leadership team, like Oklahoma City, also rely on the reports and dashboards to identify trends and manage resources appropriately, “We can see trends and patterns that help us deploy our limited resources in a more intelligent manner,” he said.
Having the right ITSM platform in place has enabled the City of Avondale to streamline city operations and deliver better service to residents – and the system’s versatility has added a tremendous amount of value to the city government.
“Everybody has a limited staff,” Scheetz says of municipal organizations. “Having a system like TeamDynamix makes a huge difference.”
Smart Service Management with Integration and Automation
Another way to make digital modernization easier is to invest in Integration Platform as a Service – iPaaS. With iPaaS it’s easy to integrate data between various systems and build workflows from one application to another. This could happen from within the ITSM platform, or it could be something run completely outside of IT Service Management. For instance, organizations can build a workflow that would initiate from a service ticket requesting to onboard a new employee. The ticket would indicate the role and hiring manager, from there – the workflow can automatically generate a record in the Active Directory, new user accounts can be set up in various systems such as MUNIS, Workday, Office365 and more. Notifications can also be sent, a request to create an access badge can be made, you can even set up an appointment for the new employee to have photos taken – then send a text with the date and time to the employee.
iPaaS is also used to synchronize data across legacy systems to reduce redundant data entry or the use of erroneous data from one system to another.
Using iPaaS to modernize systems has several advantages. To start, iPaaS enables hybrid cloud data integration and workflow (meaning some of the data is housed in systems on-prem and some in the cloud) that makes integrating systems and data secure.
By modernizing legacy systems, you give employees access to better data and reduce manual processing (including automated workflows through iPaaS) helping to facilitate collaboration, communication and transparency – allowing departments to work better together, cross-functionally.
In addition, an integration and automation platform can help organizations further address resource limitations. With no code IT Service Management, governments can better manage tickets and tasks; promote self-service of common requests through a service portal; expand service capacity without needing to add additional staff; and automate both simple and complex processes to free up resources.
To read more about how state and local governments are addressing modernization needs check out:
· City of Avondale, Arizona Achieves Greater Efficiency with Enterprise Service Management
· City of Sunnyvale Chooses TeamDynamix for ITSM and Project Portfolio Management
· ITSM Employees Love – Oklahoma City Migrates to TeamDynamix IT Service Management
