For IT leaders, spearheading digital transformation within a business or organization means navigating new technologies, processes and mindsets. In order to successfully navigate the challenges that can arise with these changes, you need to build a solid foundation within IT on which everything else can be built.
Within many IT organizations, the heart of successful digital transformations lies within the integration of codeless IT Service Management (ITSM) tools with automation, offering a robust foundation to kickstart a digital transformation journey.
Why Digital Transformation Matters
Digital transformation reshapes how businesses operate and deliver value to customers. For IT departments, it’s about leveraging technology to improve efficiency, increase agility and foster innovation. IT professionals are tasked with not just maintaining systems but also driving change that aligns with business goals. This shift underscores the importance of having the right tools and strategies in place to ensure a seamless transition.
Being equipped for digital transformation means staying relevant in a competitive market. Businesses that adapt quickly can capitalize on emerging opportunities and mitigate risks. The need for a solid digital foundation becomes even more critical as companies strive to meet customer expectations in a digital-first world. Understanding the key drivers behind digital transformation can help IT leaders make informed decisions about the tools and technologies they deploy.
“It’s a three-legged stool,” said Deborah Rojas, Chief Information Officer for Charter Oak Financial, referring to the tenets of a successful digital transformation – people, process and technology. “You can’t really have any of those legs longer or shorter than the others. Balance is important.”
Rojas leads practice optimization efforts for Charter Oak, and TeamDynamix has allowed employees to realize the vision suggested in this name by redesigning and streamlining key business practices, which has led to greater employee engagement.
“What I’m finding interesting is the staff engagement,” Rojas observes. “We’re able to focus on culture by engaging and igniting the team because we’re focused on leveling up our internal processes. As we redesign processes, we collaborate, we learn together.”
The Role of ITSM in Digital Transformation
Having a dependable, easy-to-use IT Service Management platform is pivotal in managing IT services and aligning them with business needs. Traditionally, ITSM involved complex coding and customization, requiring significant time and resources. However, codeless ITSM tools, like TeamDynamix, have revolutionized the way IT services are managed. These tools allow IT teams to configure and deploy services without extensive coding knowledge, streamlining processes and reducing the burden on IT staff.
Codeless ITSM tools empower IT professionals to focus on strategic initiatives rather than get bogged down by technical complexities. With a user-friendly interface, these tools enable quick implementation of IT services, facilitating faster response times and improved service delivery. For IT leaders, adopting codeless ITSM tools is a strategic move to enhance operational efficiency and successfully drive digital transformation efforts forward.
Massimo Zanetti, a large coffee beverage group, was using another platform to manage IT service for its 500 employees, but the system was slow and difficult to use, according to Jason Edinger, Security Senior Manager for IT Infrastructure.
In switching to TeamDynamix, a codeless ITSM system, the company has given its IT operations a significant jolt—leading to what Edinger describes as “a much faster and much richer experience” for IT employees.
Now, team members are able to close service tickets faster, leading to a better employee experience, he said. Supervisors also have better visibility into IT data, which empowers them to manage tasks and team members more effectively. All of this helps drive better operational efficiency for the company.
“The beauty of the system is the flexibility,” Edinger said. “You can start with this small, limited piece and just keep expanding as needed. And that’s what we did.”
Although most service requests still come in to the company’s IT department via email, the TeamDynamix platform includes built-in automation that helps IT technicians quickly create tickets from these service requests and route them to the appropriate team members for a response, leading to a more rapid turnaround.
“I would say we’ve seen a 200-percent increase in speed,” Edinger said. “People get a much faster response to their tickets.”
How Codeless ITSM Tools Drive Efficiency
The efficiency of IT operations significantly impacts an organization’s ability to deliver quality services. Codeless ITSM tools automate routine tasks, freeing IT staff to concentrate on more strategic activities. Automation reduces the likelihood of human error, ensuring more consistent and reliable service delivery. By automating repetitive processes, IT teams can respond to incidents more swiftly, minimizing downtime and enhancing user satisfaction.
Implementing codeless ITSM tools with automation also fosters collaboration within IT departments. These tools provide a centralized platform for managing IT services, enabling seamless communication and coordination among team members. With real-time visibility into service performance, IT leaders can make data-driven decisions, identify bottlenecks and optimize processes effectively. The result is a more agile and responsive IT department that drives digital transformation initiatives.
“One of the biggest problems we had with our previous ticketing system was tickets bouncing around among many different teams before landing in the right bucket to get resolved,” Nikole Cabral, an IT analyst and project manager for Self Regional Healthcare said. It would sometimes take weeks for tickets to be resolved if they weren’t a high priority. “Even if it’s just a service request,” she noted, “we still want a much faster turnaround time.”
Once Self Regional went live with Epic, an electronic health records management system, a few years ago, it became very challenging for help desk staff to recognize which team should receive which service requests. After implementing TeamDynamix, Cabral met with each service team to develop questions that would help users identify the specific nature of their requests more effectively.
“We were able to build automation rules within TeamDynamix to take the answers to these questions in the service forms and route tickets to the appropriate teams,” she said. “Now, tickets are getting to the right teams with the information those teams need to resolve the issue right away, which was our goal. I’m very proud of that. It took a lot of significant work, but I’m so happy that TeamDynamix even had that capability.”
This automated routing of tickets gets service requests into the hands of the right people faster, which leads to quicker problem resolution.
“It has definitely increased our turnaround speed,” Cabral said. “We used to average well over 1,000 tickets, maybe 1,500 tickets, that were constantly open. Now, we average maybe 700 to 800. So, we’ve cut this number in half. That’s significant.”
The Benefits of Automation in IT
Automation is a key component of digital transformation, enabling organizations to streamline processes and deliver services more efficiently. In the context of IT, automation reduces manual intervention, accelerates service delivery, and improves overall service quality. Automating routine tasks allows IT professionals to focus on strategic initiatives that drive business value and innovation.
Self Regional Healthcare includes a 421-bed medical center in Greenwood, S.C., it also includes the Self Medical Group, a multispecialty practice that includes more than 75 physicians. This health system is growing quickly, according to Cabral, “We have no less than four new practices onboarding now.”
With such rapid expansion, onboarding new physicians and contractors can be challenging. These new employees and contractors need the proper security clearances and IT accounts as soon as possible—and any bottlenecks can interfere with patient care.
Self Regional is using TeamDynamix to automate key tasks associated with this onboarding process, ensuring a smooth transition. “A lot of IT time is spent just completing the tasks involved in setting up new user accounts. That’s definitely a good chunk of our day-to-day work,” Cabral said. “TeamDynamix has helped us automate many of those tasks.”
A highly flexible platform for managing IT and enterprise service tickets, projects, assets and changes, TeamDynamix allows users to create their own unique service categories and build automated workflows for managing multistep processes—without any knowledge of coding required. The platform’s enterprise integration and automation layer enable IT staff to create integrations between TeamDynamix and other software programs using a simple, drag-and-drop process along with a library of pre-built connectors. As a result, organizations can easily create workflows for automating almost any service function to fit their needs.
“We are using a pre-built integration from TeamDynamix to add users to an Active Directory group, which takes the burden off of our service desk to add users manually,” Cabral said. “This automation will alleviate 20 to 30 weekly tasks from hitting the help desk once it’s fully built out. We’re very excited about that.”
Increasing efficiency is critical for Self Regional’s IT team, which supports about 3,500 end-users with a team of 90 analysts. “We usually onboard chunks of people at a time,” Cabral said. “We may have to onboard 40 end-users at once, for example.”
By automating key aspects, TeamDynamix has simplified this process and saved a tremendous amount of time for IT staff.
Using codeless ITSM tools with automation, organizations can achieve significant cost savings. Automation minimizes the drain on key IT resources, allowing those resources to be allocated to more value-added activities. Furthermore, automation enhances compliance and security by enforcing standardized processes and reducing the risk of human error.
Want to learn more about automation, codeless ITSM and TeamDynamix? Visit www.teamdynamix.com/how-can-we-help.