As businesses become increasingly reliant on technology to streamline their processes, it’s important for IT teams to have the right tools at their disposal to ensure that they can meet the needs of their organization. One of the ways to achieve this is by having IT Service Management (ITSM), Project Portfolio Management (PPM) and Integration Platform as a Service (iPaaS) all on a single platform. Here are some of the reasons why:
- Improved collaboration and communication – When ITSM, PPM and iPaaS are all on a single platform, it’s easier for teams to collaborate and communicate effectively. With all the tools in one place, everyone can access the same information and work together more efficiently. This can lead to faster decision-making and more effective problem-solving.
- Streamlined processes – Having ITSM, PPM and iPaaS on a single platform can also help streamline processes. IT teams can create workflows that automatically trigger tasks for project-based events, for example. Departments outside of IT (if employing an Enterprise Service Management approach to service delivery) can utilize integration and automation for processes like onboarding employees and more. This reduces the amount of manual work that needs to be done and helps ensure that nothing falls through the cracks both in IT and other departments – all utilizing the same codeless platform.
- Better visibility and control – When all IT functions are consolidated on one platform, it’s easier to get a comprehensive view of the organization’s technology landscape. IT leaders can see all of the projects, tasks, tickets and resources in use at any given time and can adjust as needed to improve performance. This increased visibility and control can also help teams identify areas for improvement and optimize their workflows.
- Reduced costs and complexity – Using a single platform for ITSM, PPM and iPaaS can also help reduce costs and complexity. Rather than purchasing and maintaining separate tools, and building homegrown automations between everything, IT teams can use one platform that covers all of their needs. This can reduce the time and resources required to manage multiple tools, as well as the costs associated with purchasing and maintaining them. With everyone on one platform, you have a lower total cost of ownership.
- Enhanced security and compliance – Finally, having ITSM, PPM and iPaaS on a single platform can help enhance security and compliance. IT teams can create policies and procedures that apply to all IT functions, ensuring that data is protected and regulatory requirements are met. This can be especially important for businesses in regulated industries, where compliance is critical.
Saving Time and Improving Processes
Like many IT departments, San Francisco Health Plan (SFHP), a nonprofit organization providing health insurance services and Medi-Cal to more than 186,000 families, was burdened by repetitive, manual tasks such as password resets, account provisioning and managing permissions across multiple systems. According to Ralph Boethling, Senior Program Manager at SFHP, these tasks not only drained valuable IT resources but also led to significant inconsistencies in service delivery.
“It was a lot of repetitive work that just didn’t add value,” he said. “As a mission-driven organization we constantly are measured by member outcomes so anything that distracts from member outcomes is bad and anything that helps contribute to better outcomes is good, so automating has helped us a lot in that regard.”
For example, the organization’s reliance on manual processes limited its capacity to onboard new hires, sometimes handling only four or five new employees in a day.
In addition, Boethling pointed out that the lack of automation resulted in misaligned user roles, leading to excess permissions and security vulnerabilities. “We had a lot of manual processes and various silos that held us back.”
According to Boethling, his team was likely spending 20 or more hours per week on manual tasks.
“There are three tiers of work – you’re either run, grow or change,” he said. “Running and growing are just doing more of the same. The real value, and the fun stuff, especially for IT is in the change. So the more that you redistribute and automate more of the run and grow tasks, the more time and resources you can dedicate to working on the change.”
In a little under two years, and with the help of TeamDynamix, Boethling said SFHP has made great strides in automating away the toil.
By integrating TeamDynamix with SFHP’s existing systems, including ADP, Okta and Active Directory, the IT team was able to automate the following processes:
- Automatic Account Provisioning: When a new hire’s data entered the system, TeamDynamix would automatically create their user accounts in Okta and Active Directory. This saved hours of manual effort and has helped with regulatory compliance.
- Automated Role Assignments: By linking user roles to job descriptions, the IT system ensured that employees received only the permissions they needed, improving both security and efficiency.
- Real-Time Synchronization: Using daily imports from ADP, SFHP kept employee data synchronized across multiple systems, including their badging system and user access management, again helping with regulatory compliance.
This automation-first approach streamlined multiple systems and reduced the workload on IT staff, allowing them to focus on higher-level tasks that aligned with the organization’s strategic goals.
“As a HIPPA regulated organization we are subject to certain privacy and security rules,” Boethling explained. “We saw we were ending up with a lot of accounts that had dormant permissions. The automations we have now for user accounts and role provisioning address this and take care of the security risks.”
The construction industry can be very volatile, with a high employee turnover rate due to seasonal fluctuations in the workforce. A key challenge for the IT staff in this environment is the time spent onboarding and offboarding employees, issuing passwords and devices for new hires, and then keeping up to date on departures.
If construction firms don’t have a well-designed and automated system for managing IT service, “things can easily get lost or missed in the shuffle,” Jason Mohs, IT manager for the Walbec Group, said.
Based in Waukesha, Wisconsin, the Walbec Group is a vertically integrated organization of six companies that produce high-quality construction materials and deliver unparalleled professional design, engineering, and construction services.
When Mohs joined the company, approximately 90 percent of IT service requests were via email or phone. Help desk staff spent far too much time communicating with employees, collecting the information they needed to understand the problem completely, and passing requests along to the appropriate IT staff member. This process bogged down the already resource-constrained team.
Mohs said that by moving to TeamDynamix for ITSM with automation, his team has seen several improvements.
To start, moving to a self-service portal for ticket creation has saved IT staff at least two or three minutes per service request.
Mohs’ team has used the platform’s capabilities to create a robust self-service portal with customizable service categories and an archive of knowledge base articles.
In addition, automated workflows have streamlined employee onboarding and offboarding while ensuring no steps are missed.
Mohs’ team has set up automated workflows within TeamDynamix to initiate critical tasks in provisioning passwords, technologies, and network privileges for new hires and revoking these items when employees leave the company.
As a result, IT staff are saving time on these repetitive and labor-intensive tasks. In addition, “We don’t miss things anymore,” he observed.
The efficiencies Mohs and his team have gained from using TeamDynamix have enabled them to focus on becoming more strategic. They’re using this extra time to take on projects they couldn’t get to before, such as cleaning up user accounts within Active Directory and addressing the root cause of frequent IT issues.
In turn, the end-users are experiencing better IT service and faster resolution of their problems, allowing them to do their jobs more effectively and enhancing the company’s bottom line.
“I’ve worked with other ticketing systems before,” Mohs concluded, “We are happy with the benefits we’ve realized so far, and we see a lot of potential for even further growth moving forward on the TeamDynamix platform.”
Consolidating ITSM, PPM and iPaaS on a single platform can bring a host of benefits to organizations of all sizes. From improved collaboration and communication to enhanced security and compliance, a unified, codeless platform can help IT teams work more efficiently and effectively while reducing costs and complexity.
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