How an Integrated Enterprise-Ready Service Desk Strengthens Modern Operations

Many mid-market companies are facing multiple challenges in their IT operations. Four key challenges particularly stand out that are finding hard to overcome:

• IT that is typically focused on infrastructure and break-fix: IT departments are laser-focused on keeping things afloat with endpoints, infrastructure, and break-fix items, thus unable to focus on more critical tasks

• Applications managed by executives: CFOs, COOs, and CEOs end up managing enterprise applications with expensive consultants rather than focusing on the more important matters they are supposed to do

• Isolated security practices: security operates in isolation from both infrastructure and applications and critical business systems operate outside IT’s purview

• Higher cost and greater complexity: high-cost consultants handling disparate IT support processes, resulting in separate support silos that would end up costing much more, as well as missed insights that could have helped in enterprise growth

By sticking with their siloed systems, many mid-market companies spend on multiple SaaS (software-as-a-system) applications, to a point that they end up purchasing SaaS applications that they do not get to utilize. And in the midst of this SaaS application overwhelm, these unused applications are overlooked and enterprises end up overspending by up to 25%.

The lack of integration also poses greater security risk. A Kaspersky study found that 62% of companies that have experienced security breaches actually had security tools in place but experienced breaches nevertheless because their systems were not integrated with their IT operations.

In another study by Gartner, it was revealed that companies that do not have an integrated ITSM platform would take twice as long to those that have such systems in place to remediate issues.

There is also the matter of financial cost. Hiring a service or support team to handle the different technologies from SAS subscriptions to data management to device provisioning to cloud infrastructure, as well as the different security systems that needs to be managed, can reach as high as $800,000 a year or more. That is a lot of spend without the benefit these technologies could provide if they were managed and supported cohesively.

A Lack of Business Alignment

These challenges are but a symptom of a larger issue among mid-market companies: the disconnect within the organization due to a lack of alignment between the IT department and business leadership.

The IT departments of these companies seek greater involvement in the data and enterprise applications of their respective organizations but they do not have the resources to tap the right developers nor the access to software systems that they need. Thus, they need to engage with the leadership to help acquire these resources.

On the other hand, leadership view IT as a cost center where they spend money to purchase computers and printers and handle email issues. As such, business leaders only see IT as an expense rather than a contributor to the company’s growth and success, thus being relegated strictly to infrastructure.

Thus, we are seeing business executives opting the repetitive tasks themselves rather than let IT help them find a more effective solution. If IT expertise is needed, they would opt to hire consultants who end up costing more than what leadership expected.

As a result of this minimal overlap, the growth of this organization is stymied as IT department and leadership are unable to agree on how to go with the IT operations. As such, what is needed is an “intermediary” that will bring them closer towards a common IT strategy.  

This is where the integrated enterprise service desk comes in.

The Integrated Solution

Given the challenge of maintaining IT models, an integrated enterprise service desk is of critical importance in filling the skillset and technology gap that exists in many enterprises and, more importantly, bring the IT department and business leadership closer by aligning the tech technology operations directly with the business outcomes, resulting in a fully-integrated enterprise that is primed for growth.

However, not all integrated solutions are created equal. For instance, Pandoblox’s integrated service desk has made a mark for its unique characteristics:

• able to identify the tools the enterprise needs that offer lower costs, greater native integrations, and faster ROIs

• stay within industry frameworks, ensuring compliance and security

• an ITSM foundation that builds a “single pane of glass” environment to ensure greater visibility

• automated and AI-powered to manage IT infrastructure

• auditing is ensured at every process to address failures and gaps on the onset

• empowers self-help

As Pandoblox demonstrated, the most effective integrated solution is one that has the above characteristics to ensure a capable single service desk that can handle IT operations, enterprise application management, data pipelines, and security and replaces the fragmented model at a fraction of the cost, thus doing away with incompatible applications and expensive consultants.

Creating a Reinforcing Loop that Drives AI Readiness

At its essence, an effective integrated service desk is one that treats data operations and IT operations as a reinforcing loop rather than a one-time project that keeps the infrastructure continuously running.

In this loop, Data Ops serves as the foundation that helps improve the next component that is AI insights and automation. This leads to IT Ops enablement which in turn helps improve Business agility and efficiency. By designing a reinforcing loop for the service desk, companies are able to be more proactive rather than reactive in addressing issues and making critical decisions.

An Affordable Enterprise Support Solution

While AI remains a contentious subject among many businesses, it is an integral element in the integrated service desk solution. In fact, AI does not seek to replace the service desk but make it more capable at a lower cost, especially for mid-market companies.

AI’s automated capabilities for instance can detect 90% of issues before users notice them and can handle routine requests instantly. It also provides continuous automated compliance monitoring with audit trails, thereby allowing business leaders and other personnel to focus on more important tasks and make critical decisions.

With this AI-powered and integrated service desk solution, businesses are able to have a service desk that can implemented in a matter of weeks rather than months and can be scaled according to the business’ evolving needs. With the presence of consistent, governed data availability, decision velocity is improved as the business remains on track to achieve growth while ensuring security and efficiency.