ITSM Process Automation

Why Automate?

Why Automate?

The first question asked by many ITSM organizations is why should I automate any of my processes?

Won’t it be expensive to purchase a product to implement automation? Once they have been

implemented won’t I need to maintain those automation’s with an expensive resource (like a code

developer) going forward?

The short answer to these questions is that it depends on the product that you are using for ITSM.

Hopefully, your product includes some form of automation out of the box. At a minimum, it should

allow you to integrate calls to an external workflow automation tool. If your ITSM product does include

some form of automation tool, with any luck it is possible to create that automation without a need to

write a lot of code that will need to be maintained in the future.

Benefits realized by using Automation Now that you have decided to consider automating processes, you may ask yourself why should we go

to the effort of starting an automation initiative? What is the benefit that my organization will gain?

There are a lot of benefits to be realized from implementing automation. For example:

Reduce Risk by implementing repeatable processes. You will find that the entire organization

will benefit by having a repeatable process. Customer expectations will be met (and probably

even exceeded). For example, the flow of a service request from group to group can be

automated so that when one group is completed with its portion of the request, the request can

be routed to the next group automatically. This automation will decrease human error that

might be made by routing to the wrong group with a result of potentially missing SLAs.

Improve Quality – nothing gets left out or forgotten in the process – it’s consistent. An example

here is if you automate the New Employee onboarding process, access to all of the standard

systems and applications can be automatically configured, email addresses will be generated, an

AD account can be created, hardware ordered, etc. That way, the new employee’s access and

systems will be set to go right from their first day. All they will need to do is open service

requests for any specialized systems they might require access to – like Salesforce, HR, or

Accounting.

Decrease Cost – if an automated interface to an external system can be used, you will save costs

by not requiring any human intervention to handle the request. All the parameters passed to

the external system can be entered into the request itself and then automatically passed

through. Reduce Time to Value - using automation and the cost savings noted can dramatically

reduce the Total Cost of Ownership of your ITSM system. It can also free up your support staff’s

time so that they can be productive on other items that have a direct impact on your customer

satisfaction ratings.

Reduce human error - Certainly in the request routing example mentioned earlier, but also by

reducing miskeying information into external systems when manually entering information to

fulfill the request.

Improve the customer experience by simply offering better service to your ITSM customers.

This can be accomplished by focusing on requests that do require human intervention and by

increasing the predictability of the time it takes to fulfill requests.

Improve productivity of your service desk staff - they will no longer be required to work on the

mundane tasks that you have chosen to automate. In addition, their job satisfaction will

increase by allowing them to focus on other more interesting (and perhaps less repetitive) tasks.

This can also have another advantage, reduced staff turnover, since they enjoy their job more!

Roadblocks to automation

Once you decide to move forward with automation, what roadblocks might you run into? First off, the

service desk staff may be resistant due to fear of losing their jobs. They have been working hard at

fulfilling routine requests and have been doing a stellar job of keeping the customer satisfaction and first

call resolution key performance indicators high. Now if those routine tasks are removed from them,

won’t they be concerned with how will they will be measured and how will they keep their stats and

rankings high?

Your management team will need to address this issue and assuage the fears of the team, assuring

them they are valued and by implementing automation of the repetitive and mundane tasks, they will

have time to be more productive in other areas that are more enjoyable and fulfilling for them. Perhaps

the measurement statistics of the service desk staff will also need to be adjusted or at a minimum the

expectations surrounding these stats will need to be addressed and communicated.

Another roadblock that may be seen is a fear of the automation itself. Is the software that handles the

automation good enough and resilient enough? We have all heard war stories about bugs in software

that end up creating more problems than the software is intended to resolve. This fear can be managed

by thoroughly testing the process automation’s prior to putting them into production. Make certain

that edge cases are tested as well – for example, if your automation calls out to MS Exchange to create

an account, what happens if the integration with Exchange is down at that time. Will the request be re-

tried? Also, once the automation’s have been rolled into production, be certain to actively monitor them

to make certain the automation is functioning as intended.

What to automate

Start your automation with a small well-defined process. This will allow you to get used to the

idiosyncrasies of your automation tool. Also, it won’t take you long to implement the process and you

should begin seeing benefits quickly. This will also instill management confidence in the automation and

your automation implementation plan. It can’t be stressed enough - make certain that you actively

monitor the automated process after it goes live to make sure that it is functioning as desired.

Another option to jump start your automation is, if your ITSM tool provides pre-defined automation

templates out of the box – start with one of those. You should be able to copy and modify it as required

for your process. By testing and iterating changes in the modified workflow you will quickly learn how

best to use your automation tool.

As you move forward with your automation plan, look at the service requests you are receiving today.

What are the most frequent requests being made?

What is the effort required to fulfill the request?

If the frequency is high and the effort is high – then start there! That will result in the largest savings to

your organization!

If the frequency is high and the effort is low, don’t just write this request off for automation – it may be

that automating this type of service request will result in a lot of time savings for your service desk staff

due to the frequency of the request.

You should be able to run a report from your ITSM tool to determine the frequency of requests. By

putting that output into a pie chart, it makes it fairly obvious which type of request will provide the

quickest return and you should begin your automation with that one.

Another idea is to take a look at the processes that will have dire consequences if they fail. For example,

incidents opened via a monitoring tool. If the incident is opened on a Configuration Item (CI) CI that is

critical to your organization's financial success, you should consider automating the resolution process

or at a minimum automating the incident assignment, notification, and routing processes as well as

setting the SLA. This will automatically set the appropriate level of management involvement when the

incident is opened.

Top Service Catalog items last month

Application Access Control Cisco IP phone Laptop or Desktop Assistance

Provision New Employee Provision Windows Server in AWS Enable/Disable AD User

Reset email password LDAP update Conference Room Reservation

Business Cards Batch Jobs

Other areas for automation in the ITSM world: Change Management

o Automate the change approval process based on the Service or CIs being changed

o Automate the Change Advisory Board (CAB) notification process – notify CAB members

which changes will be discussed so they are prepared to talk about the impact of the

change

o Standard changes – automate monthly maintenance change creation

Incident Management

o Assignment of incidents attributes based on CI, Service, or perhaps the incident is

opened on behalf of a VIP

o Service Level Agreement (SLA) assignment – assign SLAs based on Service or CI

attributes

o Operational Level Agreement (OLA) Assignment – assign OLAs based on the vendor

agreement

Problem management

o Problem identification – can you call out to an external process to implement problem

detection via incident event correlation or another automated problem detection

method

Service Requests

o Provision new environments in the cloud for demo/sales/testing opportunities

o Request access to new software or application

Workflow management

o Manage the next status of a ticket – only allow the service desk analyst to select from

certain statuses

o Automatically close tickets after a certain time period after they have been resolved

Perhaps you also have other business processes beyond purely IT processes in your organization that

can be automated.

Accounting – month-end, quarter-end or year-end processes can be automated for routing of

task assignments and approvals

HR – onboarding new employees. The service request(s) that are opened from this process are

typically very standard (i.e., access to systems, AD account, hardware, standard software, etc.)

Specific service requests can be added for additional services as required (sales systems,

accounting systems, CRM access, etc.)

Implementing the automation tasks Once your automation has been created and thoroughly testing in an ITSM test environment, you

should use the change management feature of your ITSM tool to move the implementation into

production. Using change management has multiple benefits:

Transparency - it shows that you are using industry standard best practices across the IT

organization. You should include back out plans as well in the event that there are problems

with the automation

Notifications - through the CAB review process, all interested groups are notified of the

automation and the go live plans

Post-Implementation Monitoring – this will allow you to monitor the automation process,

making certain that it functioning as designed and the resultant notifications to management

regarding the effectiveness of the implemented automation.

How is automation handled in ServiceAide Cloud Service Management (CSM)? ServiceAide CSM has two main areas of automation available out of the box.

Ticket workflow – you are able to create a flow for analysts to take to move a ticket to resolution/closure. This is about taking a process that today is mostly manual and giving the analyst an exact step by step process to get the ticket closed. This removes much of the inherent human error when an analyst has to choose from a broad spectrum of attributes like status, resolutions, notifications, etc. The ServiceAide CSM workflow allows you to automatically set fields based on the workflow step(s) they have taken. This is implemented within CSM using a feature called Process Designer. The Process Designer doesn’t require any programming knowledge, just an understanding of basic logic flow. It uses a drag and drop paradigm, which makes this feature intuitive and easy to use. A screenshot of the workflow for the Service Catalog item “MS Exchange: Increase Mailbox” is shown below.

Process automation – using CSM Automation Center Design Studio you are able to create new workflows or use existing workflows as templates for new workflows. These workflows can run connectors to external systems (like AWS, Active Directory, MS Exchange, VMware, CA Clarity PPM or CA Release Automation). You can also run scripts on premise using SSH/Powershell. In addition, you can create a new connector to an external system of your own. Once the

workflow has been created and published, it will appear in the CSM Service Catalog and be available for selection by an end user. Just like the Process Designer, The Design Studio doesn’t require any programming knowledge, just an understanding of basic logic flow. It also uses a drag and drop paradigm, which makes this feature intuitive and easy to use. A screenshot of the template “Create a new AD user” is shown below.

Follow-up on the Automation plan While upper levels of management may be intrigued by the cost-saving promises of automation, they

will need to be regularly informed of the status of the automation, including the net results on cost

savings as well as the impact on your Service Desk KPIs.

The entire staff should also be informed as to how the automation is progressing since everyone has a

stake in the process.

We would suggest creating a dashboard that depicts:

How far along the automation plan you are.

Which automations are complete and which are next to be implemented

Cost savings to date

Current customer satisfaction ratings, and changes since the automation project was started.

This simple dashboard will go a long way in creating the acceptance of your automation plan across all

levels of the organization that will be critical to the overall success of the plan.

Ken Laufmann ServiceAide