In recent years, the concept of proactivity has been taking over discussions on how to optimize IT routines and create more efficient service desks. In this scenario, enterprises have begun to reshape their strategies, abandoning a reactive model and creating a roadmap of actions aimed at anticipating various scenarios.
As a result, the impact of problems will be lower, improving business metrics and increasing enterprise profits. However, creating a proactive service desk requires a series of investments. Processes must be optimized, new tools implemented, and the sector’s focus redirected — allowing technicians and analysts to work on preventing failures and operational issues.
In the long term, proactivity will result in the constant optimization of routines. The entire service desk sector will have its demand response capacity expanded, and user satisfaction will be higher, since their activities will be performed with fewer errors and interruptions.
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What is the importance of a proactive service desk?
In IT management environments, proactivity is linked to the ability to act preventively and prevent problems from having a major impact on the routines of other departments. In this sense, investment in a proactive service desk should be seen as a market strategy that makes the sector more effective and has a direct influence on business efficiency.
By having a proactive service desk, the company will continuously improve its IT services, and managers will collect data that can be used to create more effective processes. Thus, the company will be able to redefine strategies and make investments with a broader return.
What measures should be taken to optimize the service desk?
First of all, the service desk must be continuously optimized. Operating practices and standards must be constantly reviewed so that the manager can easily eliminate ineffective routines. In this sense, some measures can be taken for the sector to expand its capacity to respond to failures, among which we can highlight:
- Alignment of objectives between the service desk and other departments;
- Creation of simpler and unified processes;
- Training of technicians and analysts;
- Identification of bottlenecks and areas that need improvement.
The development of the service desk must therefore be constant. And, to maximize the reach of the measures adopted by the sector, the IT manager can disseminate best practices among users of the enterprise’s IT infrastructure (whether through emails, newsletters, or Corporate TVs). Thus, the measures taken will have a greater impact in the medium and long term.
In addition, documentation with best practices can be reviewed so that the manager can more easily identify potential improvements for the sector. In this regard, the ITIL library is one of the main references for businesses seeking more effective IT services.
Standing for Information Technology Infrastructure Library, ITIL is the term used to refer to a set of IT best practices adopted by the market. This documentation is adopted as a reference by various businesses; in general, it is recommended for managers who intend to refocus their services according to user needs.
Thus, its quality is enhanced and the activities of departments such as the Service Desk become more aligned with global standards. ITIL is composed of a set of five books that describe measures that can be adopted according to the enterprise’s needs and profile. Among the main ones, we can highlight:
- creation of a workflow focused on user needs;
- alignment of strategies between departments;
- implementation of routines and tools that provide more flexibility for company activities;
- increase in the sector’s automation level.
How to define which services should be monitored?
One of the main strategies used to optimize IT routines is IT infrastructure monitoring. The implementation of tools that allow the efficient identification of vulnerabilities and tracking of operational bottlenecks facilitates the creation of a continuous flow of improvements, with new policies continuously adopted to increase the action capacity of the entire department.
In a scenario where the service desk is responsible for the continuous pursuit of the business’s IT infrastructure, the use of monitoring solutions is indispensable. IT managers should always seek to evaluate which resources have problems, apply fixes, and define metrics that allow the identification of the impact caused by changes.
In this scenario, defining what should be monitored must be done according to the business profile. Companies that handle a large amount of third-party data, or have a high flow of sensitive records, can prioritize the use of tools that increase control over access requests and data visualization. In this sense, we can highlight systems that work on identifying and blocking compromised accounts and unauthorized access attempts.
On the other hand, companies with operational chains highly integrated with their IT tools can use solutions that make the evaluation of computational resource availability and performance more precise.
Thus, whenever a service becomes unavailable or experiences a performance drop, technicians and analysts will be able to apply measures to quickly restore the company’s services. In the long term, the collected data can be used to define new risk management policies, continuously reducing the user support sector’s response time.
The use of monitoring tools should be seen by the IT manager as a way to increase the service desk’s operational capacity. And such solutions need to be implemented in accordance with the sector’s objectives and strategies. Thus, they will be able to expand the capabilities of area professionals and make their entire workflow more agile.
Together, the measures listed above can be adopted by companies to make the service desk more proactive and capable of preventing failures. Incidents will be corrected in shorter timeframes, resulting in more precise and higher-quality operations for the department. In the long term, the company will create a continuous flow of improvements, with more efficient routines and lower error rates.
Now it’s your turn: what is your opinion on proactivity in IT management? Leave us a comment and share your experiences with us!
