IT Service Management:
The Fast Track to Service Management Success: Software-as-a-Service
To successfully compete in today’s marketplace, small and medium size businesses (SMBs) must run efficiently. The right technology solutions can help SMBs to do this by improving business operations, employee productivity and profitability.
However, as their dependence on information technology grows, it becomes more difficult for IT service desk personnel to adequately support end users and the solutions that keep the business running smoothly. Unlike larger enterprises, SMBs frequently lack the IT resources to manage the growing array of hardware, software and systems necessary to support the business, and provide adequate levels of service to users.
Web-based, software-as-a-service (SaaS) or on-demand solutions can provide SMBs with a fresh approach to solving this dilemma. A SaaS service desk solution offers IT managers the feature-rich, real-time functionality they need without the burdens of deploying, managing and supporting costly hardware and software in house.
This paper begins with a discussion of the challenges that SMBs face in managing and supporting the IT solutions they need to run their businesses and examines the obstacles they face trying to effectively meet service management objectives. It then explores strategies for selecting a service management solution and how the SaaS approach can help SMBs meet these support challenges without increasing the burden on overworked IT personnel. Finally, a case study is presented that illustrates the effectiveness of this approach.
Section 1: SMB IT Hurdles – Limited IT Staff and Resources
Just like their large enterprise counterparts, SMBs want to deploy IT solutions that help them to succeed in an ever-changing marketplace. Faced with increasing pressure to compete more effectively against larger firms SMBs need to implement IT solutions to streamline and manage a variety of business processes. For example, SMBs might need to deploy customer relationship management (CRM) services to increase sales and profitability, install inventory management solutions to cut inventory costs, and implement human resources solutions to manage employeerelated issues and ensure compliance with regulatory requirements. By successfully deploying these kinds of solutions, SMBs can make more informed business decisions, reduce risk and compete more efficiently in the marketplace.
While SMBs have similar requirements and objectives as bigger organizations, they have smaller budgets and fewer IT staff than larger firms. For example, companies classified as small businesses, those with 1 to 99 employees, often have constrained IT budgets and staff. As indicated in Figure 1, small businesses often may have only one full-time person—typically an IT generalist—to handle a complex array of IT resources.
As businesses grow to medium size, defined as businesses with 100 to 999 employees, so does IT complexity. However, medium size businesses continue to face similar challenges of fulfilling technology needs with limited IT staff and skills. Figure 2, for example, illustrates that midsize companies in the United States average only four full-time IT staff members, who support, on average, 267 employees and multiple IT resources including desktops, servers, and portable devices as well as a variety of software implementations.
Increasingly, small and medium-size companies also face the complexities that come with supporting geographically dispersed end users. Because end users working at different locations–from branch offices to telecommuters to sales people at remote hotels–and may have an endless variety of settings (networks, software, data connections, etc.), it becomes more difficult for IT staff to support these end users. As noted in Figure 3, in the U.S. alone, 52% of small businesses and 85% of medium businesses have mobile workforces that IT must support. Additionally, 23% of small businesses and 40% of midsize businesses in the U.S. employ telecommuters. The number of telecommuters in midsize businesses is even higher in the U.K. at 55%. As companies grow to midsize, they are likely to have multiple locations: 85% of U.K. midsize companies, and 79% of U.S. midsize firms, for instance, have multiple locations.
Section 2: Service Management Roadblocks
Clearly, business and technology complexity will continue to rise, and IT and business outcomes are becoming increasingly intertwined. As SMBs become more reliant on IT solutions to help run the business, they are also more vulnerable, from a business perspective, should end users experience problems with them.
