IT Service Desk Agility: Cracking the Code to Faster Innovation

If your IT team is like most, you’re feeling the pressure to deliver new functionality on shorter timelines. As your organization faces modernization and market changes, your help is needed to ensure a speedy response to changing business needs.

But too often, the IT service management (ITSM) tool you’re depending on can’t support your “need for speed.” Many systems require significant coding to make even basic changes, costing you more time—and money—than you can afford.

Here’s a secret. You don’t need a SQL whiz to write reports. Nor do you need a Java guru to build workflows. You just need a low-code (sometimes referred to as “codeless”) service management platform. When you equip your team with the ability to easily modify and configure the tool on the fly—and without involving costly and often scarce development resources—you can go faster, get more done, and focus on higher value activities.

Want to learn more? Here are four more cost- and time-saving benefits you’ll experience with a low-code ITSM solution.

Hire and Train More Quickly (and Easily)

Low-code platforms are simpler to use and easier to learn. You can utilize business analysts or system administrators, instead of software developers, which are often in high demand, more expensive, and frequently shared across teams.

Once hired, those new team members can get up to speed quickly, too. On a code-intensive platform, it could take six months or longer for a team member to become competent. Training on a low-code solution is vastly accelerated. New hires can be proficient and generating value for your organization in weeks instead of many months.

Deploy Solutions Sooner (and More Broadly)

Low-code platforms typically provide WYSIWYG editors and drag-and-drop wizards. This means that building portals, dashboards, service catalogs, forms, workflows, and reports becomes a matter of simple configuration. When the need to write or manage code is minimized or eliminated altogether, you’ll be rolling out new services and capabilities much faster than on a traditional platform.

In addition to editors and wizards, your ITSM platform should enable you to extend your service offerings well beyond IT using pre-built extensions and/or companion solutions built for other lines of business such as Facilities, HR, Security, and more. These ready-made solutions improve your team’s agility in responding to new business needs. Leveraging your vendor’s library of pre-built solutions can take you from “That’s going to take a while” to “We’ve got just what you’re looking for!”

Quickly Respond to Change (Without the Pain)

On a traditional ITSM platform, customizations are code-intensive, take a long time to build, and are costly. So it’s no wonder teams collectively groan at the prospect of having to make changes. With a low-code platform, enhancements and modifications can be as simple as making some tweaks through GUIs, rather than getting under the hood to change the code base. The WYSIWYG editors and wizards that make new functionality so easy to deploy pay dividends when the business needs to respond to change.

Complete Upgrades Quickly (Without Breaking Stuff You’ve Built)

On a code-intensive ITSM platform, upgrades can be a daunting prospect. When significant customizations have been made to the code base, teams can get tied up writing or replicating code in order to preserve those customizations. Spending months on an upgrade delays the delivery of new features and functions.

On a low-code platform, upgrade processes are charted and executed much more quickly. The customizations created through wizards and editors generate metadata, rather than changes to the underlying code base. The code base can be upgraded to a new version without affecting the metadata, so your customizations aren’t lost.

This is critical, because time spent on upgrades comes at an opportunity cost. When the pain of system upgrades is removed, you can channel your energy into higher value initiatives. How many new offerings could your team roll out if they got a few extra months added back into their schedule? When upgrades are easy, you can deliver much more—and much sooner.

Conclusion

Looking for the secret to going faster and being more responsive to change? You’ll find it in a low-code ITSM platform. You’ll spend less time on training and upgrades, and more time delivering services and capabilities that are transformational to your business. When you crack the code—or essentially ditch it—you’ll be deploying solutions faster and easier, responding to changing user needs with agility, and being a force of continuous improvement. 

Want even more ways to accelerate digital transformation? Read our playbook: 5 Ways to "Fast Forward" ITSM. 

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