Help with choosing Service Management Tool

[MacAdam]

Hi,

The other day I was asked to research what properties a Service Management Tool (SMT) should have. Sad to say, I'm new in this area. I only have some experience as a Service Desk worker. But that is long past.

I can imagine that with the SMT it should be easy to:
- add a new customer with it's particular Service Level Agreement (SLA).
- track a problem of that customer where the SMT will control the problem against the SLA.

As each customer probably will have its particular brand of SLA you can imagine that it is important to be flexible in entering the SLA in the SMT. Depending on the type of problem you might not want to solve the problem directly in favour for more pressing problems. But at the same time you do not want to wait past the agreed upon time frame to solve the problem.

This is one scenario you can use to look at the capabilities of a SMT. What would you consider important in a SMT?

Abel

[The Skeptic]

Define a SMT better. "Service Management" is a very broad term. Do they mean a Service Support tool? If so then my checklist would start with
- service desk functionality
- incident, request, problem, change, release, config, knowledge and service level management functionality
- incident, request, problem and change "tickets"
- users, customers, SLAs, assets and services in same database as the tickets, all linked. This is as near as you need to get to "CMDB"
- uses ITIL terminology

[cerruti1881]

My company is implementing BMC Remedy which includes all kinds of IT service management modules such as incident management, problem management, change management, release management, asset management, etc.

[The Skeptic]

So do HP Openview SD, Tivoli SD, CA Unicenter SD, Marval, FrontRange, infra... and a dozen others. Let's stick to what the criteria might be eh?

[darag2358]

Originally Posted by MacAdam

Hi,
What would you consider important in a SMT?

It must be able to support your Service Management process, be supportable, be easily customizable, and fit within your company's budget.

It seems to me that you either aren't sure of your processes, or perhaps they aren't yet defined by your company. That should be done first before investing in a tool that may or may not fit your processes.

[The Skeptic]

"you either aren't sure of your processes, or perhaps they aren't yet defined by your company. That should be done first before investing in a tool that may or may not fit your processes" Amen brother. People Process Technology (or Things), in that order. And not the reverse: technology does not fix process