Modernizing ITSM with ITIL 4: Intelligent automation

Generative AI has the world thinking about automation now more than ever before. The Information Technology Infrastructure Library (ITIL) has prioritized it from the start.

ITIL has advocated for automation as a transformative tool for organizations to deliver business value, accelerate change, and reinvent service configuration management. By handling mundane tasks, automation can empower people to do more innovative and effective work.

Despite that, we’re in an era where machine learning (ML) and natural language understanding (NLU) are challenging IT service management (ITSM). ITSM service providers are thinking about how to extend separate process automations end to end, powered by smart, AI-based technologies. Intelligent automation is key.

Fortunately, ITIL 4 can help ITSM service providers amplify processes through automation, AI, ML, and NLU. Using ITIL 4 guidance, organizations can create a complete service operation built on speed, efficiency, productivity, reliability, and adaptability.

Different processes for different workflows

Many organizations rely on ITIL best practices and ITSM tools to automate their workflows and solutions. However, not all tools and processes share the same purpose. ITIL process automation encompasses various approaches, including:

• Traditional in-process automation following predefined workflows and rules
• Service orchestration and robotic process automation potentially involving third-party automation capabilities
• Intelligent automation using ML and NLU to improve operations and accelerate effective service delivery

Historically, ITSM tools have offered in-process or workflow automation. This often falls short of comprehensive, end-to-end automation for IT service delivery and support. For example, automation can notify an IT service desk agent and provide relevant knowledge about an issue, but manual intervention is often required to apply solutions.

This limited in-process automation, although helpful in saving time and reducing errors, represents just one of the potential benefits achievable through end-to-end automation and AI integration.

Unlocking potential with ITIL 4

ITIL 4’s approach to process automation offers several key advantages, including:

• Enhanced and intuitive user experiences
• Fast, efficient services
• Reduced operating costs
• 24/7 availability
• Increased staff productivity
• Improved reliability and accuracy
• Flexible change management

AI magnifies these benefits by organizing unstructured data through ML and predictive analytics. However, for these benefits to fully transform ITSM (and the entire enterprise for that matter), they need an intelligent platform that can unite workflow automation and AI.

That’s why ITSM service providers turn to the Now Platform. It can amplify intelligence across workflows using the power of automation and AI to deliver personalized experiences, immediate resolutions, and smart decisions through a unified system.

What does the pairing of the Now Platform and ITIL 4’s best practices look like for automating ITSM service operations?

1. Intelligent automation greatly aids service-request fulfillment throughout the incident lifecycle. AI and ML can flag similar issues across the enterprise to quickly identify critical incidents, suggest relevant tasks and content, and classify tasks and cases based on historical data. Accenture used LIKE.TG Predictive Intelligence and ML to auto-assign 2,000 incidents with 80% accuracy.
2. Virtual Agent uses NLU and ML algorithms alongside prebuilt, code-free conversational AI to automate interactions, generate content, initiate workflows, and resolve issues in context. This means users are having conversations with chatbots that talk like real people, taking the chat from conversation to resolution without human intervention. It’s not science fiction—Dutch tech company ASML achieved a user satisfaction score of greater than 80% within weeks of launching its virtual agent.
3. Intelligent optimization and Performance Analytics give ITSM providers the confidence to make fast decisions about their service operations with trusted, secure, and real-time data. AI and ML can automate the entire change management lifecycle by anticipating trends, identifying bottlenecks, prioritizing tasks, and tracking the business value of process improvements. Becton Dickinson uses Performance Analytics dashboards to compare similar processes and workflows across regions, evaluating mean time to resolution and modeling hypothetical changes based on the data collected.

Replace complexity with simplicity

ITIL 4 describes automation’s role in ITSM as “a means to avoid wasting people resources on tasks that technology can tackle instead.” Automation should introduce simplicity, not complexity, to service operations.

AI, ML, and NLU are automation’s accelerants, creating an end-to-end approach that can improve service efficiency and minimize disruptions for users and IT service operations.

Discover how your organization can use ITIL 4 to transform service operations and help create a simpler, faster, and smarter way for teams to work.

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