Self-Service Technology
In an environment, the term Automation is a much familiar word today where most IT companies lack this technology and hence fail to Reduce its cost and efficiency. Today everybody wants quick results whether it’s real-time information or on-demand services. Same expectations are even brought by us at our work. Automation is the answer for many businesses where it embraces as a path for responding to constant changes.
Self-service in a way has helped reduce IT support cost where one can complete the task at much cheaper rates, improving efficiency and hence creating an empowered environment. For many reasons, in-house tasks are mostly preferred by many IT professionals. But they fail to realize its significant benefits, their department as well as the organization as a whole are being deployed where they could offer end-users self-service solutions.
Its Benefits :
- Service Quality becomes better and so the end-users are happy.
- Faster the management and execution of results more the time saved.
- The process and resources become more transparent, efficient, and traceable.
- Managed IT services resulting in a positive end-user experience.
Think of the time-consuming manual IT tasks where one could have completed its task much before the estimated time, and have to rely on other’s work. Don’t you think that work could have been handled at the end-users point? As self-service automation allows the end-user to resolve problems independently without IT helpdesk support. Thus unfettering the IT workforce and focusing more on detracting business issues.
It might frighten you to handle control over the end-user. But the varying levels of controls can be applied :
- Fully Automated i.e, without the involvement of any IT member.
- Semi-Automated i.e, with partial involvement of IT member remotely approving procedures through SMS, email, or phone call.
Using this self-service :
- End users can Unlock an end-user account.
- Users can reset passwords.
- A range of IT tasks can be performed such as independently freeing up server disk space or restarting Windows services.
- By sending alerts and notifications by email or SMS, such as password reset or expiry notifications, ownership can be transferred proactively from the IT department to the end-user.
- Users can also “order” their requirements from a list of standard options whether for test, development, or production tasks requests, effective IT Service Management in an intuitive web portal.
In this way, on-demand provisioning of any application and infrastructure request can be enabled by IT staff. Each service can be controlled and tracked by the administrators from an initial request from the end-user to call back, recall, or withdraw.