Which department should you start with when expanding service management beyond IT?

Start with the department employees turn to most often with repetitive requests, where the list of services can be described and the head of the department is ready to own due dates. That is how the expansion went at ITG Corporation: after IT, accounting and facilities were the first to join the SimpleOne platform. Departments are connected one at a time: first you show results in the first department, then you move on to the next.

How to choose the first department

• It gets many requests, and they repeat: letters, invoices for payment, visitor passes, office supplies orders. Today they arrive by email and in messengers.
• Its services can be listed and described: what the employee needs to provide, who does the work, and how long it takes.
• The department has a head who will take ownership of the service catalog and due dates.

The numbers will show which department fits best: count how many repetitive requests each department gets in your company.

What to prepare before connecting a department

• Collect the department's requests for a month or a quarter: from the shared mailbox, messengers, and spreadsheets. Group them by type.
• Build the department's service catalog: the service name in the employee's words, the request form, and the assignee.
• Agree on a due date for each service. These become your service level agreements (SLAs).
• Describe how the department handles routine requests: who receives them, who approves, and when a request counts as done.

Set up the portal and automation after these steps. Technology supports processes rather than replacing them, and if the processes are not worked out, automation only speeds up the chaos.

At ITG Corporation, the decision came from the results in IT. "IT is not the only service provider in the company, so it was decided to transfer this practice to other departments as well," says Dmitry Semin, Deputy Technical Director for IT Processes at ITGLOBAL.COM.

Once the first departments are up and running, you can take on end-to-end processes that involve several teams. For example, a new hire touches HR, IT, facilities, and accounting. These processes deliver a visible impact, but they need more careful design.

How it works in SimpleOne ESM

SimpleOne ESM is a set of SimpleOne platform tools for managing internal services. Each department in it becomes a service provider:

• the department has its own service catalog with approvals on the shared employee portal, its own assignees, and due dates;
• due dates for each service are set in SLAs, and indicators warn in advance when a deadline is at risk;
• tasks are distributed among the department's assignees automatically, based on workload.

If the company already runs SimpleOne ITSM, a new department is connected to the same portal.

How the expansion went at ITG Corporation

• 2020: the team finalized ITSM processes and prepared the infrastructure to connect other departments.
• 2021: accounting and facilities joined the platform.
• 2022: procurement and marketing joined, and the number of requests grew to 60,000 per year, four times more than the IT department alone had handled.

The step-by-step approach (inventory, catalog, due dates, request handling, portal) is covered in detail in the article "Internal Service Management: Bringing ESM to Every Department". What it looks like in the system is on the SimpleOne ESM page.