Every IT department faces routine tasks daily: processing requests, monitoring systems, and implementing new solutions. Without automation, these processes consume too much time, increase costs, and heighten the probability of errors. Let’s explore how to digitize IT processes and achieve tangible results from the start.
Understanding IT Process Automation
IT process automation goes far beyond simply replacing manual work with software systems. Automation requires comprehensive analysis of current processes: their effectiveness, alignment with business goals, and potential for optimization.
The goal of automation is to free employees from routine and repetitive tasks by transferring them to automated solutions, which helps standardize processes, reduce error probability, and significantly increase task completion speed. As a result, not only does the speed of IT service delivery improve, but also its reliability and alignment with company needs.
Automation in the Context of ITSM
Within IT Service Management (ITSM), automation helps maintain high-quality IT service delivery. In ITSM, automation increases the processing speed of incidents, requests, changes, and other business-critical elements.
Key automation areas in ITSM include:
- Incident Management — When incident handling processes are automated, specialists don’t need to create tickets manually when failures occur. Monitoring systems automatically create incidents and assign them to responsible specialists, enabling faster problem resolution.
- Service Request Management — Automation systems distribute user requests by priority and complexity, helping to respond faster and better to requests and improve SLA compliance.
- Change Management — When implementing complex infrastructure changes, careful process planning and risk assessment are necessary — automation helps here by simplifying change stage monitoring and ensuring compliance with approval procedures and equipment configuration relationships. This reduces the likelihood of errors and unforeseen consequences.
Business Benefits of IT Automation
IT process automation demonstrates its value not only within IT Service Management (ITSM) but can also have strategic impact across the entire company. This approach, known as Enterprise Service Management (ESM), extends automation beyond the IT department to other units such as HR, accounting, and administrative services.
- Cost Reduction through decreased time spent on routine operations and fewer manual errors. Results become more predictable, even for resource-intensive tasks.
- Process Standardization — unified task execution rules that enable consistent results and minimal deviations, particularly crucial when working with critical infrastructure.
- Transparent Process Management: enables task execution monitoring, SLA compliance tracking, and quick decision-making based on current data.
- Faster Request Processing — tasks are automatically prioritized, ensuring strict SLA compliance.
- Scalable Automation — modern systems perform consistently regardless of organization size, allowing businesses to transform processes in other departments without quality loss. Flexible solutions help quickly adapt to company changes.
- Proactive Problem Detection — automation enables identifying issues before they become critical. In case of failure, automatic notifications help resolve problems faster and reduce system downtime.
Processes Suitable for Automation
Companies build processes at three levels: operational level handles daily work with requests and incidents — where automation provides quick and visible results. The tactical level addresses service quality planning and control. The strategic level is responsible for service development and alignment with company business goals.
Most of these processes are described in the ITIL library, which contains IT service management best practices. The modern ITIL 4 version covers all service departments in a company, not just IT.
Companies typically begin by automating operational processes:
| Process | Key Automation Areas |
|---|---|
| Incident Management | ● Automatic recording of employee requests
● Infrastructure problem detection through monitoring systems ● Quick troubleshooting to minimize downtime ● Swarming organization for large-scale incidents |
| Service Request Processing | ● Standard procedures for user request processing
● Multi-channel interaction through portal, email, or interface ● Support specialist workload distribution ● User satisfaction monitoring |
| Change Management | ● Risk analysis before implementing changes
● Planning and testing in a safe environment ● Monitoring change impact on business processes ● Visual representation of system relationships |
| Problem Management | ● Root cause analysis of recurring incidents
● Recording and implementing workarounds ● Known error database maintenance ● Prevention of recurring failures |
| Configuration Management | ● Up-to-date database of all IT assets (CMDB)
● Tracking relationships between components ● Recording configuration changes ● Compliance monitoring |
| Event Monitoring | ● Automatic incident creation during failures
● Early potential problem detection ● Statistics collection for trend analysis ● Proactive troubleshooting |
Modern approaches extend beyond traditional IT tasks. Automation helps simplify:
- Procurement and supplier management
- Asset tracking and maintenance
- Project management
- Service cost control
- Organizational change approval
The selection of processes for automation depends on their formalization level. Simple, repetitive operations are easy to digitize. For processes requiring expert evaluation or strategic decisions, automation plays a supporting role — helping collect data, control deadlines, and store documentation.
Automation Tools
Modern businesses need specialized platforms for IT process management. Such systems should control both services and the entire company infrastructure. When choosing a platform, it’s important to consider its flexibility, scalability, and compliance with ITIL practices and ISO/IEC 20000 standards.
ITSM systems for IT service management are central to automation. Solutions like SimpleOne ITSM simplify work with incidents, problems, and service requests. The platform monitors SLA compliance and helps build productive user interactions.
Service Desk typically serves as the starting point for any IT process automation — providing a single point for handling user requests. It’s the simplest and fastest way to experience digitalization benefits: requests no longer get lost in email, each inquiry is tracked, and executors receive clear deadlines and priorities. After setting up basic processes, companies move on to more complex tasks.
To prevent failures, monitoring systems are integrated with the ITSM system, which automatically creates incidents when problems are detected. Monitoring reduces business risks, as automatic incident registration tools based on events and alerts enable timely threat response.
Configuration Management Database (CMDB) works to account for all IT infrastructure components — allowing real-time tracking of hardware and software status and providing current information about configuration items and their attributes. The system records any changes and shows relationships between infrastructure elements, helping quickly identify problem sources.
Low-code/no-code tools have become an important criterion when choosing automation systems. Each company has its specifics — unique business processes, special approval requirements, custom request routing rules. To accommodate these features, the system must easily adapt to business needs.
Implementation Stages
Experience from successful projects shows that digital transformation of any department requires a clear action plan. To avoid typical mistakes and maximize returns from implementing new technologies, several stages must be completed:
- Current Process Analysis: Start by evaluating existing IT processes and identifying their weak points. Measure current SLA indicators, identify bottlenecks, and find processes most suitable for automation. It’s also important to analyze system interconnections to understand their integration level and where improvements are needed.
- Change Planning: Select appropriate automation tools and platforms, such as ITSM systems. Determine the sequence for process automation and calculate resources needed for project implementation.
- Testing: Before launching automation, set up rules and triggers that will automatically initiate processes. Test integrations between systems to ensure all elements work correctly. Also, configure SLA monitoring mechanisms to accurately track task completion.
- Change Planning: Select appropriate automation tools and platforms, such as ITSM systems. Determine the sequence for process automation and calculate resources needed for project implementation.
- Testing: Before launching automation, set up rules and triggers that will automatically initiate processes. Test integrations between systems to ensure all elements work correctly. Also, configure SLA monitoring mechanisms to accurately track task completion.
Success Stories in IT Automation
IT automation helps companies not only optimize existing processes but also adapt faster to market changes and implement new solutions as business grows. Experience from large organizations shows that well-planned automation can reduce operational costs by 25-30%, improve staff efficiency, and enhance user satisfaction. Through automation, companies gain flexibility for quick scaling, launching new services, and optimizing existing capabilities. Centralized management, process standardization, and automatic implementation of best practices create a solid foundation for sustainable business growth in digital transformation.
Case Study 1: International IT Service Provider
A major international IT service provider transitioned from ServiceNow to SimpleOne ITSM, completely automating their IT department operations within six months and reducing system operating costs by 30%.
SimpleOne helped build a unified environment for managing:
- Incidents and service requests
- IT infrastructure changes
- Service level management
- Knowledge base
- Configurations and assets
New employee training time decreased by 40%, and implementation speed for updates increased by 20%. Development costs for new functionality decreased by 45%.
Case Study 2: Cloud Service Provider
A cloud service provider built a modern Service Desk from scratch on the SimpleOne platform in just three months. The company deployed an internal support portal and external self-service portal for clients. The system enables management of incidents, requests, and changes, controls service levels, and maintains a knowledge base.
SimpleOne was integrated with an SMS notification system for SLA compliance monitoring. Thanks to the simple interface, employees started working in the system almost immediately, without lengthy training.
Summary
Automation is a long-term investment in business development. Implementing systems according to service management best practices helps companies reduce incident response time, speed up change implementation, and minimize human errors. Meanwhile, centralized control allows managers to make decisions based on current data and quickly scale successful practices.
The key to successful automation lies in choosing the right tools, careful planning, and systematic implementation. When properly executed, IT process automation becomes a powerful driver for business efficiency and growth, enabling organizations to stay competitive in an increasingly digital world.
