8 ways ITIL best practices improve help desk efficiency

We’ve written a lot about ITIL—Information Technology Infrastructure Library—explaining what it is, what it can do for your business holistically, how a help desk can use it, and three benefits of using ITIL methodologies.

Thousands of IT solutions providers across the globe are already benefiting from using ITIL, and we don’t want you to miss out.

Here are eight more ways ITIL can improve your business. It can help you:

1. Establish a culture of service

When we think of service, repeatability is a huge factor. You want to identify common issues clients might have, and then provide a series of steps for your team to follow that will resolve those issues as quickly as possible. That’s precisely what ITIL can help you do for your entire IT operation.

 2. Improve quality and satisfaction

Because ITIL is a framework for running an efficient IT operation with repeatable, streamlined processes, it can help you easily deliver consistently excellent service.

Think of your favorite brands. Why do you like them? Because they offer efficient/consistent service? Virtually flawless products/services? You, too, can deliver a better customer experience by applying ITIL best practices in your IT operations.

 3. Increase staff retention and productivity

If each employee has a clear picture of what’s expected of them, they’ll be more likely to stick around. Define clear, ITIL-based processes to give your team members an easy-to-follow path to productivity and growth.

4. Decrease training costs

Having new employees learn all their new job functions by interviewing existing employees is problematic for a few reasons:

• It’s difficult to absorb 100% of information the first time you hear it
• Many of your skilled employees will spend most of their time training (and retraining) rather than completing other business-critical tasks
• You might burn out some of your best employees

Detailed documentation of key job functions can help you avoid these costly drawbacks.

5. Scale your organization

If all major processes in your company are documented, you’ll find it’s easy to add new people. Their ramp-up time will be shorter, and your most experienced employees won’t be constantly barraged with questions about how to perform basic job functions.

 6. Optimize and standardize workflows

You might already have processes and workflows in place. And if you do, but you don’t know if they’re in line with ITIL best practices, it’s well worth the time to make sure they’re in compliance with ITIL. It’s really easy to overlook little opportunities for productivity enhancement; ITIL can help you home in on them and streamline your workflows further.

 7. Capture metrics and insights

It’s difficult to manage what you can’t measure. That’s why key performance indicators (KPIs) are part of the ITIL framework. By defining how you’ll measure your team’s success, you’ll empower your team to focus on the areas that matter most.

 8. Greater visibility of IT costs and assets

In setting benchmarks and reviewing metrics regularly, you’ll gain a better understanding of where your budget is going—and where you can start to make adjustments to improve your operations even further.

Beyond the eight benefits we discussed above, ITIL provides a foundation for success in IT service delivery. Instead of having to reinvent the wheel every time a process needs to be developed, you can look to examples of how others have applied the ITIL methodology to a situation similar to yours.

ITIL is a collection of best practices you can use with confidence. It’s been around for more than two decades and continues to be updated as IT practices evolve. Using ITIL-compliant products is one of many ways you can start embedding ITIL best practices into your operations.