Organizations of all sizes become more dependent on information technology (IT) in order to conduct their day-to-day operations Functioning effectively requires new and better ways to maximize the value they get from IT. Every effective IT management strategy requires equally effective service delivery capability, for an organization’s service desk is essential to ensure quality service and support.

The service desk is almost always the first line of defense when it comes to dealing with IT issues. Unfortunately, most organizations do not design their service desks around effectively responding to problems, nor do they proactively manage their IT operations in order to mitigate potential risks.

An internationally recognized framework of excellent approaches for delivering high quality IT services can be found in The Information Technology Infrastructure Library (ITIL®). While this framework is extremely useful, organizations must still find and use the tools necessary if they wish to fulfill the framework’s expectations.

Unfortunately, most organizations lack the skills and resources needed to use the numerous service desk tools and technologies at their disposal. Their service desk staffs are at a distinct disadvantage when identifying and resolving an escalating volume of issues. It’s become common for these organizations to outsource their entire IT operations in an effort to have their IT needs handled more efficiently. Such an effort frequently ends in failure. Most outsourcing agreements do not achieve their original objectives and result in termination or heavy restructuring.

Managed service providers (MSPs) are the supposed solution to the failure of traditional outsourcing arrangements. MSPs provide more specific services, which allow organizations to out-task IT management functions without giving their entire IT operations up to an outside party. Ironically, many MSPs are running into the same issues their clients do: they have trouble with the same service desk management issues.

In light of the problems with organizational skills, traditional outsourcing, and MSPs, a new generation of holistic yet versatile solutions is emerging to help IT organizations of all sizes improve their support to their end-users. These service desk automation and management solutions have powerful reporting capabilities and are more flexibly priced than previous answers to this problem, effectively reducing an IT operation’s total cost of ownership (TCO) and increasing their return on investment (ROI).

This article will explain, through examining these issues, how an integrated service desk solution allows IT organizations and third-party service providers to proactively manage the IT environment to prevent IT problems from cropping up and respond more effectively to the IT issues that do surface.