Why ITSM tools haven't delivered hoped-for efficiencies

Tens of billions of dollars have been spent over the past decade and a half on ITSM suites and the task tools within them. Reducing errors, lowering operating expenses and delivering value to the business are the common justifications for those purchases. The task tools have certainly reduced errors and there’s a lot of value in that. But if a customer was hoping to lower their operating expenses, they probably haven’t seen the return they were expecting. Why? Because they’ve only automated tasks, not processes.
IT Operations, like any complex organization, is made up of multiple silos that have to work together. Any IT process touches several silos and relies upon several tools. The task tools—e.g. server or network configuration, service desk, asset management, change management, event monitoring and the like—allow you to be effective within their narrow boundaries. Most folks recognized a problem/opportunity here—we need to share information across the tools.
CMDBs arose and one of the things they’ve done is provided a single source of truth for the information needs of the IT organization. Now Service Desks, Change Management tools and Configuration tools can all share the same information about items within the environment. Many of them feature workflow that ensures the people to processes—approvals, escalations, etc—go smoothly. That’s good, but it doesn’t solve the more basic problem. Now you just have automated tasks that share information, but you still haven’t automated the overall process. You haven’t covered system to system automation. People still connect the silos, but add no value to that process. Worse, this routine work takes them away from more valuable work—planning, judgement calls, responding to new situations—things that only people can do.
Think about your own operations—where does lag time and error creep into your processes?
Does the next silo understand the context for that new work in their inbox? The priority? Do they get all of the information they need to complete their task?
With most of the lag time and errors in IT processes coming from the hand-offs between task tools, automating the process is the best place to find reductions in operating expense and errors.