February 2019 Jim Rapoza Research Director, IT

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MID-MARKET BUSINESSES CAN DIGITALLY TRANSFORM THEIR IT CAPABILITIES PAINLESSLY

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Advances in understanding and managing today’s hybrid and multi-cloud IT systems, tied to cognitive systems that ease the burden on IT staff, are helping mid-market businesses digitally transform their IT capabilities and drive their organizations forward.

In recent years, technology has evolved so much; advances that seemed extraordinary just a few years ago (AI-assistants that can run your whole life, cognitive and automated systems that keep businesses running smoothly) now seem commonplace. And while many leading organizations are taking advantage of AI capabilities, automation and cognitive systems to bring their IT support into the modern age, mid-market businesses in particular fear that these capabilities are too costly or complex for them to adopt.

Aberdeen research has found that new advances in ITSM and ITOM offerings have made it possible for mid-market businesses to leverage cognitive capabilities and advanced IT management features without incurring high costs. And often, these businesses can adopt these new technologies without having to rip and replace their current IT support platforms.

In this knowledge brief, we’ll look at how advances in understanding and managing today’s hybrid and multi-cloud IT systems — tied to cognitive systems that ease the burden on IT staff — are helping mid-market businesses digitally transform their IT capabilities and drive their organizations forward.

The Pressure to Transform All Aspects of IT

It’s often said that knowledge is power. And in the world of IT support, this is true in more ways than many people realize.

Increasingly, knowledge in IT doesn’t just mean the experience and skill level of IT support staff. It applies to the very systems they use to manage and facilitate support. And for today’s organizations, especially those in the mid-market, upgrading their ITSM and other support systems to have this kind of knowledge, or cognition, is vital.

Businesses in the mid-market are facing a number of challenges and complexities when it comes to providing IT services and supporting the users of these services. These challenges are driving organizations to upgrade their IT support to better meet the complexities of today’s technologies and the high expectations of modern users.

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We surveyed mid-market organizations (Figure 1) to find the top pressures that are driving them to improve their IT support capabilities.

Figure 1: Top Pressures to Improve Mid-market ITSM

Looking at this data, we see that the top pressure driving mid-market businesses to improve their ITSM is the need to increase productivity. This means that they need support systems that speed up service delivery and can detect issues before they arise.

Mid-market businesses are also increasingly supporting IT infrastructures that are built not only on the Cloud, but on multiple clouds and cloud types (meaning both multiple providers and private clouds). Tied to how environments are also more hybrid in nature, these mid-market IT organizations are looking for tools that are built specifically to understand and support complex infrastructures, and to discover all the services and devices within them.

It’s no surprise that users and executives who have come to expect AI and cognitive intelligence in the tools and services they use in their personal life are demanding similar capabilities from IT. And with these drivers in mind, businesses are turning to advanced tools that leverage cognitive capabilities and intelligence to power their modern IT support systems. In what may be a surprise to some, mid-market organizations can take advantage of these powerful tools without a lot of upfront cost, complexity or disruption to their current IT systems.

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How Cognitive IT Support Helps the Mid-market Win

Throughout all of Aberdeen’s research into ITSM and support, it has become clear that businesses understand the need for tools that are not only advanced, but flexible and agile enough to grow with the organization as it continues to transform and adopt new technologies. However, these businesses are often unsure of how to easily move from a legacy ITSM solution and get on the path to intelligent, adaptive and cognitive service management.

Luckily, newer ITSM offerings are not only providing these advanced and flexible capabilities but are doing so in a way that eases implementation and lets organizations boost their support without a complex and costly rip and replace of their ITSM platform. These tools give companies deep visibility into everything across all environments (even multi-cloud), enabling comprehensive discovery of all that IT needs to support and manage.

By leveraging powerful cognitive tools, these IT organizations — who in the mid-market especially are often dealing with reduced staff and resources — can offload much of the daily support workload, letting staff focus on more critical and high value tasks. With a cognitive ITSM solution in place, these businesses gain a number of key benefits, as shown in Table 1.

Table 1: Boosting IT Service with Cognitive Capabilities Businesses with a cognitive ITSM system are:

70% more likely to lower the cost of IT service

2X more likely to deliver IT services more rapidly

40% more likely to solve incidents faster

33% more likely to have fewer calls to IT service desk

When compared to all other businesses, IT organizations with a cognitive ITSM solution in place are 33% more likely to have fewer calls coming into the service desk and 40% more likely to solve those that do come in faster.

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The intelligence of their cognitive system allows these businesses to cut down wasted time on simple requests that would otherwise bog down high value support staff. With cognitive capabilities at their disposal, staff can quickly and effectively address incidents across the organization.

This speed and agility also applies to new services and offerings that IT provides to drive the business and make it more productive. In this data, we find that having a cognitive ITSM solution in place means that a business is two times more likely than its competitors to be able to speed up the delivery of IT services — not only helping the overall organization but also increasing the value and profile of IT.

And probably most importantly for mid-market organizations that fear the potential cost of upgrading from a legacy ITSM system, businesses that have adopted cognitive service management are 70 percent more likely to lower the overall cost of providing IT service.

Key Takeaways

As we can see from these results, adopting cognitive service management can provide critical benefits to mid-market IT organizations without bringing higher costs or complexity. By leveraging cognitive support systems, businesses are becoming more productive and agile, providing services and solving incidents faster, and reducing costs and complexity.

With these intelligent support systems in hand, mid-market businesses can meet the demands and expectations of modern users and set a path that will help their organization continue to grow and innovate.

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About Aberdeen Group

Since 1988, Aberdeen Group has published research that helps businesses worldwide to improve their performance. Our analysts derive fact-based, vendor-neutral insights from a proprietary analytical framework, which identifies Best-in-Class organizations from primary research conducted with industry practitioners. The resulting research content is used by hundreds of thousands of business professionals to drive smarter decision-making and improve business strategies. Aberdeen Group is headquartered in Waltham, Massachusetts, USA.

This document is the result of primary research performed by Aberdeen Group and represents the best analysis available at the time of publication. Unless otherwise noted, the entire contents of this publication are copyrighted by Aberdeen Group and may not be reproduced, distributed, archived, or transmitted in any form or by any means without prior written consent by Aberdeen Group.

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