97% of workers and employers believe that the lack of team alignment influences the success of a task or project.
Clearly, team alignment matters in ensuring the success and growth of a business. When teams are aligned, and standard procedures are in place, it results in higher productivity, less time spent on tedious tasks, and an overall rise in positive work culture.
So how can CIOs make sure their teams are aligned and happy? Keep reading for 5 features of ITSM that promote team alignment and company success.
One of the best ITSM features for team alignment is ticketing workflows.
A ticketing workflow allows managers to easily assign tasks and responsibilities, which means that everyone knows what they need to do and is focused on the proper priorities. This also gives techs a clear understanding of their teammates' responsibilities, so they can collaborate more easily.
Workflows allow for personalization, which gives you the ability to cater workflow set-ups, such as assigning and managing tasks, according to your business structure and needs.
For example, if you have a small team, you might want to assign each team member their own projects and create a workflow that assigns each to their individual tasks. For companies with larger teams, or partaking in larger projects that involve multiple people, you could set up a workflow that assigns tasks to all participating members.
Using a ticketing workflow also makes it easier for managers to track the progress of each task, so there’s clear visibility across the entire team in terms of timelines and deadlines.
Management dashboards provide a place for all team- and business-wide KPIs to be displayed and easily accessed. There can be multiple dashboards created, including ones with overall company goals and KPIs, ones that focus just on one team, and even ones that cover just one project.
Most management dashboards include graphs, charts, numeric data, or a combination of all three. Dashboards should be very visual and easy to interpret at a glance.
Regardless of what kind of dashboard you create, management dashboards are a great way to give the entire team insight into the progress and goals of the company, which keeps everyone on the same page and working towards the same attainable metrics.
Standard operating procedures (SOPs) are the formalized and coordinated processes of a specific organization. SOPs help ensures that the delivery of services and execution of day-to-day decision-making and operations are consistently streamlined and of the highest quality.
By using an SOP management tool in ITSM software, SOPs can be updated and shared easily. They can also be embedded in tickets and task lists, so techs can read them easily and all perform the same procedures.
With SOPs, the entire team follows the same consistent procedures and is made aware of any updates. This helps centralize communication across the entire department. If giving your team clear instructions that they can all follow and use to boost efficiency and answer procedural questions isn’t a recipe for team alignment, than what is!
The nature of ticket resolution is that often, tickets will move around to different techs before they’re fully resolved. Because of that, ticket briefing and debriefing are excellent ITSM features that ease the transition and promote team alignment.
Ticket briefing allows a tech to write important notes about a ticket or client before it’s sent to someone else. Then, when a new tech receives the ticket, they have a concise summary of the ticket, its urgency, what’s already been tackled, and any other relevant details. This way, no team member has to spend time searching for information and catching up on a ticket; they’re immediately equipped with what they need to progress the request.
Similarly, some ITSM software will automatically add debriefing notes once a ticket is closed. This might include a reminder to send the client a survey and other details that are helpful for the entire team to see.
Ticket briefing and debriefing are simple but effective ways to keep everyone informed and working in harmony.
Immediately designating the priority of a new ticket does wonders for team alignment. When done automatically, this designation will help the entire team see the risk and urgency associated with a particular ticket, which will help decide who should tackle it and where it should be routed.
With priorities always in order, teams can stay aligned and always moving forward.
Team alignment is more important than ever before. Ultimately, the best ITSM software will have tools that ensure that every team member knows what to do, when to do it, and how to go about it, and that everyone is consistently on the same page.
Once teams are aligned, business leaders will see a boost in efficiency, a positive company culture, and have room to scale and succeed.
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