The Service Management Trends 2024

The new year is in the starting blocks and as we look forward to the developments in the ITSM market, I would like to share some of our thoughts and the trends in ITSM we see for 2024 and beyond! 

1. 2024 will be the year of AI in ITSM 

No doubt in tech industry last year was the year of AI. Going forward, we see that 2024 will be the year when AI makes the real impact on ITSM. There is a dire need for new approaches to improve efficiency and productivity in IT support. The job is getting harder by the day. The volume and complexity of services and requests are constantly increasing – and over 80 percent of service desk cases still require manual processing by agents. As a result, the cost per agent-contact has been increasing over the last three years.

We feel that this is not sustainable - and this is where AI can be the difference-maker to help IT work smarter. Currently AI tools are still in early adopter phase in many IT organizations. However, we believe this will change in 2024 and we will see mainstream adoption of AI in ITSM. This is driven by the significant developments in generative AI technologies and their widespread availability in business applications.  But technology availability alone is not enough. Wider adoption in ITSM will also rely on several other factors, such as AI’s ability to provide IT domain-specific intelligence, ease of use for end-users and trust and transparency within the organization.   

There are already several AI powered use cases where these elements come together. Such as AI-powered ticket communication, where AI can help agents by generating context-aware emails or chat responses that combine the ITSM insights with the generative capabilities of large language models – all while ensuring human agent stays always in control. Looking ahead, we believe that AI will be able to help both end-users and agents in multiple tasks, through various stages of the ticket  lifecycle. This type of holistic approach will be the key to unlock the real impact on efficiency and ultimately on higher employee and customer satisfaction.  

2. Data security and control remain an important ITSM topic

We see that organizations will continue to pay increasing attention to data control and transparency aspects of their ITSM solutions. Fueled by AI and the related vast increase in the use of data, more and more organizations are concerned about where their data will eventually reside. That’s why we believe next year will see an increasing number of organizations who want to host the software in their own data center of choice, where they know exactly where the data is, who is hosting it and how they can maintain control of it in all situations.  

Additionally, the severity and number of security threats related to user identities and credentials will continue to increase in 2024. Organizations will have to respond better than before and make their IT more resilient. Regular security audits, adherence to compliance standards and “security by design” will remain in focus – further underscored by new regulation such as the Cyber Resilience Act (CRA).  

We believe that going forward organizations will rely more heavily on the integration of identity and access rights management for the management of IT security risks, and will automate related processes (such as user onboarding and off-boarding) as part of their ITSM solutions. This will ensure that all IT activities comply with current and new security standards and compliance requirements. At the same time, they will proactively prevent cyber-attacks or limit their impact. 
 

3. Organizations will be balancing costs, flexibility, and growth 

Organizations must react ever more quickly to changing market conditions while at the same time keeping a tight rein on costs in the face of uncertain economic developments. This balancing act means that they are paying more attention to costs, efficiency and agility when designing their work and service processes.  

We therefore expect to see an increased demand in 2024 for tools that help them to meet these diverse needs. Tools that are easy to implement and adopt, so that organizations can get first core processes digitalized and automated with less time, cost and risk. And tools that are at the same time able to seamlessly expand to more processes, including Enterprise Service Management (ESM) – without having to accept significant additional costs. 

Many organizations are especially starting to feel their limits when facing increasing needs to expand. Such needs are not limited anymore to support processes like HR, finance, facilities, etc., but cover also processes at the core of organizations’ value chains. We believe this means organizations will increasingly look for versatile platforms that combine the best of both worlds: can be deployed quickly with core process available out-of-box, while also having flexibility to grow with agile software architecture, low code / no-code tools and easy ways to integrate. 

4. Employee experience continues to be top of mind for IT and business leaders

The skills shortage will accompany most organizations into the new year and employee satisfaction will be one of the top priorities for decision-makers to retain existing skilled workers. IT continues to have an increasingly important role to play here. Clumsy digital services reduce employee motivation and satisfaction. That is why IT and business leaders are paying more and more attention to the user experience of business applications their employees are using.   

While this is a good trend, there is still a long way to go. Bigger and more sustainable changes in employee experience will not happen with a single application or interface, but will require systematically consistent experience, aligned across all touch points where IT services are consumed and managed. And long-term, it also calls for mindset change from pure service-centric to more end-user centric approach. 

As a comparison point, modern consumer services are predominantly end-user centric. Which means the service is presented to an end-user in a personalized manner and is consumed to a great degree based on the individual users' preferences. In short, service is differentiated per end user. We believe there is great potential to follow a similar end-user centric paradigm in service management also. The ability to make processes aware of personalized insights is key to make the future service management more friendly to interact, accurate to individuals' needs and much more likely to increase subjective user experience.  
 

5. Sustainability comes into focus

Most organizations are working on plans to improve energy efficiency, reduce Scope 3 emissions and commit to international Corporate Social Standard (CSR) practices. In the coming year, organizations will increasingly look for suitable solutions in the form of Service Management systems, as they help to improve the energy efficiency of entire IT infrastructures through process automation and optimization measures. Monitoring and reporting tools help organizations to make CSR performance measurable and support the identification of potential for improvement. They create commitment and transparency through clearly defined responsibilities and processes. This strengthens the trust of customers, employees, and partners - and at the same time ensures compliance with legal regulations and reporting obligations. 

Thank you for reading my blog! Did it create thoughts or questions? Don’t hesitate to reach out to discuss more! 

Santeri (santeri.jussila@efecte.com)