ManageEngine, the real-time IT management company, today announced the results of its survey, Everything You Need to Know About ITSM Analytics: Industry Insight 2016. The survey reveals that 85 percent of users believe ITSM analytics will enhance IT service delivery, which includes 36 percent who believe that analytics would improve service desk efficiency and 30 percent who believe it would identify any gaps in the ITSM process. With regard to generating reports, 42.6 percent of users preferred to do it on their own, while 21 percent of them depended on third-party software or other teams.

ManageEngine conducted this survey to get more insight into the trends shaping the ITSM analytics market. The company polled 160 ManageEngine users — including CIOs, managers and technicians from around the globe — on their requirements for an advanced analytics tool to analyze their service desk data.

Over the past few years, IT service management (ITSM) has become an increasingly important part of an organization’s IT strategy, and they are seeking new ways to improve IT service delivery and efficiency via better ITSM processes. This makes it all the more important to track and measure critical KPIs. However, due to overwhelmingly large amounts of data, users find it challenging to manually access, track and analyze critical service desk information quickly. Analytics solutions enable users to visually analyze critical information so they can improve IT service delivery.

“While this survey highlights the importance of analytics when it comes to enhancing IT service delivery, it also sheds light on what users expect from an analytics tool,” said Sridhar Iyengar, vice president, ManageEngine. “There are currently many analytics tools in the market, but most are too complicated, require expert assistance, or are too time-consuming and expensive. Based on the survey findings, users want a self-service analytics tool that will allow them to build and personalize reports quickly. Empowering users in this regard is the first step toward achieving any form of process efficiency.”

Analytics for ITSM:  Survey Highlights

This survey identified some common data analysis challenges and preferences that service desk users share, including the following:

Report creation takes too long. Users still find it challenging to create reports, with 48 percent stating that they took more than 30 minutes to create a service desk report. As reporting is not a primary task for most IT users, they need to be able to create and share reports quickly with other decision makers.

Increased dependency on other sources. 42.6 percent of users prefer to build reports on their own and use a visually driven interface to analyze data. Visualization tools, including charts, tables and widgets, help users gain more insight from data. Query reports seem to be the second most popular option (29.6 percent), but non-technical managers either depend on third-party reporting software (13.2 percent) or contact the support team (8 percent) to generate reports.

Report customization is critical. 42.6 percent of respondents prefer custom reports over standard ones. When asked how many custom reports they have created, 34.7 percent reported that they have more than 10 in hand. When asked how frequently they generated reports, 33.5 percent said they did so on an ad hoc basis. Ad hoc reports tend to be more popular as they provide answers to particular questions and analyze specific data.

Incident management module needs more attention. When asked which modules need more reports, 22.5 percent of respondents chose incident management, 17.5 percent voted for asset management and 13.2 percent wanted more customization for change management. As the foundation of any ITSM system, incident management helps reduce the impact of an outage.

Deep analysis uncovers hidden gaps in ITSM process. 36 percent of respondents believe that an analytics tool would detect inefficiencies and gaps in the ITSM process, while 30.1 percent felt that reporting helps them identify problem areas and tackle issues, and 19 percent believe an analytics tool improves customer satisfaction. Proactive incident reporting helps teams easily detect repetitive issues, take stock of unprepared situations and, in general, work more efficiently.