IT teams are busy. Really busy. And as their to-do lists continue to grow, they’ll need all the help they can get. And that’s where IT service management (ITSM) comes in. At its core, ITSM is designed to streamline processes and procedures associated with all aspects of IT service.In this blog, we’re specifically focusing on the ITSM tools that make it all possible. For example, Jira is a popular service management tool that has been adopted for ITSM purposes. But is it really the most affordable and comprehensive ITSM tool available? Let’s find out.
What Are ITSM Tools?
Firstly, let’s discuss what ITSM tools are and list the common features associated with the best ITSM platforms. ITSM tools are software platforms used to support critical IT operations like implementing new technologies and processes. Ideally, ITSM tools help companies streamline the workflows of daily IT operations. Here are just a few of the most useful and popular features of ITSM tools.
- Analytics & Insight Management: IT teams need to derive actionable and accurate insights from their data, and fast. ITSM tools like the Startly platform come equipped with analytics and dashboarding capabilities that make it simple to organize and visualize complex datasets.
- Organizational Governance: Increased popularity of remote work and greater collaboration between IT and other departments means having a strong operational foundation in place is vital. The best ITSM tools help implement and enforce IT policies by streamlining processes like contract compliance management, organizational structure management, and expense policy management.
- Service Management: An ITSM ticketing tool helps organize and manage service tickets and requests, optimizing the entire service process. This helps teams stay on track, deliver a better customer experience, and increase the productivity of the IT team.
- Time & Expense Management: Having complete visibility regarding costs is a vital asset for all IT teams. ITSM tools make it faster and simpler to manage your entire organization’s time and expense needs.
Now that we’ve gone over the most desirable features of ITSM tools, let’s discover how the Jira platform stacks up.
So, Can Jira Be Used for ITSM?
In short, yes, Jira can be used for ITSM. The Jira service desk functions to support issue tracking and project management. The Jira tool, created by the software company Atlassian, has been adopted mainly by software development and agile teams because of its bug tracking and other capabilities. Jira offers work management functionalities including scrum boards, kanban boards, project roadmaps, and more. When it comes it ITSM specifically, here are the main Jira service management features:
- Request Management
- Incident Management
- Problem Management
- Change Management
- Configuration Management
- Knowledge Management
Although the Jira ITSM tool is fairly well stacked, it does come with some significant downsides including:
- A complex user-interface that is difficult to set up and train workers to use.
- The user-interface also makes managing multiple tasks fairly difficult.
- Jira lacks project tracking timeline capabilities.
- Jira service management pricing may be out of budget for most IT teams.
- Jira primarily functions to serve engineering teams.
- Customizing workflows is especially difficult.
All of these criticisms were listed on Gartner’s software review webpage for Jira. If you want a comprehensive idea of what Jira has to offer, warts and all, you can view their product reviews on Gartner’s site.
Skip the Hassle, Use Startly
Although Jira does offer many appealing ITSM features, many contend that it’s too complex and expensive to implement. On the flip side, Startly is an affordable, all-in-one solution to ITSM. Our platform is designed for ease-of-use without sacrificing total flexibility and functionality. Startly makes tracking time and expenses, service tickets, service management, and other critical aspects of the day-to-day IT processes simple. Want to see Startly in action? Check out our product video or try our product for free!