Why Buying a New ITSM Tool

Larger enterprises often end up with separate IT organizations across different countries - usually the result of rapid, unplanned growth. Managing these disconnected teams, each with their own ITSM tools, makes it hard to standardize enterprise-wide IT services and unlock synergies. 

The same challenge arises when one IT organization relies on separate tools for IT Service Management, Service Desk, IT Asset Management, and other disciplines. These silos slow down processes, and media breaks lead to human errors.

As organizations grow, they often reach a point where their current ITSM tool no longer provides the features needed to stay competitive. Key capabilities like process automation (even across multiple systems), AI-driven efficiency, self-service portals to enhance the user experience, or support for additional ITIL practices are often missing. 

Even when vendors offer new versions with some of these features, heavy customizations can make migration difficult. Upgrading often feels impossible without rebuilding everything from scratch. 

Many ITSM vendors offer SaaS subscriptions with short 12-month contract periods. At first glance, this sounds appealing—you get the flexibility to switch if the promised benefits don’t materialize.  

But there’s a catch: Lately, we’ve seen vendors significantly increase subscription renewal costs or introduce new licensing metrics that add extra charges for features that were previously free. In both cases, ITSM customers see costs rise much faster than expected, putting them under pressure to find more cost-effective alternatives.  

Figuring out the economic benefits of a new ITSM tool isn’t always easy. We're here to help, so let’s start with the key advantages you’ll get by upgrading to a state-of-the-art solution:

Boost IT Efficiency

• Automate ticket qualification and dispatching: With the use of AI agents there’s no need any more to manually analyze, qualify and dispatch incoming tickets to the appropriate support group.
• Speed up incident resolution: by using a CMDB for better root-cause analysis, applying proven solutions suggested by AI agents, tapping into an AI-supported knowledge base, and allowing AI agents to automatically detect major incidents.
• Reduce incidents: Reduce the number of incidents by making safer changes with AI-based risk assessments, automatically detecting problems with AI, using self-healing processes to fix issues before they escalate, and empowering users with AI-driven self-service support.
• Accelerate service delivery: Improve service delivery by offering a service shop with standardized services and automating workflows for faster request processing.

Increase User Productivity

• Minimize outages: faster incident resolution means less downtime for your end-users.
• Speed-up support: Streamline support with a self-service portal for quicker issue resolution and automated fulfillment for faster service requests. Quicker services mean higher productivity across the enterprise.

To roughly estimate the savings from these workload reductions you can apply a simple calculation:

Savings = saved effort / time * average costs of a working hour

But depending on your situation there might be more savings you could achieve with a new ITSM solution:

Cut License and Support Costs

• Reduce number of tools: Cut costs by consolidating fragmented tools into a central ITSM solution, eliminating extra support and subscription fees. 
• Reduce subscription fees: Choose a vendor with a transparent, stable, and easy-to-understand pricing model to avoid surprises with upgrades and renewals and ensure investment protection.

If these savings sound promising, you're probably wondering which ITSM vendors are a good fit. Let’s break this down step by step. In this phase we'll look at the different types of vendors.

Browsing through the internet quickly unveils hundreds of ITSM vendors. A rough segmentation helps to narrow down your search. The IT Service Management (ITSM) tool vendor market is segmented based on various factors such as functionality, target audience, deployment model, pricing, industry focus and geographic reach. Here's a breakdown of the different types of ITSM vendors and how you can differentiate them. 

Enterprise ITSM Vendors

These tools are designed for large organizations or service providers with complex IT environments, compliance requirements, and extensive service management needs. They typically also offer a complete range of ITSM capabilities, including incident management, problem management, change management, asset management, CMDB, self-service portals, and ITOM/ITAM integration. 

SMB-Focused ITSM Vendors

Cater to small and medium-sized businesses, offering simplified ITSM functionalities with an emphasis on ease of use and affordability. 

Best-of-Breed/Niche Vendors

Specialize in specific ITSM functionalities such as ticketing, IT asset management (ITAM), or automation. 

Now that you have identied saving potentials and know which vendor type would be a fit, it's time to convince your organizations to take the next steps.

Relax—you’re still in the problem identification phase. There’s no need to rush. Right now, your goal is to spark interest and get stakeholders to explore this opportunity, not to push for immediate approval. At this stage, a full business plan isn’t necessary. 

Here’s how to move your organization forward:

• Identify the key problems a new state-of-the-art ITSM tool can solve. 
• Estimate the potential economic benefits by summarizing the main advantages from the list above and assigning their cost-saving potential. 
• Validate your findings with colleagues who share your vision.
• Present your case to your manager to gain buy-in for the next steps. 

Great—hopefully you’ve secured buy-in from your management and brought more people on board. Now it’s time to move into the next phase.