4 Signs It's Time to Replace Your ITSM System

4 Signs It's Time to Replace Your ITSM System

How do you know when your organization needs to change its ITSM system? We posed this question to our partners — certified ITIL specialists who work on automating IT processes. After gathering their responses, we identified four key indicators that suggest it might be time to replace your corporate ITSM system.

The Role of an ITSM System in a Company

An ITSM (IT Service Management) system is a unified tool for managing IT services within an organization. It's a crucial part of a company's digital infrastructure, helping to maintain operations and ensure services are delivered at an agreed-upon level.

Once an ITSM product is implemented, processes are configured around it, and employees are trained, it can be quite challenging to switch to a new solution, even if issues arise with the old one. As a result, companies often find themselves stuck with an ITSM system that hinders their development rather than supporting their business processes.

So, how do you recognize when it's truly time for a change? Let's examine four main signs.

Signals to Watch Out For

1. FUNCTIONALITY ISSUES

The system's functionality should precisely match the company's needs and requirements, and the software itself should make specialists' work easier.

It's worth considering a change in your ITSM tool if:

• The system doesn't address all necessary tasks, forcing employees to use additional applications.
• Accessing data becomes difficult.
• The reports generated by the system do not meet the company's established reporting standards.
• There's existing functionality within the system that no one uses anymore.
• Modern, relevant features that users have come to expect — such as a mobile app, a comprehensive knowledge base, or multi-channel support — are missing.

A mismatch between your company's requirements and the system's capabilities is a strong reason to consider replacing an outdated system with a more modern one.

2. THE SYSTEM IS UNRELIABLE

Even the most robust software periodically requires downtime for planned maintenance or updates. Typically, these are scheduled for evenings or nights to inconvenience the fewest users possible. The vendor should provide advance notice of such activities so that all data and information can be properly backed up.

If your ITSM solution experiences sudden, unplanned service interruptions, it's a serious problem that will cost you time and money, not to mention the risk of data loss.

A clear indicator of a developer's reliability is the speed at which system updates or new releases are deployed after being announced. If new versions are consistently delayed, this could be a valid argument for changing not only the solution but also the vendor.

3. DIFFICULT TO IMPLEMENT CHANGES

Over time, a company's needs evolve, and corporate tools can't always keep pace with these changes. Consider an example: a company sets new goals that require rethinking current processes within the ITSM system. These transformations might involve migrating the system to the cloud, automating tasks, adding new products or services to the catalog, or transitioning some employees to remote work while ensuring they remain connected regardless of their location.

Or, imagine a company that uses its ITSM system to support internal users, and then at some point, it decides to also organize external customer support. Not every ITSM system can handle this task. Providing two lines of support simultaneously means organizing multiple self-service portals within one system, each with different designs, functions, authentication systems, and agent interfaces.

Could your current ITSM system handle such scenarios? Does the system adapt quickly and effectively to changes within your company? If the answer is no, this is definitely another sign that you should consider replacing your ITSM tool.

Another important aspect of customizations is how long they take. For systems that were popular 5-10 years ago, it was common for functionality enhancements to take days or even weeks. Nowadays, with modern solutions, developing new functionality often takes hours. If you're waiting months for changes to be deployed, you're waiting too long.

4. HIGH TOTAL COST OF OWNERSHIP (TCO)

Investment in a product isn't limited to its initial purchase and implementation. As the system is used over time, ongoing costs build up in addition to the license fees. For example, you need to consider the cost of computing resources and server space. As the company scales, the load on the system increases — the number of users working simultaneously in the system grows. To serve them, you need to add resources. Naturally, some solutions use computing and server resources more efficiently than others. As a rule, more modern solutions provide the same level of performance and fault tolerance on significantly smaller server capacities. Thus, if your company has been using a particular system for a long time, its costs should be periodically re-analyzed, refreshing data on all expenses.

You also need to consider the cost of additional licenses. Over time, a company might need to purchase more licenses, and their cost could have changed. It might turn out that migrating to a new, more modern system is not significantly more expensive than staying with the old one.

Some systems require additional payment for updates — over and above the paid subscription. Each year, the system should be updated, and in such cases, you also have to pay for new functionality. If the cost of updates rises, so do the expenses of owning the system. Consequently, this is also a reason to consider ITSM systems whose updates are included in the product subscription itself. SimpleOne ITSM, for example, is one such system.

Questions regarding expenses can help set priorities correctly: How much does it cost to maintain the current solution? How much does its development cost? If a company spends X amount per year supporting an old system, could that same X amount cover migration to a new solution?

Effective and uninterrupted IT service delivery contributes to the growth of performance indicators in core departments that directly create products or provide services. That's why it's so important to ensure that the software used in the IT department is viable, meets the company's needs, and evolves with it.

Even if your organization operates in the most conservative and stable sector, regulatory standards and governmental decrees are sometimes updated, and life circumstances change, requiring adaptation. This is why it's crucial that your chosen software can quickly adapt to new conditions when necessary, doesn't stagnate, and doesn't hold the entire company back with it.

If you recognize your company in the criteria mentioned, feel free to contact us to discuss the possibilities of replacing your current software with SimpleOne ITSM.