Why Cloud Based ITSM Is Ideal For Small & Mid-size Organizations

The purpose of an IT Service Management (ITSM) solution is to enable and support the IT organization.  For a small or mid-size business with a small IT budget and limited staffing, implementing a cloud based ITSM solution can be a great way to improve productivity and increase the impact from the limited resources you have.  

There are a lot of ITSM options available on the market today and it is important to find a solution that is the right scale for your organization.  In the same way that you wouldn’t use a full-blown ERP and financial management platform (like SAP) to manage a simple household budget, a small or mid-size business needs an ITSM system scaled for their organization’s needs and complexity.  On-premise options may provide the flexibility and customization options that large enterprises demand but for smaller organizations, an on-premise solution can be overkill and cloud-based ITSM solutions are a better choice.  

Key differentiators of cloud based ITSM

Features

Cloud based ITSM offerings are full-featured solutions What makes cloud based options different from on-premise ITSM is that you aren’t paying for a bunch of features that you may not need – billing is typically based on usage.  For smaller companies, this is important because you will likely need access to a full suite of features but only have a few staff using them until your company grows.  

Speed of implementation

As a small or mid-size business, you likely don’t have the time or resources to support a long implementation project to install an ITSM system.  Cloud based options are already up and running and in many cases can be ready for your company to use within a few hours or days instead of the weeks or months required for most on-premise solutions.  

Overhead cost

One of the most appealing benefits of cloud-based ITSM solutions is the avoidance of overhead costs (of both money and people).  Because the service provider operates the system, there are no up-front capital outlays for hardware and software and the vendor is responsible for maintaining the system as you use it.  ITSM system capabilities change rapidly as technology evolves and keeping up to date on patching and the latest feature releases can be a time consuming activity that small IT departments aren’t staffed to support.  With cloud-based ITSM systems, your IT staff can spend more time focusing on your business instead of maintaining their tools.

Scalability

As your company grows, your ITSM system will need to grow with it – both in capacity and in the sophistication of features that your IT department uses.  Cloud-based ITSM solutions are designed to support organizations of various sizes and (even more importantly) to support organizations changing sizes.  Shared infrastructure, security and provisioning models, usage based billing and standard APIs for integrating with other systems enable your ITSM system to grow with your company.

Ease of use

To make Cloud based ITSM solutions usable to a diverse audience of organizations, they are built around industry standard processes and best practices (such as ITIL) and come with pre-configured metrics and reporting capabilities to enable management to monitor the performance of your service management processes.  Intuitive user interfaces, out-of-box processes, and readily available training materials make cloud-based ITSM solutions easy for both IT and business users to learn quickly – accelerating time to value for your company.

For most smaller companies, a cloud based ITSM system is ideal – providing the features you need, without a lot of overhead at a cost that works for your business.  As your company grows, a cloud-based solution will be able to grow with you.