Bizitalk: What is a Service Management Software

You may have heard this term tossed around quite a bit recently, but what is Service Management Software? It’s all in the name, folks: Service Management. Service Management Software (SMS) is a program designed to monitor and manage various business services.

SMS can range from IT Service Management to Help Desk SMS to Field SMS (FSM); currently FSM has the most potential for growth, but IT and business SM isn’t far behind. The SM sector, in general, has been steadily growing over the last decade or so, and it shows no signs of slowing down. Develop a custom service management software for your own business with experts in Silicon Valley.

The thing about computers and tech, in general, is that they are meant to make our lives easier (pay attention to the word “meant”). The software can be designed to streamline everyday duties, offer an easily accessible communications center, provide a ready-made problem/solution database, and much more.

Service Management Software is no different. It helps to improve business efficiency, organization, and mobility – not to mention reducing the possibility of mistakes. Look, we’re all humans and are thus bound to make human errors. But computers aren’t human (at least not yet) and they don’t make the same mistakes.

We’ve built hundreds of apps, websites, and programs, but custom software like Service Management systems are our favorite. The reason for this because they’re unique from every other project; custom software is built from the ground up to meet specific needs.

They’re tons of fun to build and our clients are always pleased by the quality of the software we build (our apps and websites are also great!) Why don’t we cover some areas showing especial growth within the service management software industry.

Field Service Management

While the SMS industry overall is undergoing a period of rapid growth, FSM is especially expanding quickly. This is largely tied to the explosion of mobile devices within the last 10 years. Prior to 2005 or so, the idea of trying to run an entire program off the phone was ludicrous – heck, cell phones themselves were pretty new.

FSM is intended to coordinate activities within an office to those without the office. For instance, a former job of mine was Telecommunications Compliance. We used an FSM software to coordinate with engineers in the field to verify cell tower details (i.e. height, GPS, antenna type, safety measures, etc).

The advantage of a FSMS over “old-school” methods of non-online software is near-instantaneous communication. Using our FSMS allowed us, the compliance regulator, to request and receive information while staff was still in the field – and let us fix issues right then and there.

Once, our client (I could tell you the client’s name, but then I’d have to kill you. Let’s just say it’s a well-known 3 lettered phone company) had to wait months, sometimes years to get minor problems fixed. When they made the switch from standard software to mobile service management software, cell tower downtime decreased substantially.

So FSMS helped “** & $” put their cell towers online much quicker, decreased the number of fines being issued by the government, and even eased communication between “** & $” and the local community. Needless to say, I doubt “** & $” will be switching back to the old way of doing things anytime soon.

IT Management Custom Software

IT departments are notoriously difficult to manage, often unwieldy, and seemingly always understaffed – or the exact opposite; but unfortunately it is a necessary component to most modern businesses (read more on how to reduce your IT demands here).

Fortunately, IT Service Management (ITSM) is a pretty established field and ITSMS is going strong. Basically, ITSM software manages, directs, and decides how IT services are provided to clients. To be clear, ITSM is different from ITIL, or IT Infrastructure Library. The two are often conflated, but they are slightly different.

General Business Service Management

ITSM and FSM are two of the biggest segments of the SM sector, but they are not the only. A reliable software development firm can design a service management system to do practically anything.

We have built systems that track and manage everything from Business to Business services to Business to Consumer – and everything in between. One of our favorite projects involved building a service management system that could incorporate over 100 warehouses with inside and outside sales. It was a big project that spanned several companies, but it was the type of project we love: big, meaty, and an absolute joy to build.

Do you work at a company that still uses old school service management methods? Often, CEOs and management fail to realize how much of help custom software can be to a company. SDI specializes in custom software development, having built solutions for clients in 40+ countries. We work with some of the leading brands of the world such as Pepsi, Marvel, Stanford University to name a few.

Speak to expert developers at SDI now to learn all a SMS can do for you and your business. Email team@sdi.la or call Rob directly on 408.805.0495 and get 30% off your entire project.