Like many people in IT and IT service management (ITSM) roles, I love getting access to ITSM statistics and opinions on what they mean. If there are also tips on how to achieve success or to improve, then all the better. There’s a “but” here, though – while I love ITSM statistics, I hate it when I find something (usually via Google) that looks like a really interesting data point, but when I go to use it, and track down the source, I find that it’s a decade old. Its continued use is like the world and ITSM haven’t changed much in the last ten years!
Often the articles that share these aged stats are created purely for search engine optimization (SEO) purposes (and it seems to work given that I, unfortunately, find them). Still, there’s no need for any list of important stats to be so dated.
This ITSM statistics article has been written to prove my point – that an author can write something for SEO that actually helps, and doesn’t mislead, the human readers. So please keep reading to quickly consume a list of nine valuable ITSM statistics included in the reports ITSM.tools has helped to produce.
1 – ITSM success levels (a key ITSM statistic)
The AXELOS 2022 ITSM Benchmarking Report (which is full of great ITSM statistics) found that half of the organizations feel their ITSM capabilities are “good” or “great.” It’s a self-rating of success, which must be born in mind. One-quarter of organizations feel they are “getting there,” and another that they have “still much to improve upon.” It’s, therefore, a roughly 50-50 split between ITSM success and the need for continuing improvement to achieve a suitable level of ITSM maturity.
New data from @AXELOS_GBP shows roughly 50-50 split between #ITSM success and the need for continuing improvement to achieve a suitable level of ITSM maturity. Click To Tweet2 – The link between ITSM success and digital transformation success
Close to 60% of the organizations that reported “great” ITSM success in the AXELOS survey also reported their digital transformation achievements as “great.” This correlation certainly has a feel-good factor as an ITSM statistic even when we remember that “correlation does not imply causation.” So, the next closest group, in terms of “great” digital transformation success, was the “good” ITSM-success organizations at less than 10%.
3 – The link between ITSM success and enterprise service management success
The AXELOS survey also found that the organizations that reported “great” ITSM success were most likely to have advanced enterprise service management (ESM) success. Over 90% of these organizations had in-flight enterprise service management initiatives versus the survey population’s 51%. This is one of the ITSM statistics that will hopefully shine a light on what’s needed for ESM success.
4 – Employee well-being is still an issue for ITSM (sadly an underappreciated ITSM statistic)
The State of Service Management 2021 survey, produced with Praecipio Consulting, found that while slightly improved in 2021, employee well-being is still a cause for concern. 58% of survey respondents reported that work adversely affects their personal well-being. This is, unfortunately, three out of every five employees.
5 – People expect working in IT to get harder
Again this ITSM statistic is from the Praecipio survey – 81% of respondents thought working in their team would get harder over the next three years. An interesting correlation was that respondents who felt they got insufficient recognition were likelier to believe that working in their team would get harder over the next three years.
6 – ITSM process adoption levels (the ITSM statistic people often want to know)
As expected, service desk and incident management were the ITSM capabilities that scored highest in the AXELOS Benchmark survey – with 89% adoption and 52% and 49% “working well,” respectively. However, these are the only two ITSM capabilities that scored above the thirties for “working well.”
According to a new survey from @AXELOS_GBP & @ITSM_tools service desk & incident management are the only two practices that scored over 30% when asking people how well their #ITSM capabilities work. Click To TweetBut the last place of knowledge management, in terms of “working well,” is probably the most interesting insight, especially given its importance to many aspects of ITSM – from process enablement, through self-service, to AI-enabled capabilities.
7 – Self-service success levels
A late-2021 self-service survey with Freshworks found that organizations still struggle to deliver the capabilities that employees want and like to use:
- Only one in five organizations reported achieving the expected ROI for their IT self-service investment
- 30% reported a “just good enough” success
- 19% stated that it’s “not a success but still workable”
- 10% of organizations need to revisit their self-service capabilities, and another 2% gave up on them
- Interestingly, 13% of organizations still don’t offer an IT self-service portal capability to employees
From an end-user perspective, HappySignals experience data based on 393,425 pieces of end-user feedback over the last six months of 2021 highlighted that the self-service portal has:
- The lowest level of end-user happiness (73) – although, as with most channels, this has risen significantly as HappySignals customers have improved their capabilities based on the feedback
- The highest level of end-user lost productivity at 3 hours and 51 minutes – 78% more than what’s lost when end-users go via the telephone channel.
So, it’s not just industry surveys that continue to highlight issues with IT self-service capabilities; end-user experience data does too.
8 – The influence of ITSM tools on ITSM success
Logic says that how an ITSM tool performs affects ITSM success but does it? So what do our ITSM statistics say?
The correlation of the AXELOS Benchmarking survey data found that the organizations reporting “great” ITSM success were happier with their ITSM tool and at least twice as likely to have used it for more than two years. Plus, these organizations all have an ITSM tool.
Whereas those organizations not reporting ITSM success (yet) make up the majority of organizations without an ITSM tool and those replacing their ITSM tool (now or soon).
9 – Employee experience interest within ITSM
The AXELOS survey data found that two-thirds of organizations understand the need to deliver a better employee experience, with another 18% expecting to in 2022. Only 9% thought that their organizations would never see the need.
The organizations that reported “great” or “good” ITSM success were more likely to understand the need to deliver a better employee experience. However, there’s a big difference between knowing something needs doing and acting on it.
Data from @AXELOS_GBP & @ITSM_tools finds that two-thirds of organizations understand the need to deliver a better employee experience, with another 18% expecting to in 2022. #EX #ITSM Click To TweetThese are just some of the ITSM statistics created from our co-created surveys in the last 18 months. To keep them coming, please help us to help you by taking the time to participate. Hopefully we will have another ITIL survey soon.
If you like this ITSM statistics article, you might like these other ITAM articles.
Stephen Mann
Principal Analyst and Content Director at the ITSM-focused industry analyst firm ITSM.tools. Also an independent IT and IT service management marketing content creator, and a frequent blogger, writer, and presenter on the challenges and opportunities for IT service management professionals.
Previously held positions in IT research and analysis (at IT industry analyst firms Ovum and Forrester and the UK Post Office), IT service management consultancy, enterprise IT service desk and IT service management, IT asset management, innovation and creativity facilitation, project management, finance consultancy, internal audit, and product marketing for a SaaS IT service management technology vendor.
