What is ITSM? Definition, Benefits, and Best Practices (2026 Guide)

What is ITSM? Why is it important? What are its benefits, and what are the quick wins? This article covers the essentials for anyone building or evaluating an ITSM function, from the definition and its history to the practical outcomes IT teams can expect once the discipline is running properly across the organization.
Service Model Development Using ITIL 4 for Effective Service Delivery

If you’re a large organization, or an IT service provider offering services to large enterprises, reviewing your standard service model on a regular basis is imperative to keep it aligned with your business and IT strategy. Graham Heard explains why the review is essential, and how to create a service model if you don’t already have one in place.
SIAM (Service Integration and Management) Explained: Framework & Benefits

Service integration and management (SIAM), or multisourcing service integration, is a strategy organizations utilize to coordinate numerous internal and external service providers. This article offers quick insight into what it is and how it works.
Kotter Change Management: How to Apply the 8 Steps Successfully

Kotter’s 8-step Model is one of the most widely adopted approaches to change management globally. This article walks through what each of the eight steps involves, how they connect, and how ITSM and change enablement teams can put the model to work without reducing it to a checklist. It also covers where the model is most often misapplied.
Change Enablement in ITIL 4: Definition, Practice & Best Approaches

Change enablement in ITIL 4 is the practice of making sure changes to IT services and infrastructure are implemented with minimum risk and disruption, while still delivering the value the change was supposed to bring. This article covers what shifted between ITIL v3’s change management and ITIL 4’s change enablement, why the shift is important, and what the practical difference looks like day to day.
How to Define, Measure, and Report IT Service Availability That Truly Reflects Customer Value

To measure, document, and report IT service availability in ways that are useful to your organization and its customers, you need to do two things. Stuart Rance walks through what those two things are, why the standard availability reports most organizations produce fail to give a useful picture, and how to get to something better.
ITIL 4 Service Value Chain: Model, Activities, and Examples

Daniel Breston takes a closer look at the ITIL 4 Service Value Chain and asks you to observe and consider what the framework depicts against the way you deliver value with technology-based solutions today. A practical prompt to test whether the model is describing what your organization does, or what it thinks it does.
Service Desk Best Practices: What to Do When Users Don’t Respond

How should a service desk deal with end user unresponsiveness? Here we look at various opinions sourced from the Back2ITSM Facebook group. First in 2016 and now in 2023.
Getting More from ITSM Vendors: Beyond Tools and Transactions

People don’t benefit from ITSM tool vendors as much as they could. Here Stephen Mann asks ITSM Vendors to share their best ITSM tips and advice.
Customer Service Isn’t About You: Rethinking What “Good” Really Means

When you’re giving, or receiving, good customer service do you stop to consider these four points? They could help improve your experience.
Why an IT Hero Culture is Bad for Customers

Once you recognize that your IT organization has an IT hero culture, and that it’s not that great for your business, what can you do about it?
How to Reduce Service Desk Agent Stress: 11 Practical Tips for IT Support Teams

How do you start to dealing with service desk agent stress. Here you’ll find 11 tips to reduce stress based on latest GFI Research findings.
When Service Desk Scripts Fail: How “Good” Customer Support Turns Bad

This article is about a personal customer support experience with a very successful online retailer and what IT support organizations can learn from it.
Technical Support Is Really Customer Support (Here’s Why It Matters)

Let’s stop reinforcing the fact that technical support fixes IT, it really fixes the issues people have because IT isn’t working.
7 Fun Service Desk Tips from the Greatest Wizard of All Time

Ever wondered what sage IT service desk and IT service management advice Dumbledore would offer to IT support teams and personnel? Well here you go…