Cherwell signals expanding ITSM opportunity

The growing need for improved employee experiences, along with the growth of no-code options, is giving those in the channel with IT service management (ITSM) expertise the chance to aim for a bigger opportunity.

The message coming out of the recent Cherwell Clear event was that as the world of work is changing, the time is right for a conversation about how firms want to work with their staff to cover their ITSM needs.

Phil Bowermaster, principal product marketing manager at Cherwell Software, said the situation had evolved that traditional ITSM specialists were having to cover customer service management and security, and cope with workflow processes that had been written by staffers trying to find a quick solution to their problems.

“We are looking to create the best possible employee experience for these technicians and these admins who are working as a service manager, so we put a platform in place that allows you to engage with basically omnichannel engagement,” he said. “That should drive that much better employee experience, because you have got the engagements, you have the automation integration and you have everything in place to give them the same experience across all these different areas where they’re getting service management.”

Cherwell is encouraging its partners to follow the lead of customers and provide them with the answers they need to keep their evolving ITSM situation on track to deliver decent employee experiences.

“As you have people working remotely, and kind of more independently in a lot of ways, I think the value of being able to get under the hood a little bit and tinker around with it yourself and start creating your own experiences really started to catch on and I think it’s increasingly seen as a net plus for the organisation that you have that,” said Bowermaster.

Mark Jenner, CEO of AFJ Solutions, a Cherwell partner, has also seen customer demands change and the opportunity widen for those with ITSM expertise.

“A typical customer journey still tends to start with most clients from the traditional ITSM space – the ITSM aspect of it is still very important to our clients,” he said, adding that even with additional features such as AIOps, its core expertise still mattered to a lot of customers.

“Businesses more and more see the technology is a core aspect of the business,” he said, pointing out that more customers are keen to have a conversation about using automation to improve their operations.

“If you are bringing in automation, you can control cost growth through automation and you can reduce costs with automation, while still delivering all those good things such as customer experience improvements in quality,” added Jenner.