Is Unstructured Messaging Impeding Your Workflows?

If you’re anything like us, your email processes look something like this…

Let’s cover the basics: a requestor is someone who is…you guessed it…requesting something from a service provider. A service provider is… yep, right again!…someone within your organization that provides a service (which is basically everyone). And the request process probably goes something like this:

1. An employee requests company’s USB drives that have the logo printed on them for a conference he’s attending in a week.
2. Because he doesn’t know who the proper person is to direct this request, the IT service desk receives his email. The service desk directs the  requestor’s email to their manager to make sure it’s okay.
3. The requestor’s manager sees it, and she double checks the request with the requestor.
4. The requestor says that yes, he did indeed ask for the USB drives.
5. The manager then remembers that this is a marketing request and asks a marketing executive at the company, if it’s okay that they take some USB drives to the conference for branding.
6. The marketing executive approves the idea and replies to her email.
7. The IT service desk then circles back to the manager to confirm the request is taken care of and that they can close this random ticket.

While this process may not necessarily be that time consuming (or, let’s be real, it could be depending on how often people in your company check their email during the day), but seven emails floating around? Just for a simple request?

There’s far too many emails floating around for something that, in an ideal world, would be a simple conversation. And that’s where the service catalog comes in.

Through the service catalog that the company has, the provider is able to see the request — but only after the service catalog recognizes the type of request that the requester has submitted and knows that it will need the approval of the requester’s manager and the executive above her. After it gets all of the approvals needed in the workflow, it will then notify the correct service provider, who will see the permissions have been fulfilled and they can prepare the USB drives to the requester. Easier, seamless, and automated — all without the need for email.