As the trend toward digital transformation continues to accelerate, the need for businesses to streamline and simplify how they manage their IT infrastructure is increasingly critical. ITSM tools help teams standardize processes for resolving IT issues, streamline workflows, and, in theory, make data-driven decisions about how to best implement, manage and operate a business’s hardware and software resources.
But if data is missing, inaccurate, or incomplete, IT teams may lack the information they need to optimize IT performance or meet service-level agreements (SLAs) for internal and external customers. A lack of data about the IT infrastructure can also delay ticket resolution, which is costly. MetricNet reports that teams spend about $1.60 per minute resolving a ticket. With the average mean time to repair (MTTR) for failed or broken equipment taking more than 8 hours, costs pile up quickly, especially when you consider that most enterprises must process nearly 500 tickets per month.
“Lansweeper provides a single source of truth for IT asset data that can be leveraged across systems and teams, ensuring everyone is working from the exact same dataset — one that is always complete, accurate and up-to-date.”
Tom Petley, Product Manager at HaloITSM
Halo Service Solutions set out to tackle this issue with HaloITSM, an intuitive IT service management solution that empowers IT teams to deliver rapid, efficient ITIL-aligned services. In addition to being a mature and powerful tool, HaloITSM is also easy to use and administer and can be leveraged by both internal and external customers alike to troubleshoot and resolve IT service issues rapidly. Organizations around the world from multiple industries, including many public sector organizations and local governments, use HaloITSM as a service desk and enterprise service management solution.
Data Is the Foundation for Service Speed and Quality
Halo’s software addresses some of the many challenges IT organizations face in troubleshooting and resolving IT service issues. “Our customers want to move away from manual, error-prone processes that are time-consuming and inefficient,” said Tom Petley, Director, HaloITSM. “Instead of their phones ringing off the hook, having to sift through hundreds of email requests, or trying to help employees who stop by their physical desks asking for assistance, they want to empower people with self-service capabilities while streamlining processes to enable faster, more efficient issue resolution.”
According to Petley, older systems aren’t modern and rely heavily on email communication. “Legacy ITSM tools can be a bit clunky and require lots of clicks and steps to complete simple tasks,” he said. “Additionally, they often aren’t integrated with CMDB tools and provide very little information about devices and software that comprise the IT estate.”
In addition to lacking visibility and automation, legacy ITSM tools can also be difficult to administer and use, making it challenging for Service Desk staff to get the information they need for ticket handling.
To address these customer pain points, Halo made the decision to integrate its modern ITSM tool with Lansweeper’s market-leading IT asset management solution, which automates IT asset discovery and provides granular data about all connected IT, OT, and IoT devices across the IT estate in seconds.
Easy-to-Integrate and Use, Lansweeper Makes Data Access Seamless
Lansweeper provides a live feed of all of our customers’ assets, and they can choose what kind of information they want to collect, enabling them to map data to fields within HaloITSM. Lansweeper data is synced automatically behind the scenes, with no human intervention needed. Clicking a button within the HaloITSM interface enables users to see the full breadth of Lansweeper data.
“Lansweeper eliminates errors and enables real-time access to the data our customers need in seconds, which is extremely valuable and much more efficient than traditional methods for accessing that data,” said Petley. “Users don’t have to import potentially outdated spreadsheets and CSV files or enter data manually into the Software. Instead, they can configure the solution to bring in a subset of the Lansweeper data, while still having the option to toggle into the Lansweeper tool to see more granular data and pull it into HaloITSM, if needed.
”Petley added that because HaloITSM integrates with other business-critical software such as CMDBs and remote support tools like TeamViewer and BeyondTrust, those solutions can leverage Lansweeper data, as well. “Lansweeper provides a single source of truth for IT asset data that can be leveraged across systems and teams, ensuring everyone is working from the exact same dataset — one that is always complete, accurate, and up-to-date.” The integration enables you to:
- Automate IT asset discovery, eliminating manual, time-consuming tasks
- Support the development of self-service offerings, lightening the load on Service Desk staff
- Provide an easy-to-use, intuitive interface while supporting complex functionality
- Align with ITIL processes “out-of-the-box” and simplifies data governance
Combining Lansweeper & Halo ITSM
Achieve ITSM excellence by combining Lansweeper & HaloITSM.
Learn MoreIntegration Supports Self-Service Capabilities
According to Petley, the Lansweeper integration enhances the Service Desk staff’s ability to rapidly handle and resolve tickets, because all the information they need is at their fingertips. “If someone has an issue with a laptop or application, users can quickly retrieve a full history of all issues associated with that laptop, which can provide helpful context for resolving the current issue,” he said. “And if someone is requesting a new laptop or mobile device, Service Desk staff can quickly check their inventory and locate available devices.”
With all the information centralized and rapidly accessible, Halo’s customers can implement self-service capabilities to empower employees to help themselves when they have a service request or tech issue, saving the Service Desk team valuable time and effort. It also helps to reduce the MTTR, and improve service satisfaction.
Out-of-the-box ITIL Process Alignment
Another key benefit of the Lansweeper integration is “out-of-the-box” support for ITIL processes, Petley said. Implementing ITIL-aligned workflows and processes is critical to ensure a business is getting optimal value from its IT infrastructure, and that all IT investments and resources are supporting and aligned with business objectives. “Most customers tend to rely on our tool to provide best practices rather than reinventing the wheel each time,” Petley said. “With Lansweeper integrated with HaloITSM, customers can literally start using ITIL-aligned processes immediately, then tweak them and add in their own SLAs, categories, subcategories, and other customizations to meet their specific requirements.”
Similar Philosophies Strengthen Technology Partnership
According to Petley, Lansweeper has been a strong partner for Halo, given their similar philosophies and approach. “Lansweeper is easy-to-use and intuitive, which is how we strive to build our tools to be,” he said.
The biggest benefit? Having all the data in one place. Although some of Halo’s customers may already be using Lansweeper and have access to that information, the integration with HaloITSM makes the process seamless. “Without the integration, users can still go into Lansweeper to view the data, but access privileges can get in the way, making it more time-consuming and challenging to get the information they need,” he said. “With Lansweeper integrated and accessible right within the HaloITSM interface, it’s fast and easy to connect the dots and get the full picture.”
Your HaloITSM Agents have immediate access to all the asset information they need to provide your end-users with the best possible service. By linking incidents to the affected asset, you not only save time but also allows you to notice patterns of issues (re)occurring with the same devices. Moreover, HaloITSM provides you with a visual representation of the link between your assets. These dependency diagrams show you at a glance how an incident on one machine will affect any connected assets.
