some of main criterias you need to know when selecting ITSM tool

1. How to select suitable ITSM tool
By: Mohamed Zohair
Business Development Consultant
Fingerprint Consultancy
mzohair@fpconsultancy.com

2. ITIL framework alignment
Using of an ITIL aligned tool empowers the
benefits behind the straightforward features
and only makes sense if processes, people,
and products (IT services) are truly ITIL
aligned. You should be aware that most of
ITSM project may take up to a year with not
clear scope. So, implemented ITIL aligned
ITSM tool can help to save time and money

3. Self-service portal
Today the self service portal for the IT sections
is nothing new. The trick is that most portals
have been designed by IT with IT in mind. So,
the good ITSL vendor has make the selfservice portal rabidly and easy for your end
users to use, or they simply will not use it. by
reducing calls to the service desk staff, the
more valuable time will be saved to increase
the productivity and service quality

4. CMDB integration
Is there any ITSM tool not integrates with
CMDB? I think no, but what's level of
integration we talk about? Let us start with
CMDB definition as a single repository that is
designed to store many of information system
components. The main objective of CMDB is
to help an IT staff to understand the
relationships between different components
and track their configuration. Yes, the CMDB is
the fundamental component of configuration
management process but it's one of more
(assets) that used in incident, problem,
knowledge, change and asset management
process.

5. Customization readiness
In effect, implementing a tool with the "Out of
the box" features gives the organization a solid
foundation and usually shown as a reasonable
starting point, especially for organizations that
have not defined their processes. But the
perfect ITSM tool must be ready for any
required customization and perform code
changes within the tool.

6. Technology Integration
The main activities are considered with ITSM
tool integrations are (Service Level,
Configuration, and Financial Management for
IT). The perfect ITSM tool must integrate
successfully with the Service Level
Management component, Directory services
tools (e.g. MS Active Directory) and financial
tools especially for configuration Items CIs.
From other technical perspective the ITSM tool
should integrate with notification methods (e.g.
Email and SMS) that notify the technical staff
that there is something wrong happened.

7. Scalability and Sizing
it's one of selection criteria you need to pay more
attention. In particular, Most of ITSM tool vendors
provide the “Standard Configurations” of a small,
medium, and large size, and then give some level
of detail as to appropriate user counts and monitor
response time for each architectural configuration.
Whenever possible, you should check the ITSM
tool scalability prior to placing it in your
environment. Most of ITSM tool vendors provide
sizing tool helping IT decision makers to check
ITSM tool scalability / sizing features that may be
straightforward test or even can be accomplished
with little additional work beyond the hardware
setup and operating system configuration.

8. Reporting capability
The reports can be used to control, Measure, predict and
improve the process performance. The reports also can
measure attainment of strategic, tactical and operation
performance goal. The ITSM perfect tool should use
meaningful metrics (calculation) which help measuring
true and accurate process characteristics such as
Compliance, Quality, Performance and Value. An
organization uses reports to "know" some common
practice done inside it. and ITSM tool must help to deliver
such as
– Measure what they can given available data versus what
they should to
– Focus on operation performance
– Manually produce reports

9. Cost
ITSM tool has essentially changed the cost
battle by reducing the ongoing infrastructure
costs, resource costs and maintenance costs.
Its not about just the basic amount will pay
initially to tool vendor. It's about HW
infrastructures required, other SW tools,
supported database, ITSM licenses,
implementation agency professional services
fees, training, upgrade license (or fees ) and
support. The good ITSM tool which can reduce
the total cost of ownership TCO and
operational cost.