Let’s be honest here — manual IT ticketing is a thing of the past. So why are some IT departments still fielding phone calls, emails, chats, and Slack messages?
It can feel daunting to integrate an automated IT ticketing system into your business, but trust us when we say that it will make a huge difference in your day-to-day work life.
What is an IT ticketing system?
An IT ticketing system is a tool that’s used to track IT service requests, events, incidents, and any other occurrences that might require further action from the IT department.
A “ticket” refers to a document or record that denotes a need for action from the IT department. It usually contains contextual details about the event in question, and it may also include information about the person who submitted the ticket.
Tickets are generally employee-generated, but some comprehensive IT automation software packages can also generate tickets automatically. IT ticketing systems collect tickets submitted through a variety of different channels in one central location, assign each ticket to an IT agent to resolve, and log detailed information about the ticket’s events.
As your business grows, it’s especially important to invest in an IT ticketing system. As you’re working with more and more employees, you’ll be fielding calls from all directions, and your ticketing process can quickly get hectic. An effective IT ticketing system can streamline your workday by handling incoming tickets, assigning them, and logging their resolution.
Why your business needs a ticketing system
Whether you’re an in-house IT department or an MSP (managed service provider), your business can benefit from ticketing software to help streamline incoming requests and make resolution easier, faster, and more efficient.
#1: Set yourself up to scale
As businesses scale, one of the biggest hurdles they often face is project management. An IT ticketing system is a type of process automation. As your business grows, emails and phone calls to the IT department are simply not going to suffice to ensure all issues get taken care of. You need an organized system for receiving, categorizing, assigning, and resolving tickets.
Putting an IT ticketing system in place before it becomes a dire need is one of the many ways that IT departments and MSPs can provide proactive support to their clientele. These ticketing systems improve employee communication and satisfaction, and they make it easier to address issues that arise on a larger scale.
So don’t wait! This is the perfect time to explore your automation needs and consider taking on a fully automated IT ticketing system like Atera’s, which has plenty of useful features that will help you maximize your productivity as an IT expert.
#2: Centralize incoming requests
The best and most effective IT ticketing systems allow ticket submission through various avenues, including through virtual agents, by phone, by email, through service portals, or through live agents. While you might be able to field any phone-based reports while your company is small, as it grows, that strategy will quickly get overwhelming.
A good IT ticketing system will aggregate your incoming requests into one central location, meaning that you’ll have everything you need collected in one convenient place. Automated ticketing systems can also add auto-generated tags to describe the nature of reported problems, making it easier to match a problem with the right technician for the job.
Want to try our powerful IT automations?
The all-in-one IT management platform that will take your IT operations to the next level!
#3: Streamline your processes
Spending your time sifting through emails about a similar IT request months earlier isn’t a valuable use of your time – you’re a highly qualified professional, and that’s a menial task worth automating.
IT ticketing systems not only collect incoming tickets, but also categorize them (using rules), assign them, and pull relevant historical data from similar problems or from an employee’s past tickets.
High-quality automated ticketing systems can keep track of technician schedules, input scheduled tickets in advance, and automatically send customers feedback surveys once the ticket has been resolved. These are all steps that can take up a lot of your time and energy, diverting from places where you’re needed more.
#4: Put your focus where it counts
We know how important IT professionals are in the workplace. Employees and clients alike count on IT services to keep their businesses up and running and keep workflow continuity rolling. You want to be able to devote your time to the places it matters most — which is not collecting tickets from emails, chats, or phone calls.
Some things are worth doing yourself, and others are not – IT ticketing falls into the latter category. With technology where it is today, IT ticketing systems are doing everything that you can do manually in terms of responding to tickets. But they’re doing it faster, better, and more efficiently.
Your expertise is better spent on high-level complex problems and the kind of creative strategization that simply can’t be automated. By passing some responsibilities on to an automated IT ticketing system, you’re freeing yourself up to do more important work.
#5: Learn from comprehensive reports and data
A good IT ticketing system will not only follow a ticket from input to resolution, but will also continue to aggregate data once the ticket has been resolved. For example, Atera’s ticketing system provides in-depth reports and analytics that help you improve your business and demonstrate your worth each and every day.
More and more, IT departments are having to prove their worth. When that time comes, make sure that you’re prepared with the data you need to discuss user satisfaction, ticket resolution, average ticket duration, and more. We see the value in your department — and everyone else should too.
Data can also help you troubleshoot anything that’s going wrong in your business practices and processes. Are certain types of tickets taking much more time than others? Are certain technicians working at a faster pace on tickets with a given tag? This is also information that can be helpful to you as you seek to improve your department’s productivity.
Why Atera is the right solution for your ticketing needs
Atera provides a comprehensive IT ticketing system with a wide range of offerings that are sure to meet your company’s or department’s various needs. The days of manual ticket intake are behind us. It’s time to bring your IT department into the modern age by automating your ticketing.
Our ticketing solution is part of our Helpdesk product, which is tailored to match up with the way IT departments accomplish day-to-day tasks. You want a project management system that’s curated specifically for your industry, not a general solution that won’t fit your needs. As experts in the IT automation industry, we can give you that.
We have a robust suite of IT solutions, so whatever your needs, Atera is here to help. Feel free to reach out to us to discuss your business’ unique requirements in more detail.
Want to try our powerful IT automations?
The all-in-one IT management platform that will take your IT operations to the next level!
