5.4 Benefits of Incident Management

The major benefits to be gained by implementing an Incident Management process are as follows:

For the business as a whole:

• reduced business impact of Incidents by timely resolution, thereby increasing effectiveness
• the proactive identification of beneficial system enhancements and amendments
• the availability of business-focused management information related to the SLA.

For the IT organisation in particular:

• improved monitoring, allowing performance against SLAs to be accurately measured
• improved management information on aspects of service quality
• better staff utilisation, leading to greater efficiency
• elimination of lost or incorrect Incidents and service requests
• more accurate CMDB information (giving an ongoing audit while registering Incidents)
• improved User and Customer satisfaction.

In contrast, failing to implement Incident Management may result in:

• no one to manage and escalate Incidents - hence Incidents may become more severe than necessary and adversely affect IT service quality
• specialist support staff being subject to constant interruptions, making them less effective
• business staff being disrupted as people ask their colleagues for advice
• frequent reassessment of Incidents from first principle rather than reference to existing solutions
• lack of coordinated management information
• lost, or incorrectly or badly managed Incidents.