Generative AI has made waves across all industries, and ITSM is no exception. However, in a recent study by ManageEngine on the state of AI in ITSM, 71% of the surveyed organizations are still researching or have just begun piloting the technology. At ManageEngine, we decided to help shed some light on how the future of ITSM can be transformed with GenAI.

We crowdsourced opinions and insights about GenAI’s impact on the future of ITSM excellence from ten ITSM industry authorities from around the world on five topics in particular:

  • Where and how they see GenAI transforming ITSM operations in the next three years

  • The biggest corporate challenges to GenAI adoption success

  • The guidance they would give an organization approaching GenAI use

  • The stories shared of GenAI success

  • Their use of GenAI for professional and personal purposes

 The impact in the next three years

To begin, there is an unanimous agreement among ITSM experts that while the adoption of GenAI is inevitable, it will only augment people’s productivity and efficiency—not replace them.

Our Director of AI Research Ramprakash Ramamoorthy vouched for the improvement in productivity, saying, “Although there’s a fear of AI displacing jobs, it will only help speed up processes and let employees handle other important tasks. For example, developers can be guided to better knowledge resources, and bugs can be resolved sooner. In the case of text-to-code, AI can give developers a leg up and save time. After the basic processes are done, the developers can just build on their code, giving them a head start.”

The opportunities for people’s productivity improvement would arise from the usage of chatbots and co-pilots for data gathering and presentation. Beyond these popular use cases, Roman Jouravlev, ITIL senior architect at Axelos, shares:

“If I’m correct in these expectations, generative AI will significantly improve incident management, service request management, service configuration management, IT asset management, knowledge management, availability management, and monitoring and event management. Other ITSM practices may also benefit from generative AI, but its role will be less transformative and more supportive.”

The corporate challenges for a successful adoption

The ITSM experts put forth several challenges on different dimensions for an organization when adopting GenAI for ITSM. While data security and accuracy was a commonly cited challenge, one of the standout challenges was AI ethics, highlighted by Simone Jo Moore, an independent ITSM consultant:

“By no means the only challenge, yet outstanding in the lack of focus, is the discussion from the executive to the operational level of AI ethics. The technology still exceeds governance and law by around five years.”

The spotlight was also brought on financial issues as another key challenge for GenAI success. Roy Atkinson, CEO and principal advisor at Clifton Butterfield LLC, picked apart the cost challenges, noting that “As with previous ‘shiny objects,’ many organizations will buy AI-powered tools and technologies before honestly assessing how they will be used, what preparations are needed, how the effects will be measured, and what impacts they will have.”

Guidance and tips on approaching GenAI

Industry experts offered guidance and tips on regulatory compliance, business outcomes, increased investment in people, and starting out with simple use cases.

For instance, Erin Casteel, convener at The ESG Exchange, states, “I highly recommend that any organization considering using generative AI  reviews ISO/IEC 42001:2023 as a starting point . ISO/IEC 42001 is useful to AI providers, AI producers, AI customers/users, AI system integrators, and data providers.”

Vawns Murphy, principal ITSM consultant at i3Works Ltd., offers, “My one tip would be to keep it simple. Start by automating some simpler service desk tasks by introducing chatbots and virtual assistants at the incident and service request frontend. This is a straightforward exercise for most organizations, and it has the benefit of creating a way of socializing the concept of AI to end users and the business while giving human IT support experts the time and space to focus on more challenging incidents, service requests, and project work. Everyone wins!”

Read perspectives on GenAI from more ITSM experts

We would like to thank the contributors for making this highly collaborative effort possible; you can read the entire e-book for free here.

By ManageEngine