What is best-of-suite?

Best-of-suite software offers one solution for a variety of business needs. Think of ERP software that includes features for accounting, budgeting and risk management, but also project management, HR tasks and reporting. You purchase one suite, from one vendor, that offers all these capabilities.

What is best-of-breed?

If you’re looking at best-of-breed software, you purchase various solutions from various vendors that each offer their own unique tool. While this means you’re dealing with multiple vendors, the individual tools are most likely more tailored to your organizational needs.

Best-of-suite vs best-of-breed?

So which solution works best for your organization?

As you might expect, the answer is: it depends. Both solutions have their own pros and cons, and your choice should be informed by your priorities.

Here’s a few things to consider when facing the best-of-breed vs best-of-suite dilemma.

How critical is the process you want to support?

The first questions you should answer, are: what process should the software support, and how critical is that process to your organization? The more critical the process, the more important it is that the software meets your needs.

In general, using best-of-breed software is the preferred choice for your critical processes. A best-of-breed tool usually offers more functionalities than best-of-suite, and is better tailored to supporting that one specific process.

If the tool supports a not-so critical process, you’ll probably manage fine with best of suite.

Best-of-suite software might excel in one or two areas, but is unlikely to offer the best solution for all the components in their suite. As Gartner states, when explaining best-of-breed, using ERP software as an example:

“Enterprises often purchase software from different vendors to obtain the best-of-breed offering for each application area. For example, enterprises may purchase a human-resource package from one vendor and an accounting package from another. Although enterprise resource planning (ERP) vendors offer numerous enterprise applications and claim that their integrated system is a superior solution, all modules in an ERP system are rarely best-of-breed.” (source)

Compare it to photo editing. If you only do some occasional cropping and editing of photos, the default functionalities included in Microsoft Office, or on your phone, should serve you just fine. If on the other hand you edit photos on a more regular and professional basis, at some point you’ll need functionalities that only tools such as Adobe Photoshop offer.

How much time and money do you want to spend?

In general, choosing best-of-breed software means lower costs in both time and budget. Mainly because the implementation has a relatively low impact on your organization. The implementation usually involves fewer colleagues, fewer functionalities, and can therefore be handled quicker.

Two things to consider though.

Best-of-breed generally has lower costs to get started. But if you continue to string a bunch of paid tools together, you might end up paying as much as for one best-of-suite solution. As long as you keep track of which tools you purchase for which purposes, you should be able to keep your spending in check.

On the other hand, some best-of-suite solutions offer modular pricing structures, where you only pay for the features you actually need. In that case, it might be worth considering a best-of-suite solution.

How many vendors do you want to work with?

Choosing a best-of-suite solution means you only deal with one vendor for several tools. This in itself has pros and cons.

The benefit of working with a single vendor? You’ll save time implementing, training and supporting the various tools. And you’re likely to have one single point of contact for your support and customer success questions. Especially if you have a good working relationship with your vendor, this can be an efficient way of working.

At the same time, there’s also a risk involved. If the relationship with your vendor isn’t great, or if the software at some point no longer suffices, it makes it harder to switch to a different solution. You run the risk of vendor lock-in. And if you decide to switch, it might be quite expensive and time-consuming to do so.

Say you have a best-of-suite ERP solution. Your HR department is happy with its payroll functionalities, but the project planning functionalities don’t live up to your Project Management Organization’s standards. They would like to purchase a new project management tool. This is a problem if the team is expected to continue to work in the same suite.

Why TOPdesk believes in best-of-breed

While there are many legitimate reasons for choosing a best-of-suite solution, we’re not hiding the fact that we believe in the best-of-breed approach. We decided long ago that we can’t excel in all areas. We aim to make the best service management software. And let other vendors do what they do best.

APIs, ecosystem, marketplace

Because TOPdesk doesn’t offer all the functionalities an IT department needs, it becomes extra important to offer integrations with other tools. That’s why we invested in developing APIs. We currently offer a number of standard integrations, such as for MS Entra ID (formerly known as Azure AD) and Power BI. Using the APIs, IT teams can also build integrations themselves. In addition, we have built a marketplace where IT teams can find all kinds of solutions to add to their TOPdesk environment. It features over a hundred solutions for different kinds of applications. From communication tools like Microsoft Teams, Slack and several live chat and chatbot vendors, to IT asset discovery solutions (like Microsoft Intune and Lansweeper) and various AI solutions.

Increased scalability and flexibility

For our customers, the most important benefits of a best-of-breed solution are scalability and flexibility.

Lots of things are changing constantly for your organization. Your customers expect more and more, whether it’s the technology you support or how quickly you can adapt to your customers’ needs. An ecosystem of best-of-breed tools makes it easier for IT organizations to add, optimize or replace certain components or features, rather than having to adapt or replace an entire best-of-suite solution.

Decide for yourself

This is why we believe in the power of best-of-breed. But it’s up to you to decide what works best for your organization when selecting a new ITSM tool. Knowing whether you’re looking for a best-of-breed or best-of-suite solution will help you to narrow down the list of vendors.

Have you made your choice between best-of-breed and best-of-suite but not sure where to look next? Get one step closer to choosing the right vendor for you: check out our blog 5 questions to ask when shortlisting solutions.

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Table of contents

1. AI applications are starting to make a real impact
2. Increased demands on user experience
3. Focus on value creation
4. A service flux mindset – start small, iterate and be pragmatic

1. AI applications are starting to make a real impact

Recognizing AI as a major trend in our digital landscape is nothing new – and it’s only going to get more relevant. In fact, Gartner predicts that by 2025, 70% of organizations will implement structured automation – up from 20% in 2021. The question stands, how will this expand as a trend for ITSM in 2024?

For one, IT professionals expect more ways to implement AI from their ITSM software. Think of automatic categorization and routing calls to the right team based on the issue description of the call. Or using ChatGPT and other AI to auto-fill text fields in incident cards. While the margin for error with AI means content will still need to be reviewed and edited by an expert, this will save service desk departments valuable time on simple tasks.

AI applications are also shifting from ‘cute but useless’ to helpful tools for businesses. Chatbots used to

be (and still are often) tools that frustrate customers with simple conversation threads that loop and provide minimal solutions. Now, chatbots can leverage the power of AI to provide a complex matrix of solutions that benefit both customers and agents.

Entering 2024, we are just breaking ground when it comes to applying AI technology to service desk software. But in the long run, AI will be a disruptive trend for IT departments. Registering and handling calls is an important part of the work of service agents. And it’s exactly this type of admin work that’s expected to be automated by AI in the coming years.

2. Increased demands on user experience

IT teams face increasing expectations for the experiences they provide their colleagues. End-users expect a seamless and user-friendly service desk experience, that’s nothing new. But there are a few developments that will make this more urgent in the coming years.

For one, apps for private use are becoming better every year. They all provide a smooth and frictionless user experience. And your customers expect a similar experience when it comes to their business software, too. If you’re not meeting those expectations, chances are your colleagues might use that latest free planning tool they can download in 20 seconds instead of the one you carefully selected for your business.

Next to that, meeting accessibility standards is an increasingly important ambition for many organizations. Partly because of today’s diverse workforce: obviously you want the software you provide to be usable also by people who, say, are color blind or happen to have trouble reading. Guidelines such as WCAG 2.1 help organizations in this endeavor.

3. Focus on value creation

The mission of any modern IT department is not so much to facilitate and maintain an IT infrastructure but to provide value to their customers.  

This focus on value creation has two main drivers. 

The concept of ‘providing value’ in ITSM has been further popularized in ITIL 4 in 2019. Instead of focusing heavily on processes, as in ITIL v3, ITIL 4 focuses on providing value for your customers. Your aim is to discover what’s valuable to your customers and to deliver just that.

Another driver is the rising inflation that organizations have been facing in recent years.  More than ever, you’re expected to show what you’re doing – and explain why you couldn’t do it with 2 fewer people or a 10% budget cut.  

The better you can demonstrate the value of your IT team, the stronger your case will be for next year’s budget talks. 

4. A service flux mindset – start small, iterate and be pragmatic

The way IT departments approach projects is changing, too. The large, big-bang implementations with extensive design and implementation phases are making way for a more iterative approach to projects.  

It’s a trend we see at many organizations, and which we at TOPdesk call ‘service flux’.

The service flux approach means embracing constant transformation. You focus on implementing the low-effort, high-impact changes first, and go from there. It also means letting go of a ‘first-time right’ mentality.

A nice example of the service flux mindset is Knowledge Centered Service (KCS).

Traditionally, you first design a knowledge base, including all the information you think necessary, and then you implement the whole thing.  With Knowledge Centered Service, you start small and expand as you go. You give all agents the possibility to create and adapt knowledge items. You make registering and updating knowledge part of their daily process – a small step in handling each call. Each day and each hour, your team is slowly building and improving their knowledge base. Much more efficient than saving up bulk work for a Friday afternoon. 

Stay up to date on the latest ITSM trends

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For IT service desks, shifting left is about sharing your service desk’s knowledge within your organization, bringing it closer to the customer. The basic idea behind shift left is simple: skilled IT professionals make their knowledge available to less experienced front office colleagues, helping them to answer more complex questions from customers.

Here are the five key benefits of shift left for IT service management.

1. Building stronger relationships with IT customers

A definite by-product of being closer to your customer is a steady increase in personal interactions with the rest of the business. Customers will enjoy the way IT shares knowledge. They’ll appreciate your approachable attitude. As an extension, they will also feel more connected with the IT department and more likely to engage with them, which promotes further conversation.

2. Empowering IT users to solve their own issues

Bringing solutions closer to the customer restores balance to the force. Till now, the scales have arguably been tipped out of IT’s favour. Customers use traditional ticket logging technologies to throw any issue at IT. Enabling customers to solve their own problems with a self-service portal decreases IT workload. It allows the customers to be the heroes in their own story. And they won’t have to wait in line for you to fix minor problems.

3. More time for more rewarding work

It doesn’t always have to be about the customer, right? At the end of the day, the quality of your IT services highly depends on the attitude and motivation of the people delivering it.

The idea of shift left is that you share knowledge. To let each line of support, including the customer, solve more challenging issues than they did before. If you outsource your simplest tasks, you have more time for work that’ll help you deliver real value on an organizational level.

4. IT knowledge is shared across the whole business

Shift left is driven by a concept called Knowledge Centered Service (KCS), which is a simple but effective IT support methodology that places the creation and sharing of knowledge at the heart of every IT interaction. Knowledge simply becomes power. The systems used to capture, catalogue and share that power become IT’s most significant offering throughout the whole journey towards shifting left. Take it from us; TOPdesk’s internal service desk teams have implemented the KCS guidance into their own support functions and the positive results on both sides of the service relationship are very encouraging.

Knowledge becomes power. The systems used to capture, catalogue, and share that power become IT’s most significant offering throughout the whole journey towards shifting left.

5. Your IT team get the recognition they deserve

It’s always a good idea to make sure your IT department has proper visibility. CIOs and IT Directors will benefit, since they want positive IT stories to float their way up to the board. Not only does it reflect well on the work of the department, but it gives them far more leverage with negotiating for things such as more funding or adding more people to your team.

Use your IT team’s knowledge for good

Check out our Knowledge Management e-book to discover the benefits of Knowledge Centered Service and how to help your IT department get there.

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The good news? The Lean philosophy of eliminating waste – anything that doesn’t add customer value – makes your IT service management more efficient and customer-centric.

A brief history of Lean

Lean is a philosophy that concentrates on cutting the so-called waste in your daily work to focus on what truly matters: delivering customer value. Anything that doesn’t add customer value is considered waste.

A good example of a Lean approach is McDonald’s Speedee Service System. Back in 1948, McDonald’s redesigned their kitchen to maximize efficiency. The end result? Hamburgers served within 30 seconds.

Currently, car manufacturer Toyota is the leading Lean exemplar in the world, thanks to the Toyota Production System (TPS), invented in the fifties to eliminate waste in Toyota’s manufacturing and logistics processes.

The benefits of Lean Service Management

The Lean approach also works outside of hamburgers and cars.

Even though Lean doesn’t offer any specific guidance for IT service management, its philosophy works well alongside other ITSM frameworks. In fact, ITIL 4’s introduction of the Service Value System relies heavily on the Lean mindset and terminology.

Lean Service Management’s focus on customer value helps you step into your customers’ shoes and think from their perspective. This makes adapting your IT services to meet increasing customer expectations easier. And eliminating steps in your processes that don’t add customer value makes delivering IT services more efficient, ultimately lowering resolution times and increasing customer satisfaction.

Remember: Lean is a philosophy, not a rigid, unchanging set of beliefs and methods.

The 5 principles of Lean Service Management

A Lean process is based on the following 5 principles:

1. Identify value

Specify the value your customer is looking for. What do they want or need? What problem do they have that needs to be solved?

2. Map the value stream

Identify which process you need to deliver this specific value to your customer. This is called a value stream. Challenge the steps within this process: do they help deliver value? If not, try to eliminate them.

3. Create flow

Make sure the value stream runs in tight sequence so the value will flow smoothly to your customer.

4. Establish pull

Deliver the value when your customer requests it.

5. Seek perfection

Repeat the process, striving to make it perfect. Note that the goal here isn’t perfection itself, as that’s unattainable, but rather the pursuit of perfection – also known as continuous improvement.

Use Lean Service Management flexibly

These Lean principles provide you with great tools to start improving your IT processes. But remember: Lean is a philosophy, not a rigid, unchanging set of beliefs and methods. It can change or look differently, depending on the context and on the unique needs of your organization. So, pick and choose the elements from Lean that work for you and start there.

This attitude is part of a little something we at TOPdesk call service flux: embracing change and using philosophies and frameworks flexibly to make iterative improvements to your services. All so you can adapt to a constantly changing world.

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If you’re clinging to an outdated way of working, the first thing that needs to change is your mindset. Here are a few signs your IT team needs a mindset shift:

1. You’re hung up on processes

Have you ever felt like you’re clinging to a process which doesn’t work for your department or organization, simply because it’s part of a framework that you’ve chosen to follow? When using frameworks like ITIL from their processes, organizations tend to focus a little too much on guidelines and not enough on how their organization actually works. If your service desk consisted of a single person, would it make any sense to double that person’s workload for the sake of following an ITIL process? Definitely not. Try to think of frameworks as something flexible, which can be adapted to your needs, rather than a set of rules.

Learn more about flexible frameworks like ITIL in this blog.

2. You’re aiming for perfection

Too many IT departments shy away from making adjustments to their services because they think that, if they make a change, they have to do it all perfectly, right away.

Not only is this not realistic, but it also keeps you stuck in the same, old way of working. Imagine if you took the same approach to learning a new language or picking up a new hobby — you’d just start small and keep improving. The fact is, you can’t do anything perfectly without first having a bit of trial and error. Instead of focusing on the end-goal of perfection, think of service improvement as a series of small steps, in which you make low-effort, high-impact adjustments to your processes.

Getting started with improvements is much less daunting when you take an iterative approach to service management.

3. You’re cut off from the rest of the organization

You’re delivering IT services, so there’s no need to collaborate with departments or teams outside of IT, right?

Wrong. The old image of the IT department stuck in the basement is entirely outdated. In fact, service departments like IT, HR, and Facilities need each other more than ever. Your customers are their customers, and they expect a smooth, B2C-like experience with your services. Think of meeting rooms with intuitive technology that supports Bring Your Own Device and a flawless on- and offboarding process. None of these can be achieved without taking a joint approach and working together to deliver the best services possible. So, get out of the figurative IT basement and start talking to people from other departments!

Discover the benefits of collaborating with other departments.

Service flux: a pragmatic approach to service management

The mindset adjustments that I’ve described so far — taking an iterative approach to service improvement, treating frameworks as flexible, and joining forces with other departments — are all key elements of a pragmatic approach to service management, which we call service flux. In a nutshell, service flux is about embracing change and making small steps to improve your services — rather than focusing on controlling your processes — so you can adapt to a constantly changing world.

Want to learn more about service flux and how it can help your IT department? Check out our glossary page.

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With knowledge management, you use the collective knowledge of your service desk employees to resolve incidents instead of constantly having to reinvent the wheel with every new incident.

Using knowledge management best practices can cut your resolution times by 20%. But first, you need a knowledge base.

What is a knowledge base?

A knowledge base is exactly what it sounds like: a place where the collective knowledge of your IT service desk lives, neatly organized into specific categories. With the help of so-called knowledge items, your service desk employees can quickly resolve incidents without any help.

You can even make certain knowledge items available to your end-users, so they can find the answers to simple questions like “How do I connect to WiFi?” themselves.

To make the most out of a knowledge base, your service desk employees should follow these 4 knowledge management best practices:

1. Search the knowledge base first

Handling an incident? Always, always, always search the knowledge base first, even if you know the answer by heart.

Why?

First of all, if the answer is in the knowledge base, using it will save you time typing out a response – even if it’s just a matter of seconds.

But if you don’t know how to proceed with an incident, chances are the problem has been encountered and solved before. In that case, you can simply use the solution that’s in the knowledge base and resolve the incident.

If the answer isn’t available in the knowledge base, make sure to add a knowledge item yourself – however brief – so your colleagues can reap the benefits later.

2. Correct the knowledge base

Your knowledge base is only as effective as the information you feed it is.

Found a knowledge item that’s lacking something? Make sure you update it straightaway, for example when you’ve found a quicker solution to a certain problem. This way, your knowledge base becomes a continuously updated and reliable hub that will benefit the whole IT service desk.

Think of knowledge management as physiotherapy: you need to do some tough exercises at first, but the long term benefits are infinite.

3. Resolve the incident

Now, potentially armed with some new knowledge, you’re ready to resolve the incident.

While doing so, keep an eye and an ear open for anything in the solution process that deviates from what was stated in the original knowledge item.

4. Close the incident

You resolved the incident and can now confidently close the call. Once you do, see if you can add to the answer in the knowledge base. Maybe you need to fix a typo, or the solution needs an update, or the knowledge item could do with a screenshot for extra clarification. Even small changes could be helpful.

Knowledge management is a process

– Remember: knowledge management is a continuous process. If you’re new to it, it might take a while to build up your knowledge base. But as your team adds more and more knowledge items, you’ll notice that they‘re able to resolve incidents more quickly and become more efficient.

Think of knowledge management as physiotherapy: you may need to do some tough exercises at first, but the long–term benefits are infinite.

Share knowledge in your organization

Download our Knowledge Management e-book for more knowledge management tips and tricks.

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But that’s easier said than done, especially when you’re drowning in tickets or struggling to keep track of important information. That’s where ITSM tooling comes in. 

3 ways in which tooling supports IT departments in manufacturing

With the right tooling solutions, IT departments in manufacturing can automate repetitive tasks, streamline workflows, and optimize resource utilization. This enables them to operate more efficiently, reduce downtime, and allocate their time and resources to more strategic initiatives.

1. ITSM tools improve efficiency

ITSM tools bring your IT services together in one place and offer automation and other features that remove the strain of recurring tasks, freeing up time for innovation.

Take for instance University of Ottawa, the largest English-French bilingual university in the world. When their IT service desk started using TOPdesk, the total number of IT tickets dropped significantly, 45,000 tickets and counting, in fact.

How?

TOPdesk offers standardized forms and service automation. When help tickets are created, they are instantaneously routed to the correct service location for processing, reducing the time to resolve each issue while improving efficiency. Since implementation, uOttawa has been able to clear more than 45,000 (and counting) service desk tickets without the need for help desk intervention or triage service requests while relieving the strain on uOttawa’s IT department.

Thanks to service automation, uOttawa has been able to clear more than 45,000 service desk tickets without the need for help desk intervention or triage service requests.

2. ITSM tools empower your end-users

Your end-users are impatient. They expect their requests to be resolved immediately.

Luckily, most ITSM tools offer both a knowledge base and an extensive self-service portal (SSP) with standard solutions and FAQs. This empowers your end-users to find the answers to their questions themselves, using the collective knowledge of the IT department.

End-users love it: The Scandinavian Tobacco Group, manufacturer of cigars and traditional pipe tobacco, has seen similar results: once their IT department started using TOPdesk, over 80% of all tickets were logged via the SSP.

Implementing an SSP with a knowledge base also reduces the pressure on your IT team, who no longer have to answer the same questions over and over again or worry about important knowledge being tucked away in shared drives or personal docs. Instead, all knowledge is compiled in one place.

3. ITSM tools give you insight into cybersecurity

For the second year in a row, manufacturing has been the most targeted sector by cyberattacks. The sector’s main threats are:

• Phishing attacks: Attacks that trick users into divulging sensitive data, downloading malware, and exposing themselves or their organizations to cybercrime.
• Ransomware: Software that renders an organization’s network inoperable until the hacker’s demands are satisfied, resulting in downtime.
• Intellectual property (IP) theft: Attackers infiltrate a network undetected and steal a manufacturer’s intellectual property.
• Supply chain attacks: An attack on a single link in an organization’s supply chain. Successful supply chain attacks can impact the whole supply chain within days of the first attack.

IT departments play an integral role in helping manufacturers become cyber-resilient – and it all starts with becoming more knowledgeable. Knowledge is the best defence when it comes to cybersecurity: knowing exactly which assets – both hardware and software – the IT department is responsible for, where they are, and who has access to them. But also knowing who is handling sensitive information, for example.

An ITSM tool like TOPdesk will provide you with this type of information. On top of that, having standardized processes in place means you can respond quickly to crisis situations.

And, thanks to TOPdesk’s advanced reporting capabilities, you can see how your IT department is doing at a single glance – for example where any weak spots might be and where to focus your efforts.

Discover TOPdesk for Manufacturing

Managing a manufacturer’s IT infrastructure is no easy feat, especially not when you’re working reactively. TOPdesk’s IT service management solution helps you:

• Standardize processes around best practices
• Assign tasks based on capacity
• Stay on top of your game with overviews and dashboards
• Capture critical knowledge and make it accessible for everyone

Check out our IT Service Management software page or request a personalized demo today.

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Challenge 1: Onboarding new faculty members

Starting a new job is always stressful. And not only for the new recruit. For IT departments, there’s a lot of work that needs to be done to get new faculty members up and running. Think of ordering a new laptop and supplies, setting up a workspace, booking classrooms, installing software, providing projector access… the list goes on.

And if the onboarding coincides with back-to-school chaos, this only adds to the pressure.

Solution

Sure, every new starter is different. But there are certain tasks and processes the IT department must complete with every onboarding. So, why not standardize them?

Identify and map out all necessary onboarding processes, assign responsibility, and set a timeline. Standardizing processes like this makes for a smoother experience for both staff and faculty and ensures that important to-dos don’t fall between the cracks.

Challenge 2: Ordering new supplies

It’s the start of the school year. For faculty, staff, and students, this means new supplies. And for IT, this means budgeting, ordering, delivering, and tracking – all in a short window of time.

Solution

As a quick fix, why not create a tile in your online portal where end-users can request their own supplies? A solution like TOPdesk’s Self-Service Portal (SSP) allows you to create no-code forms as an administrator, so you can create highly configurable forms with minimal effort. This means you can filter requests to be sent to the correct manager for approval and even attach monetary values so they can be tracked in your budgeting system. Simple as that.

Want to take it a step further? Create an even smoother experience for your end-users by setting up a web-shop in your online portal, like this school board in Canada did in TOPdesk.

Challenge 3: Forgotten passwords

It’s a classic. How many hours of work would your IT department save if you never had to manually reset a password again?

Solution

The answer to the headache of password resets? Automation. Whether it’s done with a chatbot or via an automated workflow in a self-service portal, automating password resets can decrease service desk calls significantly and reduce end-user down-time – saving you time and money.

Automation also allows IT service desk employees to handle more complex calls and invest in larger improvements, ultimately improving job satisfaction, efficiency, and productivity. This, in turn, leads to happier end-users.

In fact, Forrester research states that employees who work with automation have experienced a 69% improvement in their job satisfaction. And our customer, the District School Board of Niagara, found automation helped them save valuable time and money.

Challenge 4: Low self-service adoption

Your IT department has spent time and effort building a shiny new Self-Service Portal (SSP) so that end-users can easily resolve their own issues.

The only problem? Students, staff, and faculty aren’t actually using it. And instead, they’re walking up to the IT service desk, where you’re already dealing with a million other requests.

Solution

Communication is key. How can people advocate for a tool if they don’t know how to use it – or don’t even know it exists? Sending out a single mass email isn’t going to cut it here. You need to demonstrate the goals and the benefits of self-service to your end-users with a thought-out communication plan before, during, and after implementation.

After all, they want to know what’s in it for them. Providing trainings to walk staff, faculty, and students through the portal will also give them the confidence to resolve their own issues, rather than resorting to a walk-up.

Discover TOPdesk for Education

Our solution lets you easily register tickets, share knowledge with other departments, and empower your end-users with 24/7 self-service.

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Today, we’re going to dive into one of the simplest ways to start automating your services in TOPdesk – with Action Sequences.

What is an Action Sequence?

Within TOPdesk, you can define multiple steps, which follow up on one another, forming an automated process. This is called an Action Sequence. Action Sequences are typically used for processing responses, updating information in TOPdesk, and communicating with third-party suppliers. They can be used to set up API-based integrations with other applications, as well as perform Actions within TOPdesk itself.

What are the benefits of using Action Sequences?

Automating (parts of) your workflow doesn’t just improve efficiency and accuracy— it also frees up valuable time for more complex, challenging work.

With Action Sequences removing mundane tasks from their to-do lists, your service team will be able to focus on bringing real value to your organization, instead of wasting time performing manual actions such as closing Incidents or typing out generic replies to customers.

How do I set up an Action Sequence?

Let’s say you want to automatically close Incidents so that Operators don’t need to do any manual work once an Incident has been solved. In this case, you use the Action Sequence ‘Set status and/or close Incident’.

For this Action Sequence, you’d need to execute 2 steps.

1. Retrieve a list of all statuses used in Incident Management.
2. Assign the correct status to the Incident.

To trigger this Action Sequence automatically, you’d need to link it to a relevant Event. For instance, after 7 days have passed since the completion date.

Simple as that! And to make things even simpler? We’ve got plenty of resources to help you get started with Action Sequences, right away.

In the TOPdesk Action Sequence Library, you can find a list of template Action Sequences, that are free to use, so there’s no need to start from scratch. Have a quick browse and see which tedious tasks you can eliminate from your daily work with automation.

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We spoke with Yoline Neegers, part of the Service Desk team at Ferranti, who uses service automation to reduce repetitive tasks, save time, and make work less stressful. 

Why Ferranti decided to automate their services

With over 54 customers in more than 18 countries, Ferranti’s service desk deals with a wide variety of requests every day. Before deploying service automation, Yoline’s team often dealt with repetitive tasks, which were time-consuming and prone to errors. To make her team’s life easier, Yoline started exploring ways to automate tasks within TOPdesk. 

How Ferranti uses Action Sequences to automate their services

Yoline and her team decided to use Action Sequences – TOPdesk’s most flexible feature for automating multiple steps in a process – to get rid of repetitive manual tasks. But what exactly did they automate and how? Here are a few examples that Yoline shared with us:

Generating documents automatically

“Whenever we hand out new hardware, the recipient has to sign a document which we used to create ourselves, adding the name of the recipient as well. But sometimes we forgot to do so and ended up with the wrong information. That’s why we automated this process using Asset Management’s actions. Now, we no longer have to manually set up documents, so we can spend our time on more pressing tasks. It also reduces the stress at work because you know that you can just automatically generate the document and it’ll be ready instantly instead of having to create it last minute.”

Learn how to set up this action sequence in knowledge item KI 11163.

Closing calls automatically

“When a call has been open for a long time without a response from the caller, the call now closes automatically. We use the same action sequence when we resolve a call. Having this setup helps us keep an overview of our open calls so the team workload is more clear.”

Learn how to set up this action sequence in knowledge item KI 11138.

Assigning operators automatically

“We also use an action sequence to automatically assign operators because we have rather large teams. To do this, we use the contact field in the operator groups. The action sequence checks who the contact of that operator group is and assigns it to that specific call. This helps us make sure that a call always gets assigned to someone, resulting in lower response times.”

Updating brief descriptions

Automating the brief descriptions in calls made Yoline’s team more efficient: “When a new employee started, the brief description would just say ‘new user’. But that didn’t give us enough information, so I automated it to include the name of the employee, their start date, and their function. On and offboarding someone has become much simpler which means we make less mistakes.” 

Learn how to set up this action sequence in knowledge item KI 13930.

How can other organizations get started with Action Sequences?

“My first tip is to check my.topdesk.com because there are a lot of great examples there.”

“My first tip is to check my.topdesk.com because there are a lot of great examples there”, Yoline shares. “For our action sequence on brief descriptions, I went into my.topdesk.com and found a knowledge item, downloaded the JSON file, and imported it into our environment. All I had to do was change some field names, after which I tested it in our test environment, and it worked! So, my advice would be to check the knowledge base because it’s a very good starting point.”

And testing is key with automation. “Use your TOPdesk test environment so you can play around and experiment with your action sequences. This way, you can test whether you have connected the right event to your sequence”, Yoline shares.

Ready to start with service automation?

Do you want to test your knowledge on Service Automation? Take the Service Automation Quick Scan to find out how much you already know about automating your services in TOPdesk.

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