The Difference Between Incident and Problem Management

At least once a week, 55% of businesses experience repetitive IT service problems.

Do you experience the same IT issues over and over? Incident management will restore your IT service as fast as possible, rather than identifying or resolving the underlying cause or problem creating the issues in the first place. If a series of repeated incidents has significant impact on your business, it’s probably time to assign resources to perform a root-cause analysis and find the way to stop them from occurring altogether.

Do companies have adequate processes in place to identify the sources of these problems?54% say no.

“When a lower priority incident happens just one time, it may not have a huge business impact,” says Jack Mansfield, Vice President of Digital Workplace Strategy and host of the Bell Techlogix podcast, Transformative IT Service Management. “However, the collective business impact that could occur because of a lower priority incident happening over and over might make it as bad for your business as a single major incident.”

The problem management process of IT managed services diagnoses the problem of one or more incidents to resolve the underlying cause. In managing the lifecycle of incidents identified through the incident management process, then diagnosing their problems or root causes, problem management minimizes their impact on you and your business. The process implements appropriate control procedures for resolving the problems, such as change management, to ensure incidents do not recur. Problem management also interfaces with the knowledge management process to reduce the number of incidents and their impact on business-critical endeavors over time.

Connecting With SIAM

Getting to the exact root cause of a problem, or root cause analysis, is an integral part of problem management and often involves working with different providers or multiple vendors and stakeholders to execute, especially if several potential causes are identified. This is where

Service Integration and Management (SIAM) comes into play. The SIAM process tracks the performance of all service providers involved in a problem investigation.

“SIAM really pulls it all together,” says Brenda Lichtenberg, Senior Vice President of Strategy and Portfolio. “It gives you a picture of transparency about what's happening in your environment right now. All the different providers work together as a team, and you can quickly get to the right person at the right time to get a problem resolved a lot faster.”

Measuring the Success of Problem Management

Once your organization can measure the success of its problem management process, it’s much easier to see why it’s good business to make it a priority. If you see the same incidents recur, it means your root cause analysis and subsequent corrective actions are not working. The evidence is revealed in the transparency of the data you are collecting. Repetitive incidents are a constant drain on the day-to-day “firefighting” of incident management and problem management is a key ingredient of its success. Once you make problem management a priority, you save time and costs and your IT environment is more efficient overall.

Want to continue the conversation? Take a listen to episode two of the all-new Bell Techlogix podcast, Transformative IT Service Management.

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Bell Techlogix is a leader in comprehensive IT managed services, providing Next Generation Digital Workplace and Infrastructure Management solutions to large and mid-market enterprises. We deliver a true client partnership and an enhanced digital experience with custom solutions that build, integrate and support the next wave of operational transformation. With our strong heritage of leveraging an “always available,” globally capable, domestic delivery model coupled with a flexible approach to project and consultative services, you receive dedicated, mission critical 24×7 service that exceeds your business expectations.