Aegis Solutions - Problem Management

The Problem Management process has both reactive and proactive aspects. The reactive aspect is concerned with solving Problems in response to one or more Incidents. Proactive Problem Management is concerned with identifying and solving Problems and Known Errors before Incidents occur in the first place.

The Problem Management process is intended to reduce both the number and severity of Incidents and Problems on the business. Therefore, part of Problem Management's responsibility is to ensure that previous information is documented in such a way that it is readily available to first-line and other second-line staff.

Aegis provides the ability to classify and prioritize problems in any way you like. Automated workflow ensures problems are directed to the most appropriate or available technical support consultants.

The Knowledge Base integration enables technical support consultants and customers to easily search for solutions.

You can search for RFC when adding new problems. You can also easily raise a new RFC from a problem. Easily link affected CIs to problems.

Benefits of Problem Management

The benefits of taking a formal approach to Problem Management include the following:

• Improved IT service quality. Problem Management helps generate a cycle of rapidly increasing IT service quality. High-quality reliable service is good for the business users of IT, and good for the productivity and morale of the IT service providers.
• Incident volume reduction. Problem Management is instrumental in reducing the number of Incidents that interrupt the conduct of business.
• Permanent solutions. There will be a gradual reduction in the number and impact of Problems and Known Errors as those that are resolved stay resolved.
• Improved organizational learning. The Problem Management process is based on the concept of learning from past experience. The process provides the historical data to identify trends, and the means of preventing failures and of reducing the impact of failures, resulting in improved User productivity.
• Better first-time fix rate at the Service Desk. Problem Management enables a better first time fix rate of Incidents at the Service Desk, achieved via the capture, retention and availability of Incident resolution and Work-around data within a knowledge database available to the Service Desk at call logging.

In contrast, the costs of not implementing a Problem Management process may include:

• A purely reactive support organization, facing up to Problems only when the service to Customers has already been disrupted.
• An IT User organization, confronted with recurring Incidents, losing faith in the quality of the IT support organization.
• An ineffective support organization, with high costs and low employee motivation, since similar Incidents have to be resolved repeatedly and structural solutions are not provided.