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ServiceTeam ITSM: Not Just a Simple Power App: How ServiceTeam Leverages the Microsoft Power Platform for Comprehensive ITSM and ITAM
Microsoft wants to empower every person and organization on the planet to achieve more. Several years back, it took a giant leap in fulfilling its mission with the development of the Microsoft Power Platform, a comprehensive suite of low-code tools to empower organizations to cost-effectively optimize business processes and operations, without having to rely on a massive investment in technical expertise. The end result is that both Gartner and Forrester have named Microsoft a Leader in Enterprise Low-Code Platforms.
The Power Platform isn’t just one product, but rather a suite of products that includes Power Apps, Power BI, Power Automate, Power Pages, and Power Virtual Agents (now part of Copilot Studio).
Our ServiceTeam suite of Power Apps products are engineered from the ground up within the Power Platform—providing enterprise-level ITSM and ITAM processes, while complimenting Microsoft Dynamics 365 business applications and other Power Apps. Since we are a Microsoft ISV Partner, we respect the boundaries and rules that a tight integration with the Microsoft ecosystem requires. In many ways, we share the Microsoft vision of empowerment, but we also know that not every business process or operation can be boiled down to a simple app.
We want our customers to benefit from all that the Power Platform brings to the table—to be able to configure, modify and extend when necessary, to benefit from shared data and the platform’s standardization, security, automation, analytics and intelligence—while also leveraging ITSM and ITAM processes and best practices provided through our ServiceTeam products.
How do our customers benefit from ServiceTeam being built with the Power Platform? Here are 7 ways:
Easier Configuration and Modification
As we mentioned above, Microsoft has been recognized by both Gartner and Forrester as a Leader in low-code platforms. Microsoft believes that with a low-code platform, its very nature being easy-to-use, everyone should be able to imagine and create Power Apps. In reality, the task still often falls to developers. ITSM and ITAM are complicated disciplines that have many requirements and best practices for success, and so we leveraged Power Apps to engineer products that allow our customers to, for example, easily configure or modify ServiceTeam without having to use expensive outside specialist resources (as needed with our competitor’s products). Moreover, since ServiceTeam is a native Power Platform application, if a company’s entire operations are run in the Power Platform or Dynamics 365 environment, our product fits right in, so no need to have employees with specialized skill sets to leverage ServiceTeam’s inherit flexibility and ease-of-use.
Improved Productivity
Having a common user interface and a common way of building business apps means a simplified user experience whether you are a developer or an end-user. The Power Platform gives the gift of standardization across business applications. With ServiceTeam, we ensure that we follow the rules and live in harmony within the Power Platform, resulting in the ability to have ITSM and ITAM processes and best practices that have an unmistakable Microsoft look and feel, and way of doing things. Some examples include, leveraging Power BI to create insightful out-of-the-box reports, leveraging Power Pages for the self-service portal, leveraging Power Automate for automation and workflows, and leveraging the Power Platform App Side Panes technology to surface relevant and timely information into Productivity Panes, so agents don’t have to leave a ticket to get additional information. A simplified user interface that works more or less the same way across a range of business apps results in less of a learning curve, reduced errors and issues, improved productivity, and less costs. Whether employees are developers or end-users, our Microsoft-centric customers find that ServiceTeam fits right into their environments.
Evolution with Microsoft Technology
Microsoft spent $27 Billion dollars on Research & Development in 2023. Advancements of Microsoft’s low-code technology and the Power Platform flow right through to our customers in two ways. First, when Microsoft makes improvements to product performance. Our customers don’t need to become familiar with the underlying technology to undertake a massive update or re-configure ServiceTeam in order to receive the benefits. These performance improvements just happen. Second, when Microsoft develops new capabilities and/or features. Twice a year, Microsoft releases two waves of updates, which details changes, upgrades and new capabilities for all their products. We immediately begin analyzing these releases to see how we can incorporate new capabilities and features for ITSM and ITAM. Once our customers download a new release of ServiceTeam, they can immediately begin capitalizing on the benefits. There’s no need to become familiar with the technology or spend time developing. And with ServiceTeam ITSM an upgrade doesn’t come at an exorbitant cost to our customers, ServiceTeam’s low-code nature makes upgrades and if needed, modifications a breeze.
Seamless Interoperability and Extensibility
As a Microsoft Partner, our approach has always been to develop harmonized second-party products, which means we leverage what we can from the Power Platform as well as the Dataverse ecosystem. By taking advantage of capabilities already in existence within the Microsoft ecosystem, we not only help our customers by providing standardization and a cohesive user experience, but we also provide better interoperability as well. To deliver seamless interoperability and extensibility, we leverage Microsoft’s tables, and when that’s not possible, we can create a relationship to them. For example, ServiceTeam uses the Microsoft account structure to represent suppliers, customers and departments, which already exist due to Microsoft Dynamics 365 Customer Engagement products. So, in this instance, we took advantage of the Microsoft tables that already exist. Our goal is always to deliver interoperability, but not dependence. Whenever possible, we leverage the power of the relationship within the Dataverse rather than an extension. And finally, we should note that by relying on the Dataverse, we can provide our customers with a single source of truth for data, versus siloed databases and data warehouses as seen with other tools.
Robust Security with Microsoft Azure
Our suite of ServiceTeam products is nestled within the heart of the Microsoft Power Platform and the Power Platform is nestled within the heart of the Microsoft Azure Cloud. There are several ways in which our ServiceTeam customers benefit from the Power Platform being on Azure, including best in class security; reliance on global cloud infrastructure; abundant and supportive data protection compliance offerings; flexibility and scalability; and finally, reliable back up and disaster recovery. Our ServiceTeam customers inherit all of the benefits from Microsoft Azure—and the continued investments that Microsoft will make—because of the underlying cloud technology and infrastructure that our family of ServiceTeam products are built on. For more detailed information on the benefits, read our blog post More Than Just an App on Microsoft Azure.
Ready to Capitalize on Microsoft Copilot for ITSM and ITAM
Since its release in early 2023, Microsoft has put Copilot—Microsoft’s AI companion—within a host of Microsoft products, including the Power Platform. As a Microsoft Partner, we can capitalize on Copilot (and other Microsoft AI) technology for ServiceTeam, leveraging natural language and generative AI, for productivity gains within ITSM and ITAM. Microsoft’s commitment to Copilot extends beyond technology, providing us with insights, guidance, and tools to apply AI responsibly and efficiently. We see many ways in which we can weave AI seamlessly into the fabric of ITSM and ITAM for the better. For example, currently, if a service agent comes upon a problem, in which they would like to invite a list of subject matter experts (SMEs) to help resolve an issue, they can do so through the ServiceTeam ITSM resource center. We believe we could deploy Copilot to help agents access key knowledge resources and understand when they needed to trigger this action in the first place. We believe Copilot is a great tool that can be wielded for specific needs, whether it involves sentiment analysis, knowledge management, context understanding, or adaptive search capabilities. We are committed to working with our partner, Microsoft, to harness the best of AI to not just be efficient, but revolutionary. For more information on how we see AI’s impact, visit AI’s Potential Role in IT Service Management.
Time Efficiency and Cost Savings
More than just a simple integration, ServiceTeam lives and breaths the Microsoft Power Platform, and is part of a leading platform versus siloed or point solutions. As such, our customers receive the common benefits of deploying a platform, including easy-to-implement built-in integrations; easy-to-manage configurations and upgrades; the ability to leverage skillsets and knowledge across business services—all of which result in our customers being able to drive savings and increase value for ITSM and ITAM. In fact, our Microsoft-centric customers originally come to us because they are looking for best-of-platform ITSM and ITAM solutions. Our customers buy ServiceTeam because of its performance, robust capabilities, as well as its lower total cost of ownership compared to many of our competitors, plus many other benefits beyond the Power Platform. See Why Our Customers Choose ServiceTeam Over All the Others for more information.
Conclusion
The Power Platform is at the heart of everything we do with ServiceTeam. Our products share its digital DNA. We want our customers to benefit from everything that the Power Platform has to offer such as codeless configuration, flexibility, standardization, security, automation, analytics, and intelligence—as applied to ITSM and ITAM processes and best practices. ServiceTeam will continue to evolve, not only because of customer needs and market forces, but because Microsoft continues to evolve and invest in the Microsoft Power Platform, including Copilot and we, in turn, leverage that evolution to innovate for ITSM and ITAM.
Here are some more blog posts we think you might be interested in:
Microsoft Copilot: The AI and Automation Opportunity for ITSM
Why Our Customers Choose ServiceTeam Over All the Others
City of London Transforms IT Services with ServiceTeam ITSM and the Microsoft Power Platform
