Have you ever changed or amended the source code of an IT Service Management (ITSM) solution? Perhaps to add features and functions that weren’t included in the “out-of-the-box” software?
If so, you may have complicated the link between what you’ve got and what the vendor will support. Now, consider that you may also have potentially dozens of integrations connecting your ITSM software with other ITOM tools. If over-customised, your solution will become fragile to touch and is likely to cause major disruptions across your business.

The key risk in over customisation of your ITSM tool code is that you’re more likely to get locked into your current version. Axios Systems’ research, which engaged 250 senior IT professionals from over 100 leading organisations, identified the two fundamental service management challenges for 2015: 25% highlighted that they face significant internal barriers to adopting new service functionality such as service catalog and collaboration.

A further 26% highlighted their key challenge to improving performance is the introduction of a new service management product or significantly upgrading their current solution.

With outdated ITSM software comes the loss of agility.

So, what can you do to break the over-customisation habit? Ask yourself: “Do we really need this customisation?” Evaluate the pros and cons of your requirements versus increased application management overheads. Your strategy needs to ensure that today’s changes will not limit your ability to drive wider innovations in the future.

If wide-scale customisation is not the key to sustainable innovation, then what is best practice? Brian Kerr, Senior Managing Consultant at Axios Systems highlights “Whilst the ITIL framework provides the methodology for effectively managing IT service, it is fundamental that the selected tool enables complete control without the requirement for extensive recoding. To mitigate this risk, vendor selection is key. It is an absolute imperative that the tool provides granular configuration without users resorting to custom coding.”

Scott Leckie, CTO at Axios Systems continues “Axios are recognised as visionaries in IT service management. Our solution, assyst, has the highest levels of R&D investment in the industry and consistently receives perfect scores for functionality from leading analysts. We were the first to provision all 15 ITIL processes with a single application. Configuration is at the core of assyst’s flexibility.”