Reduce Shadow IT With a Service Request Catalog

Foster business partnerships with sourcing-as-a-service.

Analyst Perspective

Improve the request management process to reduce shadow IT.

In July 2022, Ivanti conducted a study on the state of the digital employee experience, surveying 10,000 office workers, IT professionals, and C-suite executives. Results of this study indicated that 49% of employees are frustrated by their tools, and 26% of employees were considering quitting their jobs due to unsuitable tech. 42% spent their own money to gain technology to improve their productivity. Despite this, only 21% of IT leaders prioritized user experience when selecting new tools.

Any organization’s workers are expected to be productive and contribute to operational improvements or customer experience. Yet those workers don’t always have the tools needed to do the job. One option is to give the business greater control, allowing them to choose and acquire the solutions that will make them more productive. Info-Tech's blueprint Embrace Business-Managed Applications takes you down this path.

However, if the business doesn’t want to manage applications, but just wants have access to better ones, IT is positioned to provide services for application and equipment sourcing that will improve the employee experience while ensuring applications and equipment are fully managed by the asset, service, and security teams.

Improving the request management and deployment practice can give the business what they need without forcing them to manage license agreements, renewals, and warranties.

Sandi Conrad
ITIL Managing Professional
Principal Research Director, IT Infrastructure & Operations,
Info-Tech Research Group

Your challenge

This research is designed to help organizations that are looking to improve request management processes and reduce shadow IT.

Shadow IT: The IT team is regularly surprised to discover new products within the organization, often when following up on help desk tickets or requests for renewals from business users or vendors.

Renewal management: The contracts and asset teams need to be aware of upcoming renewals and have adequate time to review renewals.

Over-purchasing and over-spending: Contracts may be renewed without a clear picture of utilization, potentially renewing unused applications. Applications or equipment may be purchased at retail price where corporate, government, or educational discounts exist.

Info-Tech Insight

To increase the visibility of the IT environment, IT needs to transform the request management process to create a service that makes it easier for the business to access the tools they need rather than seeking them outside of the organization.

— Source: Zylo, SaaS Trends for IT Leaders, 2022

Common obstacles

Too many layers of approvals and a lack of IT workers makes it difficult to rethink service request fulfillment.

Delays: The business may not be getting the applications they need from IT to do their jobs or must wait too long to get the applications approved.

Denials: Without IT’s support, the business is finding alternative options, including SaaS applications, as they can be bought and used without IT’s input or knowledge.

Threats: Applications that have not been vetted by security or installed without their knowledge may present additional threats to the organization.

Access: Self-serve isn’t mature enough to support an applications catalog.

8: average number of applications entering the organization every 30 days

— Source: Zylo, SaaS Trends for Procurement, 2022

Info-Tech’s approach

Improve the request management process to create sourcing-as-a-service for the business.

• Improve customer service
• Reduce shadow IT
• Gain control in a way that keeps the business happy

Blueprint deliverables

Each step of this blueprint is accompanied by supporting deliverables to help you accomplish your goals:

Create a request management process and service catalog to improve delivery of technology to the business