Less than 10% of UK Public Sector organisations are using AI in ITSM. Are you?

I recently wrote about some of the use cases for AI within a Service Management context (you can read that here ?? my AI capability article) and that - at time of writing - there isn't a wealth of particularly 'mind blowing' examples available although the ones that are, are all highly practical with measurable benefits associated to them.

Given the considerable amount of noise however that AI is, and continues to generate in various articles, social feeds etc, I wanted to understand the actual real world picture of this and how the market space sees this, what the adoption rate is (early days?) and what, if any, plans there are to introduce AI functionality within Service Management functions on a day to day basis in the near future...

The variety of time saving, efficiency gains, content creation and other benefits AI will bring are well 'documented' and there is a massive marketing push along with investment with this technology amongst the big and not so big players in the Service Management space, ServiceNow BMC Software Atlassian Xurrent Freshworks and others all showcasing their respective, proprietary and, lets face it, mildly unique stance on this.

Anyways, onto the stats!

We asked "the FOI audience" the following questions to help understand current thinking.

1. Are you currently using AI in your Service Management function (and if so, tell us about it and the benefits you've driven and what statistically has improved)?
2. If not, why not and do you plan to introduce AI functionality within your Service Management function within the next 12mths? If yes, why, what, where how etc. If not, why not?

So, to look at Q1. Are you currently using AI within your IT Service Management function?

Out of ~400 public sector organisations (Local Councils and NHS Trusts) who responded by the time this was published, our surveys says...

Wow! Less than 10% currently using AI....

Well... I had half expected the adoption rate to be higher as it seems a bit of a no brainer given some of the apparent quick wins that are available, but it was interesting to digest some of the commentary coming back as these benefits and associated market messaging don't seem to have immediately convinced the teams and organisations providing service management on a day to day basis...

In addition, and while a low number of respondents, one name did come up several times which was Microsoft's Co-Pilot and noting that this isn't specifically attached to a ITSM platform, kind of makes sense as it's available in Windows - so I can see where and how it could be used alongside for things like 'generate a summary of X' and 'write something relating to Y' and then using those outputs to add to information etc to a ticket.

Other notable and measured success cases cited were:

• Average saving of 30mins per day for re-assigning/creating repeat requests
• Percentage of Helpdesk incidents solved within 3.5hr increased from 56% to 70%
• ~2000 tickets logged via Chatbot where the Chatbot resolved ~30% (which formally would have been done by 1st line support) over a 3 month period.

So there are tangible benefits being achieved, but interestingly most of the respondents who said yes, aren't (currently) measuring success?

As always, keen to know what the readers think, are you actively using AI within your organisation? Leave a comment and let us know how it's going ??

I'll cover off the respondents who are NOT currently using AI and those that are planning to in my follow up articles and give some views on that ??

If you're thinking about introducing #AI capability within your service management function, or are interested in hearing about what/how other organisations are introducing this and the outcomes they're achieving, but are uncertain where best to start, get in touch with the team at Xcession Ltd for an exploratory conversation - we'd be happy to share our experiences and knowledge around this and help you get started ????

Footnote - stats compiled and current as of Freedom of Information (FOI) research carried out in May/June 2024

One example of the generative AI capability that I think is very cool is the NLP for automation rules - see below ??