Why is incident tracking Important in the IT sector?

Incidents are the events that are encountered between the operation or during testing of the review. The difference in the operation of equipment can be encountered through testing and result may vary with defect, error, fault or the incident. Incidents can be categorized as the issue due to misconfiguration, corrupted, data, or server crash, etc.

Aim of Incident Management Process

There are two main aims of an incident management process. First, to restore the service back to normal and make operation as fast as possible and the second to reduce the severe effect of critical incidences on business operations.

Purpose of Incident Management Process

The purpose of incident management is to restore the normal services of operations as soon as possible and reduce its adverse effect on business operations. This ensures the maintenance of the agreed levels of service quality always.

Objectives of the Incident Management Process

The objectives of the incident management process are:

To ensure the use of standard procedures and methods for efficient response and documentation of the process with proper analyzation and reporting of incidents.

To improve the quality of communication and visibility of incidents.

To improve business recognition with the professional approach to resolving incidents quickly.

To properly manage the incident management activities and prioritize them according to their need.

To improve and maintain user satisfaction without losing the quality of services.

The workflow of the Incident Management Process

Before starting here is a brief about the frequently used terms in the procedure incident management.

Incident Repository: It is a database which contains the relevant data about the incidents that have previously occurred in the system. This information is used to create an incident report which involves the fields such as data, expected results, actual result, date and time, the status of incident etc.

Severity: It is the potential impact of the incident that will tell the gravity of the situation, it could be major, minor, fatal or critical for immediate action of resolution.

Priority: Priority of resolving the incident is set according to the seriousness of the incident and its effect, it could be set as high, medium, low, very high or urgent or immediate.

Incident Status: The incident status will tell the current state of handling the incident, it could be new, in-progress, resolved and closed.

The incident management software process starts with the logging of an incident to resolve them. It will ensure that the incident has been addressed is a systematic manner. And by streamlining the entire process, it is a great chance to resolve the issue more quickly.

Step 1. Incident Identification and Logging

The incident is identified either via testing, user feedback, infrastructure monitoring, or another method. Then the incident is logged with submitting the information such as date and time of occurrence, incident title, details and current status of the incident, etc.

Step 2. Classification and Prioritization

Classification of incidents helps to categorize the issue based on their software, hardware, service request, etc. to make an accurate and easy report for analysis. Prioritization helps to identify the order and priority of incidents on which it is to be handled, this depends on its impact, seriousness and the involved risk factor.

Step 3. Investigation and Analysis

Investigation and analysis are done for a better understanding of the problem and gather information for preventing its re-occurrence.

Step 4. Resolution and Recovery

Resolution and recovery are done to solve the incident and bring the system back to its proper working condition.

Step 5. Incident Closure

At last, the solution is tested and if the system works as calculated, then the incident report is marked closed.

Importance of Incident Management Software

Through effectively functional incident management the organizations keep a record of every issue of their departments according to the nature of the problem. The best way is captured to resolve the issue by reviewing the past incidents that have occurred in an organization.

An incident tracking system allows to track the history of the incidents and their solutions which makes it easy for the reporting and monitoring of issues.

When the issue is submitted, it is good to track it for its status of resolving and the responsible person. The alerts and notifications are also sent to keep you updated about the stats of the incident.

Incident management is also important for customer satisfaction and affected business efficiency. The incident tracking system helps the organization to streamline the management process of complaints handling and to satisfy the customers.

There is always the stress of monitoring the inefficiencies that could lead to mistakes or issues. Incident management is an easy and affordable solution for these problems, it will assist to track and manage all the incidents and issues in an easy to understand manner.

Incident tracking system synchronizes the processes of reporting and analysing all the incidents without making any delay. Some software also helps to generate a graphic representation of the reports for better understanding.

Incident management includes the surety of safety and security of the people working in the environment thus, resolve the problem as soon as the incident is identified and recorded.

It processes of incident tracking is a paperless process, this not only saves the organization a money and writing time but also supports the conservation of environment program. Also, it is easy to view and carry the digital document anywhere around the world as compared to the papers.

Incidents are resolved according to the information of their type, department, etc. the information helps the system to find the best solution for the issue. This way less time is invested in understanding the query and resolving it.

Conclusion:

Each and every incident identified and recorded are different from each other, a good incident tracking system also a part of asset management software helps to track and manage the issue in an easy and effective manner. All the questions will be answered such as where and when the incident occurred, who identified and reported the incident, etc. A cloud-based incident management system helps to generate the well-detailed reports for the incidents.