There was a time when IT self-service was considered inconvenient. In the early days, when the underlying technology was often slow, erratic, and inconsistent, many felt it was faster and easier to rely on a live person. Today digitally-familiar users can’t imagine a world without it.

The beauty of technology self-service is in how it allows you to scale your business, paying dividends as you grow – particularly in technical and customer support. According to a commissioned study conducted by Forrester in March 2021, 63% of respondents reported it can take them up to 3 days to provision on-premises IT resources. This is detrimental to scalability but something that can be mediated through safe self-service. The cost savings of secure self-service also enables scalability. Provide support through self-service and it will cost you less than 1% of what it costs you to provide it through staff. Plus, 71% of consumers of information want to solve issues on their own. So, not only does a self-service option cost less and save time, it’s what your users want.

Still, in I&O departments, especially enterprise messaging and middleware, the adoption curve for self-service has been slow.  There, perceived security challenges often restrain the implementation of self-service capabilities. In the same Forrester study, they found that 58% of professionals at organizations not currently providing IT self-service capabilities reported security challenges as the reason.