Start with the core ITSM workflows
Every ITSM tool claims to do everything. Test the three workflows your team runs most often, end to end, during the demo:
- Incident management: logging from email and portal, automatic categorisation, assignment, escalation and resolution notes.
- Service request management: a service catalogue, approval routing and fulfilment tracking for common requests such as access and hardware.
- Change management: change requests with impact analysis and multi-step approvals before anything reaches production.
Check how Gen AI is actually used
Gen AI is now standard in ITSM marketing. Ask to see it working on real tickets. Useful capabilities include automatic ticket classification and routing, summaries of long ticket threads for the next agent, knowledge article suggestions while an agent is typing, and SLA breach prediction so supervisors can act early.
The most valuable step is agentic auto-resolution: an AI agent that handles common incidents such as password resets end to end, without an agent touching the ticket.
SLAs, dashboards and reporting
- Can you define different SLAs by priority, category and customer group?
- Do agents see SLA timers on every ticket, and do supervisors get alerts before a breach?
- Can managers build their own dashboards without asking the vendor?
- Can you export data for audits and management reviews?
Integrations and self-service
An ITSM tool is only as useful as its connections. Check API access and connectors for the tools you already use, and make sure employees get a self-service portal where they can raise requests, track status and find answers without calling the service desk.
Hosting, security and data location
Tickets contain employee data, system details and sometimes customer information. Ask where the platform is hosted, where data is stored, how traffic is encrypted and how access is controlled by role. For Indian enterprises, data stored in India simplifies internal security reviews and DPDP Act planning.
Run a focused proof of concept
Shortlist two or three tools and run a short pilot with one team and real tickets. Measure first response time, resolution time and how many tickets were correctly categorised without manual changes. Those numbers will tell you more than any feature list.
ConvergeDesk combines incident, request and change management with Gen AI classification, SLA forecasting and agentic auto-resolution, hosted on Microsoft Azure with data in India.