IT Service Management (ITSM) platforms have become an important part of how large organizations manage employee IT support, incident resolution, service requests, integrations, access, and ongoing platform administration.
Within these environments, IT System Administrators play a hands-on role in configuring and maintaining the systems that support day-to-day IT service operations. Their responsibilities can extend from configuring incident management workflows, Service Level Agreements (SLAs), notifications, and service categorization to establishing integrations with enterprise systems such as Single Sign-On (SSO), Microsoft Teams, Slack, Configuration Management Databases (CMDBs), and monitoring tools.
As AI capabilities became increasingly incorporated into IT workflows, the study explored how experienced IT administrators were already using AI and what they expected from more AI-native ITSM platforms.
The study was designed to understand the experiences and expectations of IT System Administrators working directly with ITSM systems and products.
The research focused on two key areas:
- Validating participants’ experience with AI-native ITSM setup and configuration
- Understanding their expectations, needs, and potential use cases for AI-native ITSM platforms
The study specifically looked at professionals who had hands-on responsibility for setting up ITSM products and could articulate how AI was being used within their current workflows and where it could provide additional support.
The research focused on professionals working within large enterprises with more than 5,000 employees globally.
This organization-size requirement positioned the research around complex enterprise IT environments where ITSM platforms typically support larger employee populations, multiple systems, structured workflows, and broader integration requirements.
The study covered organizations across a wide range of industries, including:
- Education
- Energy and Utilities
- Financial Services
- Government
- Healthcare and Life Sciences
- Manufacturing and Natural Resources
- Media
- Retail and Wholesale
- Software
- Hardware
- Telecommunications
- Transportation
The research centered on IT professionals with direct responsibility for configuring, implementing, and maintaining ITSM platforms.
Participants were required to have hands-on experience with activities such as:
- Configuring ITSM incident management workflows, SLAs, notifications, and service categorization
- Establishing and managing integrations between ITSM platforms and enterprise systems
- Managing integrations involving SSO, Teams/Slack, CMDBs, and monitoring tools
- Owning or co-owning ITSM implementation projects from provisioning through deployment and go-live
- Creating user accounts and assigning roles and permissions
- Providing configuration guidance to IT fulfiller teams
- Monitoring platform performance and implementing updates
- Maintaining ITSM configuration documentation
The target profile included IT Administrators, System Administrators, and IT System Administrators, with flexibility around exact job titles where responsibilities aligned with the research requirements.
A key qualification was direct experience setting up ITSM products within the previous two years.
Participants were screened for involvement in incident management, with the ability to work across related areas such as:
- Request Management
- Change Management
- Problem Management
- Major Incident Management
Incident Management was a required area of experience, ensuring that participants had direct exposure to one of the central operational functions of ITSM.
The research also looked at professionals who had been involved in ITSM setup for multiple years and were able to describe their responsibilities and experiences in detail.
The study placed particular emphasis on the growing role of AI within IT service operations.
Participants were required to be currently using AI within their workflows, with the screening capturing different levels of usage:
- Daily
- Weekly
- Occasionally
This provided a basis for understanding how AI was already being incorporated into incident and service operations rather than examining AI adoption only from a theoretical perspective.
The research explored how IT administrators currently interacted with AI and where AI-native capabilities could potentially assist with their day-to-day ITSM activities, configuration work, and service operations.
The research screened participants based on their experience with different ITSM platforms and enterprise support tools, including Atlassian, Zendesk, Freshservice, PagerDuty, and Salesforce, as well as other relevant ITSM products.
The focus was on professionals with practical experience setting up, configuring, and administering these environments, rather than users whose involvement was limited to submitting or managing basic IT service requests.
The study engaged IT System Administrators working in large enterprise organizations.
Participants were required to be full-time employees and to have direct responsibility for ITSM setup, configuration, and administration. They were also required to be comfortable discussing their professional workflows while participating in a recorded research session that included screen sharing of a prototype.
The research was conducted through 60-minute in-depth qualitative interviews, allowing participants to describe their current ITSM configuration practices, incident management responsibilities, AI usage, and expectations for AI-native experiences in their own words.
Vertex Expert Network supported the research by identifying and recruiting IT professionals who matched the required organization size, industry, job function, ITSM experience, and AI-usage criteria. The team screened participants for hands-on ITSM configuration responsibilities, verified their professional fit, and coordinated their participation in the research engagement.
The research focused on experienced IT System Administrators and related system administration professionals working within large enterprises of more than 5,000 employees.
Participants brought hands-on experience configuring ITSM environments, managing incident workflows, establishing enterprise integrations, administering permissions and user access, supporting implementation and go-live activities, monitoring platform performance, and maintaining system configurations.
The study also included professionals who were actively using AI within their incident or service operations workflows and could discuss how AI was being applied in their day-to-day work and where AI-native ITSM capabilities could better support them.
Through 60-minute in-depth qualitative interviews, the research captured practical perspectives from IT professionals working across diverse enterprise industries and technology environments.
Looking to understand how enterprise IT teams are adopting AI across service management and operational workflows? Connect with Vertex Expert Network to access perspectives from IT professionals with hands-on experience managing and configuring enterprise ITSM environments.
