Why Relationship Mapping Matters
BY IT GLUE | January 05, 2021
Picture this: What if your technicians could locate every piece of information they need, right from your client’s software license data to their ISP information, without breaking a sweat? Think about what this could do for your ticket resolution speed and quality. Well, relationship mapping makes this possible.
Relationship mapping enables your technicians to link related items together, allowing them to quickly pull up all the information they need. It has the potential to significantly improve your team’s productivity, making it a must-have feature for any serious IT documentation software.
However, simply having everything documented isn’t enough. Not wasting time searching for your documentation is just as important – because it’s already there, one click away, on the right-hand side of your screen.
Let’s take a closer look at some of the reasons why relationship mapping matters in IT documentation.
Reduces Research Time
When you can build logical, two-way connections between different assets, users and locations, you won’t have to locate every piece of information manually. Your technicians will save a ton of time since they can pull up all related information regarding a ticket in a single click — no more sifting through pesky excel sheets trying to find the right piece of information.
Troubleshoot Faster
Let’s say your client reaches out complaining that several of their workstations are not functioning correctly. Relationship mapping enables your technicians to quickly identify the affected workstations and find out what software is installed on those computers as well as details of firewalls, connected devices and more. This way, they can determine if the issue the client is facing is a computer (endpoint) problem or a problem with a server, switch or firewall, and start taking steps immediately to resolve the problem.
Build a Self-Service Culture
Deploying a documentation software with relationship mapping capabilities is a great way to empower your technicians. They can define and, more importantly, understand the relationships between different elements quickly.
Relationship mapping helps you eliminate finger-pointing and confusion that could potentially occur due to simple forgetfulness, during emergencies or while onboarding new employees. When all the relevant information for any given task can be found with a few clicks, it allows your technicians to be that much more independent. More importantly, they can proceed with absolute confidence.
Wrapping up
Information existing in silos is not useful to anyone, regardless of whether it’s your information or a client’s information. You need to build a web of relevant connections between the different pieces. That’s why relationship mapping is critical to effective IT documentation.
In fact, relationship mapping is one of the key points of differentiation between IT Glue and most (if not all) other documentation systems. While other systems offer “flat” documentation, IT Glue offers “structured” documentation. It creates logical, two-way connections between pieces of information (assets) such as vendors, licenses, network devices, contacts, domains, passwords, standard operating procedures or licenses.
Additionally, Network Glue detects and shows all the different devices on the network and how they are connected to each other, adding another level of automation to relationship mapping.
If you are interested in learning more about IT Glue’s documentation tools and how they can help you enhance your documentation and overall business efficiency, sign up for a demo today!
