1. Use Proven Standards

There's no need to reinvent the wheel on ITSM standards. Two great places to start are the Information Technology Infrastructure Library (ITIL) and Control Objectives for Information and Related Technology (COBIT), Mike Alley, director of ITSM for Logicalis U.S., said. While there is some overlap, Alley recommended ITIL for back-office needs, while he said COBIT was better suited for cost and IT governance standards. In the end, it's not the standard itself that matters so much -- businesses can even develop their own. But having some sort of standard in place gives a better end-to-end picture of IT support and how to best manage and monitor the services in your portfolio, Alley said.