Demand management (also called requirements management) describes the process of capturing, assessing, and implementing the requirements of a business department.

This process can only be managed if a central system is available both to the business department and the IT department. In a first step, this system is used to capture and categorize the requirements. Business managers and/or IT managers will then assess these requirements. A positive assessment is then followed by the approval.

Business managers, however, also need to be able to coordinate any activities with the party making the request and the IT department. Here's a real-life example: a minor requirement was approved by the business department but turned down by the IT department because of cost considerations. The business department can once again specify its requirements to reduce the cost of implementation.

The process of coordinating activities between the business department, the party making the request, and the IT department comes before the actual change management process carried out by the IT department.

The open workflow concept of theGuard! ServiceDesk makes it easy to add demand management to a company's change management process. One advantage of the implementation is that the system can be easily accessed through a Web interface. This allows every single employee in the organization to flexibly access and participate in the process.

The integrated approval system allows everyone involved in the process (IT department, business department, party making the request) to request approval. This can be done in different process steps.

theGuard! actively supports the approval process with e-mail messages, escalations, and notifications. It is also possible to assign vacation replacements to make sure that approval processes can be handled quickly and efficiently.

Adding requirements management to your theGuard! ServiceDesk will allow you to better integrate existing ITIL process into your organization. This, however, is only possible if you have the change management and incident management modules of theGuard! ServiceDesk in place.