Just how beneficial is IT automation, you might be asking yourself? Well, Kaseya has identified a number of “habits” that best-in-class IT departments consistently practice using IT automation. By adopting these habits you can improve the status of your department within your organization and simultaneously upgrade department activities from tactical to strategic.
Effective Habit #1: Understanding the Business Goals
The IT department is often seen as overhead. Business administrators may not understand the potential strategic value of IT, so it’s up to the IT department to educate them – not by telling them, but by showing them. The best way to do that is to truly understand the strategic goals of your company or organization and align your efforts to support them.
Effective Habit #2: Focus on Projects that Drive Down Costs or Increase Revenues
You can’t do everything, so evaluate all the projects in your queue and rank them according to how much business benefit each can deliver. Identify the subset of highly visible business systems that contribute the most to the bottom line. Then focus on making those systems run as quickly and efficiently as possible through IT automation. Empower users – make it easy for them to do their jobs.
Effective Habit #3: Make Cloud Computing Work for You
Don’t worry that cloud computing will make your IT department obsolete. View the cloud as a tool that you can leverage to rid yourself of the day to day drudgery. Let the cloud do the daily necessary, but mundane tasks. That frees you up to successfully tackle the projects that improve the bottom line, making your IT department more visible as contributors to business success.
Effective Habit #4: Embrace New Industry Trends
Keep on top of new techniques and technologies. Evaluate them to determine which ones are a best fit for your organization and which ones can give you the best bang for your buck. Pay attention not only to buzz within the tech community, but with what is happening within your user/business community. Don’t wait for users to come to you with requests for support of new IT automation technologies. Take ownership for being the technology experts and introduce trending topics such as mobile computing, social media, virtualization, etc. to the business side before they become aware of them.
Effective Habit #5: Leverage and Benefit from User Self-Service
Find your power users and enable them. Allow them to handle some of your lower level tasks. This can improve your relationship with your user community – you are acknowledging that some of them have a certain level of IT skills; while it also frees your people up to focus on more strategic activities that contribute to the bottom line.
