Information Technology has a lot of different meanings to a lot of different people. Those that work in the IT field believe that IT is a driving force behind business success. While those that consider themselves “business people” often believe IT is simply there to make sure their email works or their computer doesn’t crash. In reality, IT is now more important than ever, considering the revolutionary technology that exists today and the few that actually understand how it can be leveraged to achieve business goals. With this in mind, we’ll take a look at some staggering IT statistics and what it means for modern IT.
A recent study from CA Technologies came to some interesting conclusions. One of them is that 93% of users (workers) are satisfied with incident response from their IT department. This is a positive statistic considering 54% of business people believe IT is simply a maintenance entity instead of an innovator. That’s basically a 50/50 split. With today’s technology you would think that sales, marketing, and executives among other departments outside IT would believe that IT is what helps them do their jobs better, and thus innovates the way they do business.
What’s more telling is that only 29% of business people believe their IT department is agile and flexible. This basically means they believe their IT department is more responsive than proactive. To take it a step further, 73% of users believe their organization needs to do more in order to make IT more effective. This includes adding more options to coincide with mobile devices and overall mobility. These days business doesn’t just take place in the boardroom or a cubicle. Workers are constantly on the move, and want to be able to work in multiple locations at different times. They also need to make sure their systems work when they need them, and being able to notify IT of a possible issue in multiple ways is becoming more and more of a necessity.
To put things in perspective, Millennials (those born between 1980 & 2000) are having less and less face to face interactions, and are communicating more and more via messaging applications, email, and over the phone. This pales in comparison to past generations who were much more team oriented and worked primarily face to face or one on one. The IT needs change drastically for these different generations of workers, and as past generations retire and leave the workforce it’s important that IT keeps up with new user, and business, demand.
The main problem this presents is that IT comes with a cost, a cost that is often beyond the budget of many businesses. Or at least thought to be. Perhaps organizations should think about putting more into their IT infrastructure? That might be a solution. Another option is to find IT solutions that are more cost effective yet still yield the results and drive innovation that a growing and fast-moving business needs.
Think about this. Facebook, probably the most famous network on the Internet, grew substantially in just a short time. In 2004 they had about a million users; and by the end of the following year, they had over 5 Million. Two years later they had 50 Million users, and today they have over 1 Billion users. Facebook grew substantially from year to year, adding over 100 Million users in some years. Imagine the IT needs to make sure that every user has a positive experience. Imagine what it takes to keep their employees and site up and running, secure, and innovative. Facebook’s ability to make this happen (albeit with some of the technology world’s finest talent) sets them apart from any other business out there today.
Going back to the CA Technologies study, they also made some interesting points about how to make sure organizations satisfy business and user demand. They stated that,
“…trends, such as the proliferation of cloud, virtualization and mobile devices, have fundamentally altered the technology landscape and changed how the business and users interact with IT. Despite this, many organizations are still running a service desk platform that is the same or similar to ones they used a decade ago without evolving with the times – and they often suffer from the same high cost, complexity, slow response and inflexibility challenges these legacy platforms are infamous for causing. With the right solution, however, IT has the opportunity to satisfy both business and user demands for delivering and consuming IT services in the current business landscape. A next-generation service desk platform will help by:
- Being easy to understand and use
- Providing self-service and collaboration to help resolve issues
- Leveraging one point of contact to get ‘work’ done
- Providing modern interfaces to match the experience
- Reducing cost of ownership”
Now, we understand that IT can often seem overwhelming and tough to understand, especially when it comes to understanding how IT fits into the business model. A trusted IT partner and consultant like Neovera can help you make sense of a complicated IT world and effectively help your organization streamline your IT infrastructure so you can do business more efficiently.