Pretty much any organization is going to have used IT to automate aspects of its business. That’s the whole point. The obvious ones would be the finance processes like invoicing, payroll and accounts payable; or supply chain logistics stuff where stock inventory is controlled and deliveries made as precise and ‘just in time’ as possible. Less obvious ones would be the sales process, customer service practices and the like. The point is that IT has successfully automated everything that businesses do; so much so that new Web 2.0 business models have since been created which are entirely based upon IT’s automating influence.
But – HELLO?! – can anyone else spot the glaring discrepancy here? IT has automated every other aspect of business life, except for the IT department. Surrounded by rack upon rack of the most sophisticated technology available, IT people are spending nearly 90% of their total budgets looking after it all; and the meager remainder on innovating new internal services. If we’re honest, how much of that ‘operating’ pot gets consumed by administering time-consuming processes and replicated tasks, from silo’d and proprietary technology sets?
That’s what brings us to writing this blog and setting up this site. Automated IT wants to promote best-practice approaches, and their attendant technology solutions, that do the following for the good of the IT dept:
- Slash operating costs
- Reduce man-hours
- Cut space and power needs
- Support better decision making
- Boost uptime
Wish us luck!
Tags: automate, customer service, payroll, web 2.0
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July 21st, 2009 at 12:34 pm
all these research findings are a load of bunkem – they’re not in touch with the real world
July 23rd, 2009 at 2:01 pm
Thanks for the comment bazza – those are PwC stats as reported in the FT by the way. If your experience differs then please elaborate. 77% of statistics are made up on the spot apparently
though in all seriousness our own insights are that a 80-90% opex figure chimes with most IT depts today.
July 24th, 2009 at 5:54 pm
i guess what i’m refferring to is that most of the budget would comprise staff wages, renewals for maintenance and so forth – so what i’m saying is that when take out staffing etc – the ratio’s would be much different – perhaps 50:50 or is automated IT all about pruning staff costs as well . . . . .
July 27th, 2009 at 2:40 pm
I think you just answered your own question bazza – absolutely staff costs are a huge part, and a real opportunity for automation. look at where else IT has brought automation to other departments of a business; freeing up manpower is a major aspect. thanks again for your comment
July 28th, 2009 at 10:50 am
Thats all well and good – the benefits sound real and valuable and the challenges are certainly there – its the upfront investment both in $$ and resource – that the business will struggle with – and I will certainly find hard to sell internally with my current budget restrictions.. or is it much simpler than I think it is to implement ?
July 28th, 2009 at 10:55 am
thanks for the comment Dassy – we will be bringing you some practical advice with our first advisory very soon – be ready for that; we’d love to hear your comments!
July 28th, 2009 at 11:00 am
Well if Automated IT is as business effective as you are respondent I will stay tuned on this. Looking forward for more info
July 28th, 2009 at 12:28 pm
As someone who never did trust statistics……….what percentage do you reckon we could shave off our very tight IT budget, if we were able to get our IT guys to spend more of their time and expertise on innovation and less on managing the processes?
July 28th, 2009 at 1:42 pm
sorry to fudge a response PatMC – but it probably depends on your present set-up. that being said, each of the advisories we’ll be producing soon will specify some of the savings you can make following each given automation strategies. these aren’t shaving the odd 1% here and there; there are practices you can employ which offer more dramatic advantages than that. and benefits aren’t just restricted to cost savings…
July 28th, 2009 at 3:37 pm
i see the main obstacle being IT people themselves – wood from the trees and all that – very often the people that are busy practicing said manual tasks don’t realise their so called critical work can be automated – we spoke to a company the other day about taking their IP address management off spread sheets and freeware on to a dedicated device with a nice gui etc – it also had the benefit of protecting their DNS and DHCP servers (i know i is getting techy here) but the point being – the device would have saved the organisation over 200 man days per year – the guys response was they’d never had a DNS problem ever and the spread sheet worked fine – how do you over come this sub conscious rebuff etc