Inefficiency is a universal culprit in keeping businesses from reaching their potential. Estimates show how outdated, impractical processes can amount to seven-figure losses annually. IT might be your company’s most technologically-inclined department, but that doesn’t mean it couldn’t benefit from embracing automation more than it already is.
What are the benefits of process streamlining and automation in IT? Which processes should be automated first, and what tools are appropriate for the job? Read our brief overview to get a better idea and start implementing beneficial changes at your workplace instantly.
What Problems Do IT Workflow Streamlining & Automation Address?
Relying on outdated and manual practices affects your IT team on several levels, with efficiency being the most straightforward. Manually executing repetitive tasks can cause bottlenecks and take up much time. It’d be better spent on strategic decision-making, innovation, and proactive risk management.
As the business grows, so do the complexity and scope of the IT team’s responsibilities. Addressing them manually requires more hires and more expenditure. Automating what you can instead leads to more flexible scalability and lower long-term costs.
Remember, even the best IT specialists can make mistakes because we’re all human. A system misconfiguration may go unnoticed until it causes preventable downtime, and human error is often the leading cause of data breaches. Automation ensures that processes and actions are executed flawlessly every time, reducing the risk of these issues.
Leaving most decisions to individual team members creates disparate workflows and knowledge gaps. Instead, establishing documented, standardized processes streamlines and speeds up workflows, helps with onboarding, and enforces compliance with industry standards.
Essential IT Workflow Automation Tools
Hundreds of tools now allow for the automation of various business aspects, from invoicing and social media management to customer support. Here’s what to focus on in the context of IT.
- Patch management tools: Automatically rolling out patches ensures all operating systems, applications, and security software are running the latest version, reducing the attack surface while giving users access to new features.
- Configuration management tools: These tools ensure servers, networks, and systems meet predefined performance and security standards, mitigating misconfiguration risks.
- Password managers. Encourage the use of a password manager for IT teams to generate and securely store unique passwords for all internal systems and tools. With this solution, your IT team can schedule regular password changes and maintenance, ensuring top-notch security for every account in your company.
- IAM tools: Identity and access management tools work with password managers to enforce role-based access, granting users the appropriate permissions and revoking them as needed.
- SIEM tools: Security information and event management tools automate threat detection and mitigation by streamlining data collection and log analysis to identify and resolve threats before they spread.
- Data backup tools: These tools are crucial for fast disaster recovery and protection from threats like ransomware. Automating backup schedules and data integrity checks ensures reliable backup maintenance.
- VPN tools: Best business VPNs automatically secure connections for remote employees, reducing the IT team’s manual workload. This ensures consistent protection for company systems without requiring constant oversight.
- CI/CD tools: These tools streamline and improve the software development process by identifying integration issues, maintaining code quality standards, automating deployment, and monitoring application health.
- Service level agreement (SLA) monitoring tools: These tools track SLA adherence to ensure uptimes, resolution times, and other metrics align with agreed-upon expectations. They are essential for businesses in IT, cloud services, customer support, SaaS, outsourcing, or logistics.
Conclusion
Neglecting automation in a field developing as rapidly as IT practically guarantees your business won’t be capable of addressing client requirements or evolving cyber threats sooner rather than later. Use what you’ve learned here as a jumping-off point in creating a comprehensive and effective IT automation strategy instead.
