3 Common Issues Found During IT Assessments + How to Fix Them

IT assessments are a useful tool for organizations to understand the strengths and weaknesses of their operations. ?Assessments help companies identify areas for improvement, optimize processes, improve their technology-stack and align their IT strategies with business goals.?

These assessments are very thorough and include weeks of effort analyzing data, interviewing key stakeholders, and developing a detailed action plan to improvement the business.? After our assessments we continue to see 3 consistent issues that impact organizations.

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1. Lack of a Cohesive IT Roadmap

Issue:

A cohesive IT roadmap is essential for guiding an organization’s technology initiatives, ensuring that each team from Applications to Security are aligned with the overall business strategy. Many companies struggle with fragmented IT plans or in some cases no strategy at all.?? This often leads to teams working in silos, resulting in disjointed projects, inefficient use of resources, and missed opportunities for collaboration & innovation.

Solution:

Develop a cohesive IT roadmap:

·???????? Define Clear Business Goals: Ensure that your IT strategy aligns with the overall business objectives of the organization.

·???????? Prioritize Initiatives: Identify and prioritize IT projects based on their potential impact and alignment with business goals. Focus on initiatives that deliver the most value, balancing both effort and outcomes.? It is also important to engage with key stakeholders to understand their needs and expectations.?

·???????? Define Milestones + Metrics: Establish clear milestones and success metrics for each initiative. This helps in tracking progress and measuring the impact.? This can also help determine if projects are getting offtrack or no longer aligned to business goals.

·???????? Communicate + Update Regularly: Maintain consistent communication with all stakeholders and regularly update the IT roadmap to reflect progress as well as changes in business strategy.?? Do not execute upon your roadmap behind the scenes, celebrate progress, broadcast improvements, and evangelize the benefits that IT initiatives provide to the business.

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2. Missing ITSM Foundational Elements

Issue:

IT Service Management (ITSM) provides a structured approach to managing IT services, but many organizations are missing some foundational elements.? Many times organizations feel that they are more mature in this area unfortunately most only have some elements of ITSM.? This leads to inefficiencies, inconsistent service delivery, and increased downtime.?

Solution:

Start by implementing an enterprise grade ITSM platform that includes Incident, Request, Change, Problem, Knowledge, Asset, Service Catalog and CMDB.? ?Then focus on Organizational Change Management (OCM) to ensure the platform and processes are not only adopted but embraced by the organization.?

Establish a strong ITSM foundation:

·???????? Align on a Platform: ?Implement or align on a single ITSM platform.?? This must be a single platform as having many can be just as challenging as having none.? This platform should include all foundational ITSM elements and must be combined with proper implementation and adoption across the organization.

·???????? Define + Document Processes: Selecting the right platform will provide a framework however processes must be clearly documented, including incident management, change management, and problem management. This ensures consistency, improves adoption, and enables ongoing training.

·???????? Optimize Integrations: Integrate the platform with other business critical applications to streamline workflows and drive automation.? This is particularly important for Asset Management and CMDB accuracy.? Integrating your ITSM platform with Microsoft Intune as an example, will allow you to easily manage your endpoints and associate them to Incidents, Requests, Change and Problem tasks.

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3. Failing to Realize the Value of Existing Tools/Investments

Issue:

Organizations often invest heavily in IT tools and technologies but fail to realize their full potential. ?This can be due to a number of reasons including inadequate training, lack of awareness to full capabilities or a not properly forecasting the costs to fully implement. leading to a poor return on investment (ROI).

Solution:

By defining a core application stack and organization can align their tools investments and focus on unlocking the full potential of platforms they have today.? Organizations should also seek assistance and training of their teams to enable full use of existing solutions.

·???????? Evaluate Tool Usage: Continuously assess how tools are being used within the organization and identify underutilized features or opportunities for consolidation. Reference this article on combating “Tool Sprawl”

·???????? Invest in Training:? Often IT teams are so focused on putting out fires or completing projects that they do not commit sufficient time to learning.? Leaders must commit time and capital to training and developing their resources on the core stack of applications.? By investing in continuous learning, certifications and conferences, leaders can expand the capabilities of their teams and enable better use of existing tools. ??

·???????? Focus on Microsoft: One of the most underutilized platforms is Microsoft – while Microsoft has continued to expand the capabilities and features of the E3 + E5 licenses few organizations are leveraging these enhancements to their full potential. Focusing efforts here will not only help organization to improve their operations but this can often be achieved with no additional investment or will offer savings to reinvest into other initiatives.

·???????? Avoid “unitaskers”: ?IT leaders should be cautious of the pursuit of best in class tools as this can unfortunately lead to expensive, niche` tools that are “unitaskers”- performing only one function while still requiring full administration and support.? These tools may be the industry leader in their particular space; however organizations are often better served by deploying a solution within an existing platform that offers nearly the same performance without the additional overhead and expense.

Conclusion

While regular assessments are effective for continuous improvement and maintaining a robust and agile IT infrastructure, maximize your value by ensuring you have addressed these common issues.? By developing a cohesive IT roadmap, implementing ITSM foundational elements, and maximizing the value of existing tools, companies can focus on higher level initiatives.?