12 May Grip on your IT landscape
Are you a very busy IT manager and do you have hardly any time left for innovation? Read our 5 tips to get a better grip on your IT landscape.
5 tips to get a better grip on your IT landscape
As an IT manager, you’ve seen huge changes to your role over recent years, partly as a result of digitisation and the new way of working. More processes are now digital, and employees are increasingly working outside the office.
The youngest generations in the workplace (millennials and Gen Z) have high expectations of IT. They want to be able to work anywhere and anytime on the latest, fastest devices. This means the IT landscape is becoming a lot broader and more complex.
At the same time, 81% of IT managers say they are too busy to come up with innovative solutions for a changing IT landscape, mainly because they spend too much time on low-value, high-effort tasks.
This blog has 5 tips to help you get a better grip on your IT landscape, allowing you to spend more time on what’s really important.
Tip 1: Centralise IT with Unified Endpoint Management
`Knowing exactly what’s going on is a crucial part of IT management’. Do you still manually enter data about your IT assets? Research shows that 43% of all IT managers are still filling in a spreadsheet overview of their IT resources. However, due to how widely data is distributed, this is almost impossible to do in 2021. Establishing the relationships between the various IT assets is quite a challenge in itself – keeping them up to date on the long term is another. By centralising or automating this process, you have more control over your IT landscape and processes.
There used to be a very tight-fisted approach to IT resources, with restricted access and minimal rights. Then came the `Consumerization of IT’, a trend that saw people start to use certain IT resources at home, such as their iPad, for business purposes. Users in general and younger generations in particular are becoming increasingly digitally literate, resulting in `Shadow IT’.
It’s therefore very important to support users instead of restricting them. Unified Endpoint Management ensures centralised management and security for IT resources without restricting users.
Tip 2: Introduce zero-touch deployment
Various tools, such as Windows Autopilot, simplify the rollout of new systems when they’re combined with a Unified Endpoint Management system. In many cases (and if properly set up), a new system no longer needs to be directed via the service desk but can be made immediately available to the end user. As a result, you can on-board new employees almost effortlessly.
How often do you get someone knocking at your door? And how many reports do you receive about hardware or software malfunctions? As an IT manager, you probably have more important tasks to do than resolving bugs and providing support to employees. Setting things up correctly and automating processes also frees up resources to support your end users.
In addition, make sure there are other ways for your employees to ask questions, such as via an online FAQ page or support site. In this way, you give end users more opportunities to solve problems independently.
Tip 3: Standardise IT devices
More than half of the employees are not satisfied with their device. Set up personas at the company and make sure the hardware and software are aligned with these during on-boarding, so you can support your personas as effectively as possible. After all, a graphic designer places more demands on their devices than an administrative employee does.
In order to standardise at company level, classifying the personas into user groups and standardising them according to these groups is a smart move. If you only base standardisation on personas, you run the risk of a proliferation of IT resources. Standardise the different user groups, taking SLA and lifecycle management into account.
Employees want very different things compared with a few years ago. Nowadays, they expect to be able to use their devices easily at home, at the office, during meetings, and on the road. In addition, millennials and Gen Z are used to working with the latest and fastest technology – and they expect the same from their employers. Reliable device management can nip future problems in the bud.
Tip 4: Predict your IT spending
Switching to a pay-per-use model – something that is becoming ever more attractive – helps to keep your expenses transparent. That’s why most companies are usually quick to adopt these types of models for their IT. After all, you pay a fixed amount per month per workstation, making the costs predictable and transparent, and can enjoy the flexibility you don’t have when making an upfront investment. It also gives you, as an IT manager, more time to focus on your core business, as processes are automated.
Tip 5: Choose the right workplace strategy
This tip echoes the ones about supporting your employees as effectively as possible. An effective workplace strategy also increases productivity and employee satisfaction:
- Personal Device (formerly `Bring Your Own Device’): private system with private admin rights, business container for applications and data;
- Corporate Owned Device: business system with business admin rights, no private environment;
- Kiosk: business system with business admin rights, only one or a few applications available to end users;
- Corporate Owned, Personal Enabled (formerly `Choose Your Own Device’): business system with business admin rights, separating private from business. The system can then be used for both business and private purposes without the data and applications intermingling.
If you’d like to know more, we’d be happy to show you how you can optimise your IT landscape. Feel free to contact us for personal advice.