Gaps and shortcomings in your IT operations can have immediate and obvious spillover affects across all business areas. Too often, decision-makers don’t notice these deficiencies or simply tolerate them due to lack of resources or knowledge for making improvements. With focus and diligence, it’s possible for company leaders to identify or at least prepare for shortcomings and, in doing so, improve IT and business processes and opportunities.
The gap starts here
So, what are common IT operational gaps holding company leaders and their teams back from reaching their goals and full potential? According to an SEI eBook, some often-seen IT operations shortcomings include the following:
- Complacency — The attitude “if it hasn’t broken yet, you’re probably just fine” isn’t going to be much comfort when risks become realities. Stagnation is a big problem for employees in many companies whose leaders are slow to adapt.
- Lack of functional training and cross-functional awareness — If employees, from top-level to entry-level, do not understand the functional areas of your IT infrastructure, they will likely be hard-pressed to contribute to optimizing shared processes and approaches.
- Communication and timing challenges — Siloed departments and lacking communication among staff members can lead to widespread redundancy of efforts and IT spending. Communication gaps can also lead to distrust, finger-pointing, missed growth opportunities, and lack of productivity.
- Poor documentation — Outdated, incorrect, misplaced, or lacking documentation can be blamed for any number of mishaps and snafus within IT operations.
- Failure to plan for the future — Although this one could fall under complacency, its impact can be so detrimental that it gets its own mention here. A lack of planning can have day-to-day productivity impacts that add up to major losses. Failure to mitigate unforeseen risks, innovate, and understand your future market — and needs of those in it — can mean the difference between leading your industry and closing your company doors.
Consider where your biggest IT gaps lie, and then take the proper steps to begin overcoming them company-wide.
Avoid or overcome hurdles
To avoid, address, or overcome these hurdles, IT deparments need to start with thorough gap analysis, objectively citing the state of IT operations and their alignment — or lack thereof — with business objectives. There is no one-size-fits-all solution that helps optimize IT for every company. Instead, company leaders need to determine their particular areas of weakness and develop customized plans to work toward improved operations.
These considerations can help drive efforts to effectively execute your company IT operations:
- Ensure open dialog is not only accepted but also encouraged from all levels within the company. This requires everyone to share a common language and objectives — such as IT terminology and business speak translated for all parties.
- If those in IT departments and other business units see themselves as competing, distrust can arise and hinder progress. Ensure everyone in the company focuses on shared goals, as improving processes and overall market standing is the end goal. To achieve this, those across all departments should view other units as equal assets.
- How do company leaders know business is progressing if there are no metrics in place to quantify improvements? Install dashboards, implement agreed-upon baselines and measures, and find tools that make processes easy for all involved.
- Eliminate silos. A holistic view of IT operations and how they directly map to business objectives is crucial to determine what is actually happening and where room exists for optimizations. This approach can also help ensure everyone is focused on the same goals and looking at the same metrics.
IT maturity can help
These common IT operational gaps are why many savvy IT leaders look to their IT maturity models road maps to bridge the gaps and align IT with business objectives. Those who strive to close those gaps by understanding maturity levels and developing systematic approaches to advancement and improvements can benefit from risk mitigation, fewer missteps, improved revenue streams, and increased market shares.
About the Author
Synoptek is an established firm that provides information systems consulting and IT management services. Synoptek and its predecessors have been providing these services for 23 years.