Where Am I? What Path Should I Take?
Imagine you’re trying to get to a friend’s house and call them asking for directions. The first question they’ll likely ask is, “Where are you now?” This analogy is crucial when discussing IT governance. Most companies know where they want to go but often lack clarity on their current position and the best path to take. A global survey of 749 IT executives, including CIOs from 23 countries, revealed recurring and pressing issues in IT governance, highlighting the need for specialized services.(Fonte: http://www.isaca.org)
Key Challenges Faced by Companies
- 58% of respondents mentioned a lack of sufficient staff.
- 48% cited problems with IT service execution, ranking as the second major difficulty.
- 38% pointed out inadequate skills among their IT teams.
- 30% anticipated issues related to IT return on investment.
Additionally, 93% of respondents stated that IT has medium to high importance in overall corporate strategy — a 6% increase from the previous year.
IT Governance: A Constant Need
Managing small IT demands is always challenging, particularly due to the conflicting interests involved. Clients expect immediate execution, while IT demands often exceed delivery capacity. For IT managers, this represents a constant puzzle, trying to balance demands with available resources.
Many companies undergo significant changes, and often, IT managers lack comprehensive documentation of their environment and have small teams to handle a large workload. This leads to task accumulation and unproductive time spent on incident resolution, such as email interruptions, application failures, or issues with critical business systems.
With technological advancement and increased competition, companies seek intelligent solutions that make IT management stand out. However, rapidly adopting these solutions without proper planning can result in disorganized sector growth, unnecessary acquisitions, and implementation failures.
The Importance of a Strategic Plan
For IT to become a strategic differentiator, it’s essential to develop a detailed plan outlining the steps needed to achieve objectives. This plan should include a clear timeline, highlighting key business aspects and emerging technologies. Without this, IT might lose the company’s trust, leading to a difficult-to-reverse loss of credibility.
Practical Tips for IT Managers
Although many IT managers know where they want to lead their company, they often lack clarity on their current position or the best route to get there. Here are some essential tips:
- Define your IT service portfolio and pipeline.
- Document to comply with best practices in information security.
- Create comprehensive documentation of the technology environment, following ITIL practices.
- Identify the current and desired state for better IT governance.
- Implement ITIL practices with your internal team, starting with Configuration, Incidents, Problems, and Changes.
Conducting a complete assessment and documenting the entire IT environment can be complex and time-consuming, especially when it involves physical and logical infrastructure, network topology, server hardware and software, and legacy systems. Specialized consultancies can assist in this process.
The Importance of Hiring a Specialized Partner
This is where the significance of seeking qualified partners, like Outview IT Solutions, comes into play. Companies looking for IT service providers often use key phrases to ensure that the chosen partner has the necessary expertise and aligns with their expectations.
Common Phrases When Seeking an IT Service Provider:
- High availability guarantee
- Customized solutions for your business
- Continuous process improvement
- Cost reduction and efficiency increase
- Compliance with security standards
- Proactive, real-time monitoring
- 24/7 specialized technical support
- Risk management and mitigation
- Strategic consulting services
- Support for digital transformation
These factors are crucial when selecting IT partners, especially in today’s dynamic and demanding environment. Hiring a provider with experience in infrastructure management, information security, and business continuity makes all the difference.
Conclusion
Knowing where you want to go is important, but knowing where you are now is crucial for plotting the best path forward. Therefore, consider seeking specialized consulting to help map your IT environment, diagnose issues, and implement effective solutions. If you need assistance, feel free to leave a comment or contact us, and we’ll be happy to help.
