7 ways to make IT operations more efficient

Kelker notes that ISG research recently found that nearly 66% of enterprises wish to automate as many operations as possible, and another 61% want to drive greater efficiency and productivity of IT operations teams and processes. “Any IT operations automation approach should leverage AIOps to deliver efficiency,” he says. “Commonly implemented AIOps use cases will drive reduction in open incident tickets and service outages with AI-infused intelligent alerting, auto-remediation, root cause analysis, anomaly/threat detection, and capacity optimization.”

6. Leverage industry benchmarks

Eli Cohen, CEO and co-founder of The ADU Guide, a construction company that creates accessory dwellings (secondary housing units built on a single-family residential lot), believes that IT efficiency should be based on squeezing the most value out of IT resources while minimizing costs.

Leveraging industry benchmarks has proved instrumental in driving efficiency within IT operations, Cohen says. “Regularly comparing our performance against industry standards allows us to gain valuable insights into our strengths and weaknesses,” he explains. “Identifying areas where we may fall short or excel enables strategic decision-making for improvement.”

“By embracing industry benchmarks, we’ve set a clear standard for success, fostering a culture of continuous improvement within our IT team,” Cohen says. “This proactive approach ensures that we not only meet but exceed industry norms, staying at the forefront of technological advancements.”

7. Emphasize self-service for scale

Jonny LeRoy, senior vice president and CTO at industrial supply company Grainger, believes that strong customer service is a frequently overlooked efficiency attribute. “We’re moving toward self-service through automation and want users to be able to resolve most of their own IT service needs with ease, reducing the number of interactions.”

LeRoy says he focuses on building self-service systems that are easy to access and operate. “We’re trying to scale the amount of customers we serve without having to scale our technology teams linearly with growth,” he explains. Achieving this goal requires an ongoing focus on efficiency. “Through our focus on continuous improvement via self-service and effective problem management practices, we have been able to shrink our frontline support volume by one-third in 12 months.”

LeRoy also believes that a flexible domain model will rapidly improve customer satisfaction. “A ‘one size fits all’ operations model can introduce complexities for our customers and our engineers,” he says. The model he deployed automatically routes work to agents possessing the specific expertise needed to make interactions as smooth as possible.

“By working to embed continuous improvement, we’ve ensured we have the basics right, leveraged playbooks to create standardization, and have created a unified support model across different operational teams,” LeRoy concludes.