4 Questions for Every CTO/CIO - 1 Answer

posted by Mike Mazzolini

In today's economic climate it is imperative your organization's IT resources operate at the most efficient levels but fit nicely into smaller and smaller budgets. If you are the man or woman in charge of technology direction, at any size organization, that may be your job description.

Building the most proficient technology operation for your company takes significant effort. 

By asking yourself the following 4 questions and applying 1 solution - Workflow Automation - you may get a leg up on the competition.

1) Is There Enough Time and Money to Properly Document Processes?

Documentation is necessary - right? 

Every organization or company needs to insure that it has proper documentation that describes the processes that make it go. But, really, who has time to spend on writing up the procedure you just designed and implemented. You could get someone else to do it but that really never works because the other person is as busy as you.

But documentation is necessary - right?

There are so many reasons to document process:

• It helps communicate ideas to others
• Can prevent re-inventing the wheel
• Preserves knowledge that can be passed on
• Prevents mistakes
• and many more good reasons

Yes! Documentation is good and important to every organization. What can be done to insure proper documentation for process is in place?

Answer: Workflow Automation

Workflows are self-documenting. As you build the process you are generating the documentation. Anyone can easily see how they work. Your support staff won't have to find "the person" who wrote it.

2) How Can I Manage the Time and Cost to Model and Build Support Process?

Every well run organization usually has the best built support processes. There is a cost involved in putting these proper processes in place. The problem is that this is not a one time deterministic cost. Businesses change and grow and this requires that your support processes move and adjust accordingly. So, how does an organization manage the ongoing time and cost? 

Answer: Workflow Automation 

Workflows allow users to program or generate automation processes at a higher abstraction level to more easily deal with the growing complexity of technology. Unlike scripting languages that are hard to read and understand, workflows are simple to maintain, which reduces ongoing operational cost. 

3) Are Your Support Processes, Platform Agnostic?

I can hear you now, "I don't need to worry about being platform agnostic, my business runs on a single consistent platform". 

If there is one thing I've learned over the course of my career in technology, it's that technology can change fast and what might be the platform of choice today isn't the choice tomorrow. That leads to supporting multiple platforms and solutions, which leads to more support process. So, how can an organization insure that it has support processes that are platform independent?

Answer: Workflow Automation

A workflow automation solution will abstract the platform layer. This allows IT personnel to build a single process that operates cross-platform, reducing copy/paste errors and eliminating code drift.

4) Can You Scale the Business without Overburdening Your IT Staff?

This maybe the most import question of them all. It's a question that every successful business, ultimately, has to answer.

Certainly, there are many variables to consider as you try to scale a business. However, if additional revenue requires relatively smaller additions to operating and technology costs, then congratulations…your business scales! So, how can you increase the likelihood that your technology costs stay under control?

Answer: You guessed it - Workflow Automation

Applying a good workflow automation solution can help control your operating costs by promoting the use of best practices, insuring documentation, reducing support maintenance, ensuring seamless operation across platforms and allowing you to scale operations.

3 IT Challenges Small and Medium Business Face

posted by GUEST POST

If you have a small or medium-sized business, having a good IT automation strategy can make a huge impact.

Over the years, We’ve worked with a lot of smaller organizations.  Their challenges seem to fall in these categories:

1. Scalability.  How does your staffing change as the number of computational assets increase?  If you’re like most companies, you want to grow but not increase head count. 

2. Reliability.  Is your IT staff spending too much time fighting fires?  Are the fires getting in the way of forward-moving initiatives?  Are errors and mistakes costing you downtime that exposes you to lost business?  Does it risk your reputation?

3. Compliance.  Good or bad, the powers in Washington will create more regulations.  Whether you process credit cards, handle patient records, deal with people’s financial data, etc.  You probably need to be compliant with some kind of acronym like SOX, HIPPA, etc.  In this economy, with all that needs done, how do you have time to follow it all?

Automation is the answer.  By designing good IT process and then turning that into workflows executed by computers rather than people, you address each of these problems head-on.

1. Scalability.  As you transition your staff from “doers” to “designers”, you allow your organization to grow without growing your workforce.  It’s very much like transitioning from a team of workers who attach bumpers as cars come down an assembly line to a team of workers who program the robot that assembles the bumpers.  In the later case, if you want to make twice as many cars, you need twice as many robots, not twice as many people.  The same is true with IT workflow.  If you have to do a task more than once, create a workflow. 

2. Reliability.  We often joke that the automation solution is the only employee who works 24/7, never makes a mistake and never forgets to do something because they get interrupted by a phone call.  But it absolutely true.  Once your IT process becomes a machine-executed workflow, the number of errors and mistakes will drop significantly.  There will be fewer fires to fight and the automation solution will allow lesser skilled staff to handle more of them – freeing your best people to remain focused on new initiatives.

3. Compliance.  A good automation tool should be designed to encompass the requirements of the various “acronyms” and shepherd you down a path that helps you build and enforce best practices.  Security audits are cheap and easy when you know your tools simply won’t allow anything to occur outside your security policies and provides the audit trails to prove it. 

We're always interested in talking to people about their challenges.  Please don't hesitate to comment and send us questions.

XonaSoftware Support team is made up of a handful of individuals that spend their days working with organizations to solve their most significant IT challenges through the use of automation.