Staying agile is essential for businesses in all industries. Technologies are evolving quickly. Because of this, so are your customers’ expectations and needs.
People don’t just like having fast delivery of products and services. They expect it. To continually delight customers, organizations are doubling down on their IT operations management and embracing this concept of IT business transformation.
This is not surprising when you look at the consistent increase in IT investments over the last 15 years. In fact, Statista found that global IT spending is expected to reach approximately $3.61 trillion in 2021.
The landscape of how businesses leverage technology is changing fast, as more solutions are being integrated into daily operations and automation is still a top priority. Thus, the age of IT transformation is in full swing.
What Is IT Transformation (ITX)?
IT transformation refers to the complete reassessment of an organization’s current IT infrastructure. The reassessment leads to modifications that modernize and improve hardware components, workflows, software applications, management of IT services, and the mechanisms used for data storage and accessibility.
As part of the bigger picture, the IT transformation concept falls under what is commonly referred to as digital transformation.
Digital Transformation vs. IT Transformation
The process of digital transformation is centered around adopting new technologies in a strategic way in an effort to improve processes, boost productivity, mitigate risks, manage costs, and ultimately deliver a better employee experience and customer experience.
The digital transformation process leads to changes in the way an organization uses IT in their processes and how they provide services and products. Within this scope, IT transformation aims to make changes to how the organization’s IT function directly improves the IT services they provide.
Digital transformation often includes IT transformation, but the latter can be executed without a full scale digital transformation. For example, if your IT department is underperforming, you can adopt IT transformation to make significant updates to improve the team’s overall performance.
Simply put, IT transformation is the process of updating legacy systems to support your business in its long-term growth and aligning your IT department with big picture goals. An IT transformation project might include changing your network architecture, data management processes, software, and hardware.
Why Is IT Transformation Important? 3 Ways ITX Supports Business Growth
Looking at the scope of your current business technologies and planning for long-term growth, you can see how this process sets you up for continued success. A drastic change in the way your IT team operates is no longer a nice-to-have. It’s essential, especially when you see how ITX can support sustainable business growth.
1. It Redefines How You Strategize
One of the most obvious benefits is improving your ability to streamline how your IT team is managed. With the right technologies and processes in place, your employees across the entire company are well equipped to access the technologies they need quickly.
Consequently, employees become faster at completing tasks and more engaged in their work. The time you save can then be used to brainstorm and execute strategic initiatives that support your “big picture” objectives.
2. It Improves Your Company’s Speed and Agility
The faster your team can access and use the tools they need, the faster your business can deliver products and services. This also leads to easier implementation of new solutions as you evolve your internal tech stack.
This improved speed is what supports your business agility, meaning your ability to adapt quickly to changes in your market, lead change in your industry, outpace your competitors, and proactively respond to changes in demands from your customers.
3. It Saves You Money
The financial advantages of ITX are hard to overstate. Not only does investing in ITX help save you big on the immediate costs of using technologies that are redundant, but you also save in the long run.
You can leverage automation to reduce your need for personnel, simplify the experience of your end users, and even prevent having to spend big money on costly hardware maintenance or data center utilization.
What Does IT Transformation Consist Of?
The process of updating your IT requires a lot of moving parts, all of which aim to streamline productivity through your people, processes, and technology. It’s a large project to take on, as it centers on three key areas of focus:
Customer Success Operations
Your customers are the lifeblood of your organization, so naturally they’re top of mind when it comes to improving how your IT team supports them. As you plan and implement your ITX project, keep in mind exactly how your improvements support your customers.
With a solid IT service management (ITSM) strategy in place, you can ensure all experiences your customers have with your IT systems are positive and secure. This way, your customers’ data stays safe while they enjoy interacting with your digital systems.
You can also deliver a seamless service desk support experience with the right ITSM processes in place. The faster your support team can help with incident and problem management, the more satisfied your customers will be.
The end goal of enhancing your IT service management is to help your customers get the results they need from your organization. When you can achieve this, not only will you retain and potentially upsell your existing customers, but you can also gain new customers. The happier your current customer base, the more likely they are to refer others and bolster your positive reputation.
Workforce Enablement
Creating an awesome customer experience is vital to the success of your business, but it’s hard to do this without happy employees. This is where workforce enablement comes in handy.
The goal of workforce enablement is to focus on improving employee satisfaction. In the context of IT operations management, that aligns with providing your staff with the right tools to simplify their workday. This might include automation, operational model updates, process improvements, and employee workflows.
With an improved employee experience, you can see increased productivity, improved collaboration, and higher engagement levels. That directly supports a positive customer experience. Simply put, when your employees are happy, they can better support and delight your customers.
Technology Integration
How efficient is an IT system that is riddled with disconnected solutions and clunky piecemealed processes?
The answer is simple — it’s not. This is why developing a sensible, fully integrated IT system matters. With putting the right solutions in place and using proper integration, all of your data is easy to manage and transfer across teams. This empowers your team to collaborate more effectively than ever before.
IT workflows are vital to how you integrate your technologies. Using the right IT transformation and ITSM tools makes this complex process easier.
For example, ServiceNow users can build all kinds of workflows in several key business areas, including:
- IT service management (ITSM)
- IT operations management (ITOM)
- IT business management (ITBM)
- IT asset management (ITAM)
- IT security operations
Building these workflows lays the foundation for the success of your IT transformation.
How Can IT Transformation Help My Company?
No matter your type of business, your industry, or your size, a fully optimized IT system supports the sustainable, long-term growth of your business.
It’s important to see the entire picture of how your ITX project can impact each aspect of your organization. Since it achieves full integration across all your tools, improves the employee experience, and empowers your teams to drive customer success, it all works together to help you meet your business growth goals.
Simply put, ITX lays the foundation for happier employees who are more efficient and empowered to focus on big picture strategic initiatives, thanks to seamless integrations across teams and automated processes. In turn, your streamlined operations speed up your ability to adapt to changing needs in your market that gives you a leg up on your competitors.
To get started, you need the right ITX and ITSM tools in place (e.g., ServiceNow, Freshservice, SysAid), and a trusted partner who can help spearhead your ITX project. It’s best to find firms that act as a certified partner with your ITX platform.
When you work closely with the right partners, you’re ready to improve your profitability over time, improve customer success, and streamline processes for maximum efficiency.
