Automation can make IT at your enterprise more secure, more efficient, and more valuable to your business. It can have personal benefits for you and your team as well.

Automation and Productivity

“Automation will change the daily work activities of everyone, from miners and landscapers to commercial bankers, fashion designers, welders, and CEOs.”

—Harnessing automation for a future that works, McKinsey Global Institute (MGI), January 2017.

The fascinating McKinsey study mentioned above predicts that about half of the work for which people get paid today could be automated by 2055, using technologies that have already been demonstrated. And McKinsey adds that the growth in productivity to be produced by that automation by 2065 will eclipse that generated by IT between 1995 and 2005. By McKinsey’s measure, IT generated productivity growth of 0.6 percent during that decade. In comparison, the firm predicts that automation will generate productivity growth of between 0.8 and 1.4 percent by 2065.

Automation and IT

Automation is already delivering significant benefits to IT environments, from user self-service to more and better patch management. The increasing reliance of all types and sizes of enterprises on IT, the relentless move to cloud computing, and the growth of artificial intelligence and machine learning, more IT automation is clearly coming. This portends some great opportunities for IT leaders and their teams to improve IT at their enterprises—and to enhance their own career development.

Michael Simmons is co-founder of Empact, a group that produces events designed to foster and encourage entrepreneurship among young people. In a 2016 Inc.com column, Simmons distilled interviews with Bill Gates, Warren Buffett, and other high-profile business leaders into what Simmons called the “five-hour rule.” He found that the best leaders spend at least one hour each day, or five hours each week, on reading, reflection, and experimentation. They do not spend much time doing things by rote. As many IT people have learned from painful experience, repetition of mundane, well-understood tasks produces little benefit, and creates opportunities for mistakes.

If those mundane, well-understood tasks can be automated instead, it frees up time and bandwidth for those who had to perform them manually before. Every patch you don’t have to deploy or user password you don’t have to reset manually does the same for you and members of your team.

When implemented and deployed effectively, IT automation can reduce costs and improve performance, security, and user satisfaction. If you want to extend the success and business value of IT at your enterprise, and your ability to grow and evolve professionally, automation can help you do both.

And in case you think this is just feel-good fluff, consider what AT&T CEO Randall Stephenson said in a 2016 New York Times interview. “There is a need to retool yourself, and you should not expect to stop,” Stephenson said. He added that those who do not spend five to 10 hours learning each week “will obsolete themselves with the technology.” Or if the McKinsey study is an accurate prediction, they’ll just be automated out of a job.

Ivanti: Your IT Automation Ally

Ivanti offers multiple solutions that can automate, streamline, and speed mundane tasks across your IT environment. Is your enterprise still manually managing software patches and updates? Ivanti can help. Having trouble tracking your IT assets? Ivanti can help. Want to roll out Windows 10 more quickly with fewer hiccups? Ivanti can help. Is your service management team constantly beleaguered and blindsided by user requests and network incidents? Ivanti can help.

Get in touch with Ivanti today. Let us help you increase IT automation, performance, and security at your enterprise.

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