Ivanti Blog: Posts by

How Consolidating Your Tech Stack Drives DEX Outcomes

Thu, 29 Jun 2023 15:25:35 Z

Every month, it seems that a new “must use” tool hits the market. What ends up happening is IT teams are gifted a hodge-podge of tools — snowballing into unnecessary frustration and increased workloads.

“The issue is there are so many technologies and ways you can have this experience, and it is very easy to fall into a trap of having too many tools and that will dilute your experience and lead to frustration. We have information on multiple SharePoint sites, Teams, Yammer, Service Now, One Drive and who knows what else exists, so we have a very bad experience as you do not know where to find things, and if you do not follow any of those channels, you will miss stuff. Pick your standard and do not fall into the trap of implementing the flavor of the month.”

- Team Lead, Emerson Electric Co

Growing digital environments with too many disparate tools has created a scenario where optimising digital experiences across various devices and locations is falling short, preventing your organisation’s ability to effectively adapt to Everywhere Work.

When laying the foundation for an improved digital employee experience (DEX), consolidating your tech stack is a crucial component.

Why unmanaged tools and assets are hurting your DEX

Some organisations have reported their digital transformation being accelerated by three to five years since 2020. Unlike a few years ago, assets no longer live just in the office. They are scattered across the globe and increasing in quantity. Recent reports show the average employee uses 2.6 devices to get their job done.

But with more assets come more problems. 45% of employees have experienced more tech issues since 2020, with the average employee running into 3.67 endpoint issues a day.

This volume of daily issues means that valuable insights are growing fast and in different places.

Being able to navigate this complex environment in a timely manner to address all issues proactively poses a challenge when your tools and systems don't talk to each other.

A more complex environment without the proper tools has IT and security professionals feeling the heat. 73% report an increased workload since their organisation adopted hybrid/remote work. In fact, nearly 1 in 3 IT and security professionals report losing at least one team member due to burnout.

And these types of work environments aren’t going away anytime soon. According to our Everywhere Work research:

71% of office workers want to work either hybrid (with control over which days they come to the office) or remote.
66% of employees say they have experienced no negative side effects due to remote work.
71% of C-Suite admit hybrid working has had a positive impact on employee morale.

Some organisations are already taking action. A recent survey conducted by EMA, found that a resounding 86% of respondents are looking to consolidate asset-related tools and 18% are actively planning to manage all asset types on one platform.

“Centralisation is critical. Having too many tools is an issue for us.”

- System Administrator, CFCU Community Credit Union

Consolidating your tech stack lays the groundwork for automation, which helps decrease workloads and ultimately deter digital burnouts for your IT and security teams. With technology becoming more entwined with the daily operations of employees, making sure you provide efficient ways to manage, secure and support this environment for your IT teams is crucial to delivering improved experiences.

Benefits of consolidating your tech stack

Consolidating your tech stack aids DEX initiatives in many ways, including: 

1. Reducing complexity for your IT staff

It's time to kick manual processes and inefficient workloads to the curb. Connecting and simplifying your organisation’s workflows streamlines and automates your IT environments. This removes unnecessary complexity and enables improved experiences for your IT teams.

2. More responsive and efficient IT support

28% of employees wish for a more responsive service desk. When IT has all the information in a single place, they can address and resolve tickets quicker and more effectively.

3. Preventing issue before they happen

Quickly resolving issues and, ideally, preventing issues in the first place, creates betterexperiences. Research shows it can take up to 20 minutes for workers to refocus on a task. When you simplify your tech stack and enable access to valuable insights in one place, preventing issues becomes a breeze. You get to keep employees out of the service queue and focused on their jobs, reclaiming thousands of hours of lost productivity across your organisation.

When looking to create better employee experiences in the Everywhere Work era, consolidating your tech stack is a step you can’t afford to skip. Simplifying and streamlining your IT structure makes life easier for your IT and security teams — freeing up their time to understand employee sentiment, track and optimise experiences over time and prevent issues before they occur.

To learn more about DEX, watch our on-demand webinar to get A step-by-step guide to planning and measuring digital employee experience.

Ivanti Neurons for Discovery: The Single Source of Truth in Minutes, Not Days

Mon, 03 Aug 2020 22:28:53 Z

Who doesn’t like a good ole’ game of “Guess how many M&Ms or marbles are in that jar”? Are you off by 20, 50, or by a couple hundred? Or maybe you’re fairly close estimating the number of spheres in a confined space. Now think about your IT assets in your organization. Are all of them accounted for? Where are they located? Take a guess. Guess again. A miss is as good as a mile.

Keeping track of all your IT assets, understanding what hardware and software is used, and keeping them protected is not an easy feat. Now add on the next layer of complexity with more remote devices and edge devices accessing your network. Employees working anytime, connecting from anywhere, requiring contextual awareness to provide better overall experiences.

There’s no way to manually keep up with the device proliferation and real-time changes. You need a way of quickly scanning and tracking what’s connecting to your network to keep your environment secure, compliant, and cost efficient.

What if you could have accurate and actionable visibility of all your IT assets in minutes? Well, let me introduce you to Ivanti Neurons for Discovery.

1. Ivanti Neurons for Discovery: Find Everything

An IT staffing company once told me about an asset that was stuck in a cabinet behind a box of Oreo cookies. Right, not sure how Oreo cookies can last that long. Definitely not in my household. Or another example, an organization was still accounting for assets that were no longer with the company—decommissioned, lost, or never returned. Would you be OK with former employees still holding onto your hardware and accessing corporate information? Wouldn’t you want to know when new or unknown devices join your network?

With Ivanti Neurons for Discovery, you can say goodbye to your tracking spreadsheets once and for all, and to those ghost cookies…I mean ghost assets. It discovers devices quickly in real time on any network segment.

You might say you already have multiple discovery solutions in your organization. How is this one different? Ivanti Neurons for Discovery uses passive and active discovery to find all managed or unmanaged devices. It detects network-connected devices in real time, even if they’re behind a firewall. Ivanti Neurons for Discovery scans your network without requiring you to install agents on all devices on your network. Think of it as your neighborhood watch program with an assigned representative and not consuming your bandwidth. Always on, always working for you. If something is there, even for a moment, you'll catch it and inventory what's on it.

2. Ivanti Neurons for Discovery: Aggregate Information

A transportation company was sure they captured everything they had. When we then conducted a discovery scan, we found 30% more devices than their endpoint solution and Active Directory showed them. They were sure their environment was properly protected, but how do you secure devices you don’t even know about?

With Ivanti Neurons for Discovery, once a device is discovered, the in-depth inventory service interrogates each IP-connected device or service to learn everything it can, including information about the network connection, hardware details, manufacturer, and what software is running on the device. When under management, inventory will also provide software-usage information to help you manage your software assets efficiently. Ivanti Neurons for Discovery “connects the dots” and aggregates accurate asset information from multiple data sources. Ongoing discovery scans ensure you are aware of any new or unknown devices that join your network.

3. Ivanti Neurons for Discovery: Augment Data

A university was tracking their IT assets with spreadsheets and another department managed their contracts repository. They didn’t proactively manage end-of-life dates or warranties and often spent time fixing devices that were still under warranty. In our “Aligning ITSM and ITAM Processes Survey”, we found that half of the respondents admitted to sometimes fixing devices that later were discovered to still be under warranty, resulting in time and money lost.

In this same study, 20% of respondents admitted not having the insights into which assets were out of date, and 28% reported spending hours per week supporting out-of-warranty and out-of-support-policy assets. With Ivanti Neurons for Discovery, you can augment your data from third-party systems using connectors to B2B data like hardware warranty information, vendor licensing rules, or purchasing information from resellers. With this enriched asset data, you can optimize purchases, warranties, contract data, and end-of-life cycles as needed so your service and IT teams have everything they need to log an issue against an asset and get it resolved quickly and accurately.

4. Ivanti Neurons for Discovery: Make Sense of Data

Analyst firm Enterprise Management Associates found that on average, IT spends 10 hours per week resolving data-accuracy issues. That’s a quarter of a person year at minimum that I’m sure you can find other use for. For many, it’s taking a lot of time as data can be in so many different places—in their procurement system, in IT endpoint and network management systems, in contract repositories, in spreadsheets, and more.

It’s tough to normalize the data, reconcile it, and make sure you understand the delta, and where the data is coming from. Good tools can automate this process for you, to give you robust data you can work with.

Ivanti Neurons for Discovery fully automates normalization and reconciliation processes to clean up your data and reduce the number of names used to describe the same thing. Convert all your asset data to have a standard name, mapping structure, and classification.

Ivanti Neurons for Discovery helps you reduce the time spent on aggregating and harmonizing asset data from weeks down to minutes. No more cross-referencing and manual reconciliation activity among devices that interact with every system in your IT estate. The output helps you identify devices that are missing and unaccounted for, and that pose significant security risks. Ivanti Neurons for Discovery provides accurate asset information leading to improved cost efficiency through better utilization of existing assets and improves your security posture.

5. Ivanti Neurons for Discovery: Provide Actionable Insights

Asset Discovery and inventory capabilities are foundational to effective endpoint, asset, service, and security management. To efficiently assist your end users and remediate issues quickly, you need to have all the necessary asset data in context at your fingertips. We asked 1,600 survey respondents if service management processes and request workflows have automatic visibility into asset information and relationships. According to the findings, 43% reported “sometimes,” but more than one third of respondents don’t have any visibility into this information.

Ivanti Neurons for Discovery provides turnkey discovery functionality to easily populate configuration management (CMDB) and asset management databases. Our customers report that it only takes them minutes to populate the CMDB with insightful data that helps them provide service in context with asset information to make informed decisions. When service and asset processes and data are closely aligned with accurate data in the CMDB, many activities and processes become more automated, efficient, and responsive, leading to better outcomes and better service experiences.

Try It Out Today

With Ivanti Neurons for Discovery, you have complete asset visibility and are equipped to optimize your asset value and improve your security posture. No more tracking spreadsheets and no more ghost assets. Ivanti Neurons for Discovery provides you with that single source of truth in minutes not days, for accurate and actionable insights. So, stop guessing, eat your M&Ms, and let Ivanti Neurons for Discovery take care of your asset-discovery needs.