London, February 20 2013: Research commissioned by IPsoft has revealed that 69% of IT decision makers would prioritise modernising their IT infrastructure if their IT staff had more man hours at their disposal, with many more citing deployment of new applications and configuration and installation of new technologies as key areas they would like more time spent on. The Vanson Bourne research study, commissioned by the expert systems specialist, surveyed UK IT decision makers in a bid to understand more about what value additional human capital would bring to businesses.
“Too many organisations today are failing to invest time in improvements to existing IT infrastructure, often because they don’t have the resources available to do so,” comments UK MD Terry Walby. “In many cases those skills exist within a business, but they are often tied up with dealing with low level tasks related to running, rather than improving, IT. This survey revealed that staff only regularly use about half of their applicable skills, so if companies looked at smarter ways of freeing up existing resources they could prioritise change activities that would really make an impact to the business.”
Despite the criticality of IT not just to running the business, but to driving innovation, the research also revealed that 57% of board level executives admit to not knowing what skills their IT teams are armed with.
Walby continues, “Part of the issue is that often businesses don’t spend enough time considering how to best use the talent they have at their disposal. Firstly, a greater awareness of capability from the top down is fundamental. Then, organisations should look to automation to relieve skilled staff of more mundane activities, and facilitate the more intelligent and efficient use of human capital. With early adopters consistently seeing over half of IT support tasks delivered with no human intervention, untapped potential within existing IT staff can quickly be released by following this approach.”
Bob Tarzey, Service Director at analyst firm Quocirca concludes, “It appears that in many cases the wastage of skills is simply accepted by IT managers. Whilst this continues, IT departments will be less able to focus on the delivery of innovative new applications, to the detriment of the businesses they serve.”
Kaynak : 