Rahul Hirani, Chief Product Officer at NinjaOne
Historically, IT teams have been seen as an operational and largely reactive function, responsible for troubleshooting technical problems, managing hardware, and handling a constant stream of help desk tickets when issues arise. But times are changing. Organisations recognise that proactive digital strategies are essential to deliver exceptional employee and customer experiences, optimise workflows, and ultimately generate better organisational outcomes.
But at the same time, IT teams are constantly being asked to do more with less, while managing a diverse range of devices, which employees must be able to access and operate anytime, anywhere. With higher expectations across a wider variety of solutions, there’s a lot at stake for IT – and a lot of room for burnout. Fortunately, automation presents a unique opportunity for teams looking to overcome these challenges.
Identify where AI is likely to make the most impact
Those who understand where and how to effectively apply AI to their work are best positioned to succeed while accelerating work and adding more value to business. To identify opportunities where automation is likely to make the biggest impact, IT teams should ask themselves:
- Where do you spend most of your time? Installing patches, diagnosing errors, backing up systems? Could you offload or accelerate these tasks with automation? Even gaining 5 – 10% of time back in your day can result in greater efficiencies and improved productivity.
- Which time-consuming, manual, and rules-based tasks can be quickly automated? Applying AI to these use cases first is often the easiest way to win the trust of the wider organisation. Once you have a few wins under your belt, expand automation to other processes and use cases.
Keeping people in the process
At the same time, it’s crucial to weigh risk and security in AI adoption. AI tools aren’t all created equal, and they won’t be suitable for every task. AI has proven it’s not infallible, and IT teams are responsible for many critical operations and data privacy functions. That’s why maintaining human oversight in AI processes is essential. Letting AI act autonomously and make the wrong decision is too risky – especially when it comes to IT.
Take patch management, for example. It’s rarely a perfect process and pushing out updates just because they’re available can occasionally lead to more problems than it solves. IT teams should lean into automation for identifying and prioritising which patches are most critical, stable, and time-sensitive (to stay ahead of zero-days) but keep humans involved in the process. Used properly, automation can help improve security for organisations operating in highly regulated sectors like financial services – making systems even safer with time. Customers of ours, like TF Bank in Sweden, have seen particular resilience and efficiency wins as a result of automating patch management processes.
On the whole, AI can make informed recommendations, but it should be up to human IT administrators to approve those actions – at least for now. Organisations should steer clear of tools that hand AI “the keys to the kingdom,” and thoughtful AI deployment should be coupled with humans on the loop. This approach ensures that IT teams can gain back time to focus on bigger priorities, while keeping appropriate guardrails in place to prevent AI from making the wrong call and jeopardising business.
Leverage automation to protect your most valuable asset: Time
Digital environments are growing more complex. An exploding number of endpoints spread across different locations, expanding tech stacks, and a host of new challenges introduced by AI – it’s a heavy load to carry for IT. Time is more valuable than ever. By reducing the hours spent on repetitive manual tasks, IT professionals can play a more active role in the growth of their organisation. At the same time, they can refine skills in new areas to support their own career development.
IT teams play a more important role in business differentiation, and customer and employee satisfaction than ever amidst the new pressures they face. Thankfully, modern tools mean that IT organisations can better support their teams and their evolving digital preferences, while staying ahead of burnout.
Success is a team sport. And equipping IT with the tools needed to accelerate work and grow in their roles doesn’t just benefit those individuals, it also helps the wider organisation become more efficient and productive, and customers better serviced, as a result.