One of the biggest reasons organizations don’t try out a new software vendor is the perceived costs of switching. Most cite the fear of implementation being too expensive, too difficult, or too time-consuming—all excuses to justify maintaining a vendor contract, even if that vendor is performing poorly and not meeting expectations. But what’s at risk when organizations simply renew year after year? Who loses if the status quo is maintained?

As your DevOps and IT Service Management (ITSM) teams continue to increase, so should your ability to provide self-service infrastructure capabilities. Whether you are a ServiceNow or Puppet administrator looking to expand automation to other groups such as Site Reliability Engineering or the IT Service Desk, the integration of Puppet Enterprise and ServiceNow is now at your fingertips.

According to the latest report on ITSM in 2021 and beyond, when asked what main area their service desk would be focusing on in 2021, the largest proportion of respondents specified they will be focusing on automation of processes, tasks, and ticket handling. Some of the biggest trends are around Chatbots and Virtual Agents, as specified by 44% of respondents, and self-service, as specified by 42% of respondents.

Customer preferences are constantly evolving, just as much as technology. This can have a significant impact on your business and its internal operations. Such fast-paced evolution demands an equally fast change management function. Organizations that focus just on the mechanics of change management but ignore the principles and intended outcomes are likely to make mistakes. But you can avoid these mistakes through intelligent design and application of change management.

Customer preferences are constantly evolving, just as much as technology. This can have a significant impact on your business and its internal operations. Such fast-paced evolution demands an equally fast change management function. Organizations that focus just on the mechanics of change management but ignore the principles and intended outcomes are likely to make mistakes. But you can avoid these mistakes through intelligent design and application of change management.

As the digital-first operating world evolves, IT organizations are struggling to decide which practices to maintain and which to phase out. This transition from a “plan/build/run” lifecycle to a more agile, team-oriented structure has become the catalyst for organizational conflict, challenging the very foundation of how companies should operate.

As organizations experience increasing complexity and expanding perimeters, IT professionals are looking to get a better understanding into their distributed software and hardware assets. IT teams need immediate access to detailed information in context of services and underlying assets they run on to make more intelligent decisions about their IT investments. Having asset visibility at their fingertips enables them to maximize cost savings, secure assets, and improve the employee experience.

The pandemic has undoubtedly accelerated digital transformation for organizations of all sizes and across all sectors. With that change, Canadians’ expectations for streamlined, simple digital services are shifting, too. Citizens are now looking for consumer-grade experiences from government. With demand for digital experiences increasing across all generations of Canadians, government has an opportunity to streamline their services for the digital age.

The experienced IT professional is no stranger to the term “automation.” However, many don’t fully grasp the potential this word presents to IT processes, including the fast-growing realm of intelligent automation. But before you start looking to automation to help rein in costs, it’s important to develop an automation strategy that best fits the needs of your organization. This article explores the three key areas in which to start when building your automation framework.