As organizations overhaul their internal IT framework with new and improved technologies and practices, they are becoming more confident in their IT productivity and turning it into savings for their bottom line. From cloud computing to machine learning and big data, prospects for IT organizations have never looked more optimistic. The key to making huge strides and ultimately a positive transformation of your business is to enable your skilled IT workforce. As you upskill your team for IT service management, keep a steady pace and stay up-to-date. Here are 5 areas that you must focus on:
IT Service Management should give Tangible Results
IT companies are now moving towards improved service management and operations to increase efficiency and cost savings in various areas. Those IT professionals will be better equipped to handle their teams who create stable, repeatable and responsive solutions for IT service delivery, risk management, and governance. A recent study shows that about 42% of executives report cost savings as a direct result of the IT Service Management program and about one-third of the executives report increase in productivity and savings in their IT systems.
Streamline IT Ops with Machine Learning
Machine learning and AI are definitely making headlines in the consumer industry, in addition, they are playing a key role in IT companies to automate common tasks and for streamlining operations. A study by Gartner reports that 40% of large enterprises by 2022 are projected to use Machine Learning and Big Data to support their IT operations, service desks, and monitoring. To prove this trend you can see that the most demanded skills on Monster are deep learning and machine learning. Accordingly, IT Ops training and certification and online IT technical training are few of the most popular training programs on the web.
Align IT Service Management with Business Objectives
A key skill every IT executive aims to master is proving the ROI of their new IT initiatives for operations, and also their ability to align processes strategically with their organization’s broader objectives and vision. IT organizations must also grow past simply being a fix-it operation and collaborate effectively with customers, adopt continuous service improvement strategies and create success methodologies and metrics to measure them. Now, IT spending is generated from standalone business units, instead of traditional IT, this forces IT professionals to operate in alignment with objectives important to stakeholders in order to stay relevant. For this purpose, IT Ops training establishes credibility with your workforce to create and then manage services based on organizational requirements.
Leverage Cloud
With productivity gains and cost savings cloud provides, there is an increasing level of interest by IT executives to optimize their systems for cloud ops. Since the cloud computing industry is expected to grow beyond $162 billion by 2020, expanding by about 20% a year. While an increasing number of CFOs admit adopting cloud has had a measurable impact on their organization. Additionally, the cloud provides massive cost savings and scalability benefits for businesses when it comes to storing massive amounts of data, creation, and deployment of both ERP and CRM capabilities, helping them boost their bottom line. Cisco cloud fundamentals will go long way in training your workforce to perform far more efficiently benefiting various areas of your business.
Train Workforce for the Entire Lifecycle
Once your technical team has mastered the whole IT service management lifecycle, it will enhance your organizational drive allowing you to better leverage technology and do more with fewer resources. ITSM framework was created and compiled as a list of best practices to advance your organization in service management, the teachings of which are used across the globe to improve IT processes. With proper training, you can train the professionals in your organization to master the 5 phases of IT service management lifecycle. Namely service design, strategy, operation, transition and continuous improvement. ITSM empowers your workers to align your business vision with IT strategy, allowing your new services to seamlessly transition to operations without any hiccups.
Upskilling Your Team
Business executives are well aware that it isn’t easy to retain talented professionals, and it is far more expensive to lose a good worker than to hire two in their place. So it is actually a financially sound advice to invest in your workforce and providing them with good reasons not to leave. By upskilling your staff, you are increasing their value and their value to your organization. While there is a chance your staff might use those skills to get another job, there is a higher chance they’d feel a deeper connection with your organization and decide otherwise.
There are three ways you can upskill your staff, two of which you can avail at QuickStart.
On the Job Training
Firstly, you can hire trainers who can hold seminars in your office on a variety of topics relating to ITSM and teach them new IT skills. You can set these sessions during the day, for example during or right after the lunch hour. You can encourage your IT staff with a few perks depending on the skills you’re teaching them.
Virtual Training
Another way to go about upskilling your staff is signing them up for online courses. Some offer micro-learning, these are short web-based courses on a single topic at a time and can be covered in about 10 minutes. These can be done over a coffee break, or at the start or the end of the day.
Off the Job Training
Some skills are best taught in a formal setting. These are skills that require complete focus and mindset that is there to learn. Once you’ve planned out how to best go about training your team, these could either be conferences, seminars, and workshops.
Whether you’ve already begun transforming your organization, or a strategy is in the pipeline, there is a wealth of information and a plethora of ways you can take your organization and your workforce to the next level by elevating business process and upskilling your staff. QuickStart is a great place to start in both of these aspects and upgrade your organization.