Digital transformation and talent shortages cited as top challenges for IT departments

The two biggest challenges for IT departments are keeping up with digital transformation (32%) and keeping talent in technical roles (26%), according to a new study from Ivanti, the automation platform provider.

Additionally, the study found that IT departments are viewed as critical to an organisation's growth and business strategy by 61% of respondents.

However, despite this high level of support for the IT department, 72% of respondents reported losing team members with 41% of respondents citing a high workload as the top reason for losing team members.

Other reasons included:

• Unrealistic expectations placed on the team (34%)
• Lack of executive support (32%)
• Remote work was not a possibility (28%)
• Executive hesitancy to adopt automation (26%)
• Lack of critical technology to effectively do their job (24%)

Interestingly, there was a disconnect between C-suite/vice president and managers/directors. This was demonstrated by the finding that managers and directors were more likely to report that the IT department was viewed as only a cost centre (27%) versus only 19% of C-suite/vice president respondents who only viewed IT as a cost centre.

The pandemic accelerated the rapid shift to remote work and two-thirds of decision-makers (67%) reported they accelerated their plans or increased their adoption of automated IT service offerings due to the pandemic. Of note, only 1% of decision makers have already completed their adoption of automated services.

According to Ivanti, in today's 'everywhere workplace', employees expect to be able to connect with various devices to corporate networks, data and services.

The need to keep these devices and services connected has placed stress on IT team members that could be alleviated by the implementation of automated IT services.

The study found that the majority (55%) of respondents reported automating IT processes saving the IT department 1 - 8 hours per service request.

For organisations which have more than 50% of their IT services automated, the time saved per service request jumped to more than 16 hours, the study finds.

The study also finds that organisations with more than 50% of IT services automated were more likely to feel the IT department is viewed as critical to the organisation's growth and business strategy (74%), demonstrating the value of automation.

Of this same group, only 32% feel the executive team views IT as only around to troubleshoot hardware or software issues versus 47% of all respondents.

Ivanti president and chief product officer Mayaki Nayyar says, "Employees are working differently than they have in years before, and we'll continue to see an evolution of how people work as we move into the future and beyond the pandemic.

"The workloads and pressure to perform that have been placed on IT teams will only continue to increase.

"The only way to alleviate some of these stresses and retain technical talent, is to implement automation into IT services so that team members can focus their attention on activities that drive the business forward and contribute to the business strategy."