Five steps to take the pressure off your IT team

We’ve all heard this tired old IT joke: the first response to any IT user’s query is to ask them whether they’ve tried to “turn it off and on again”...  Thing is, in real life this is less of a joke and more of a significant cost factor. Deploying, maintaining and managing an organisation’s estate of laptops, workstations, printers and mobile devices is a complex task that’s both expensive and time-consuming. Surveys suggest that many IT teams are still tracking their assets by spreadsheet, but that’s a huge challenge especially now as most organisations operate out of not just a few offices but have to support equipment at hundreds of work-at-home locations.

 No wonder that IT teams are getting sidetracked and focus on IT chores to keep things running smoothly, instead of providing much-needed strategic support that delivers business value.

 It shouldn’t – and doesn’t – have to be this way. So here are my five steps to take the pressure off your IT team.

Step 1: Make sure new devices are out-of-the-box ready for your organisation’s IT set-up
One of the most time-consuming tasks for IT teams is setting up new devices for employees, whether they work from home or the office. A new laptop has to come with the right software, correctly configured security settings, and guaranteed compatibility with the network and other devices. Given the high turnover of devices and employees, it’s a task that seemingly never ends. But what if you could skip this step altogether and have new devices arrive at an employee’s desk fully set up and ready to use the moment they come out of the box? That’s what HP Workforce Solutions can do for you. We pre-configure your devices according to your specifications, and ship them directly to your employees, wherever they work. They simply power them up, log in, and are good to go. No IT intervention required.

Step 2: Manage all devices centrally, from a single dashboard
Despite the best efforts to standardise, IT estates will always be diverse and complex. Employees have highly distinct IT needs – some need high-end computing power, others a highly portable laptop, many need to print simple documents, while others require high quality, customer-ready images or large-format prints. With devices from multiple vendors at play, it can be hard to keep track of all the inventory, ensure its performance, security, and compliance – and troubleshoot any issues as they arise. Without an adaptive endpoint management solution, your IT team is bound to waste time, money and resources. That’s why it is so important to simplify the process to a point where you have complete visibility and control over your entire IT estate from a single dashboard. One good example is the HP Workforce Experience Platform, which lets you monitor, manage, and optimize all your devices, from PCs to printers to phones – whether they are from HP or any other manufacturer. You can remotely update, secure, and repair your devices, and get insights and analytics to improve your IT efficiency and productivity.

Step 3: Optimise your devices for the workload of each job role
Here’s a common mistake made in many organisations: they give every employee the same type of device, regardless of their job role or workload. This results in either underperformance or overspending. Some employees will have devices that are not powerful enough to handle their tasks, resulting in frustration and delays. Others may have devices that are over-spec’ed for their needs, resulting in unnecessary cost.

But what if you could match the right device to the right employee, based on their real workload and workflows? Simply by monitoring and analysing the real-life performance of your hardware (but without getting even close to any of your data), we can help identify the optimal device for each job role. This makes it easy to give each employee the devices they need to be both productive and happy at work.

Step 4: Use predictive maintenance to reduce downtime to mere minutes
It’s Murphy’s law: devices are likely to fail at the most inconvenient time and as close to a deadline as possible. Device failures and downtimes are a huge headache for IT teams, as they demand immediate attention and tend to trigger costly repairs. As the complexity and diversity of devices increases, it can also become hard to forecast when and where a device will fail and – just as importantly – how to fix or replace it quickly and effectively.

The solution is predictive maintenance, which can detect potential issues long before they result in critical failure. Using HP Proactive Insights, our system will flag early if a battery, hard drive or other component is showing signs that it is getting close to its end-of-life. Instead of suffering downtime that can last hours or days, we reduce it to mere minutes – the time it takes us to swap the struggling component right at your employee’s home or office.

Step 5: Make it easy to upgrade your IT estate
The last big upgrade cycle in corporate IT happened three or four years ago, at the start of the COVID-19 pandemic. Organisations everywhere know that they urgently need to upgrade many of their devices – not least to be prepared for the imminent roll-out of a new generation of AI tools. IT teams face the challenge of keeping up with the pace of change while minimising capital expenditure. Innovative solutions such as Device-as-a-Service (DaaS) make this refresh more flexible and affordable. With DaaS, you can give your staff the latest devices and services for a fixed monthly fee, and enjoy the benefits of lifecycle management, security, and support. With Trade-In, you can get cash back for your old devices, and use it to fund new ones.

By following these five simple steps, you can reduce the pressure on your IT team and free up their resources for tasks that add to your business value, transforming them from a cost centre to a profit driver. And it also makes for happier, more productive employees – without having to tell them to “try switching it off and on again”.