How to automate IT activities with the right tooling

When we look at options for IT automation tools, the first question we ask ourselves is: What is our client trying to achieve in their IT transformation and overall digital transformation?

This leads us to a detailed understanding of their current challenges (tracking IT costs, for example) and the optimal tools to achieve IT automation. Below, we’ll share more on our agnostic approach to automation in the IT industry and the roles of data, tooling selection, and business innovation in enterprise IT automation.

Our agnostic approach to IT transformation 

As our name highlights, at DXC ServiceNow Strategic Business Group we primarily work with ServiceNow. However, we’re proud of our agnostic approach to IT automation solutions, seeking the ideal match for each individual client. While ServiceNow offers vast potential for IT automation, IT transformation, and longer-term digital transformation in enterprise organizations, it’s not necessarily the ideal fit for everyone. So we embrace all tools to support clients in automating IT: Jira, Agile, Azure DevOps, etc.

ServiceNow IT automation: Guiding our clients to extract maximum value

Already using ServiceNow for ticketing, workflows, and incident management? It’s a promising start but there’s plenty more benefit to leverage.

Our team knows the ServiceNow Platform’s functionalities and capabilities inside out, enabling us to highlight untapped resources within your current license. As a result, there’s often no need to increase investment upfront to reap the rewards of ServiceNow IT automation.

Automating IT: Start with a solid data foundation

Successful enterprise IT automation begins with a well-crafted data underlayer. This crucial data foundation will generally take 1 - 2 years to build — so we aim to have it create value as soon as possible. How? By deriving our primary use case from the client’s core IT transformation challenge. We select the initial data points for the data foundation to address this use case, generating utility from its earliest stages. With concrete results from approximately 6 months in, organizational buy-in and support for further implementation tend to gain natural traction.

Taking data-based use cases as our starting point also clarifies which IT automation tools an organization should implement, which data is necessary to gather and store, and how data flows between the enterprise’s IT automation solutions. Furthermore, paring back to core needs allows setting clear definitions for data sources, use cases, tools, and features across the organization as its IT automation evolves.

Clarity in IT automation solutions: Which tools are generating which data?

As we optimize a client’s data foundation, implementing data flows one core use case at a time, we encounter a common scenario: Multiple IT automation tools essentially performing the same job. That means multiple data sets to maintain, multiple governance protocols, data stewards, product owners… sounding familiar?

This complicates answering a question that’s key to maintaining data clarity, governance, security, and more: Which tooling is creating which data within your organization’s IT landscape?

Not to mention that overlapping tools entail time and cost inefficiency, with replicated workloads and billing. To guide clients in streamlining their IT automation — aiming for maximum utility and minimum expense — we leverage the IT4IT™ framework[1] to accurately map internal tooling to the data it generates.

Selecting the right IT automation tools for your organization

Working from a solid data foundation and clarity on which tools are interacting, or will need to interact, with which data points, the process of selecting IT automation tools simplifies. We extricate ourselves from tail-chasing tool comparison discussions to instead focus on selecting IT automation solutions based on concrete, data-driven value processes.

Sometimes, this approach even highlights that IT automation tools aren’t the first area where a client should invest. Naturally, automating IT remains the overarching end goal. However, manually charting connections and impacts can lay the groundwork to later introduce the right IT automation software for the client’s needs.

Synergizing IT automation and business innovation

A data-driven foundation is vital for business innovation. Yet business innovation itself can also generate the use cases that drive creating an organization’s data foundation.

Often, business innovation use cases are the best drivers for introducing IT automation solutions, as these projects have significant organizational motivation behind them. Additionally, they serve business (digital transformation) and IT (IT transformation) aims simultaneously. From the business perspective, using innovation-focused use cases to implement IT automation tools enables faster enterprise evolution and delivery of action-ready solutions. From the IT perspective, having business innovation as a driver ensures buy-in (and ongoing investment) to accelerate the maturity of the enterprise’s IT operations unit.

Is your IT business ready for IT transformation?

Find out if your IT strategy is aligned to your current IT transformation program with our IT transformation readiness check.

Ready to discuss automating your IT activities in more detail? Reach out to our experts below. 

[1] IT4IT is a registered trademark of The Open Group 

Want to know more about It4IT?