How to Have a Successful IT Organization Restructuring

How to Have a Successful IT Organization Restructuring

In the digital age, the business landscape can change at any moment, resulting in significant changes for organizations. This is especially true when it comes to IT.

IT systems and infrastructures are not without flaws. However, your IT systems and infrastructures should help your organization take on all the requirements of today’s digital landscape. However, both internal and external changes can have a major impact on IT efficiency. When your IT efficiency begins to fail your IT infrastructure, it’s time for an IT organization restructuring.

IT infrastructures are complex layouts and any form of restructuring needs to be approached carefully. To help relieve the pain that can come with this process, we’re going to share some advice that can help you get started.

New IT Organizational Structure

Over the past years, IT organizational requirements have changed significantly, especially from providing technology to enabling key business strategies.  Therefore, restructuring is very important to an IT organization. IT organization restructuring typically involves making difficult decisions in order to improve the organization.

No one likes to restructure, but sometimes you don’t have a choice: The time will come when you have to change your IT organizational structure. IT organizations can respond to the leading drivers to reduce costs, address growth, and embrace new technologies in multiple ways. Strategies for IT organization restructuring include changing the IT organization’s placement, IT integration, IT distribution, downsizing, IT organization redesign, implementing new services, and outsourcing.

Restructuring creates huge opportunities for an IT organization and the business it serves. Many IT staff will embrace the changes that come along with restructuring, but there will be others who will not. Regardless of the stance, restructuring calls for significant worry. An IT team is aware of organizational pressures, financial concerns, and the impact new technologies have on the IT organization. Whether they share this or not, staff members worry if they will still have a role after the new organizational structure is in place.

To take on digital initiatives, IT leaders are beginning to rethink and reorganize how work gets done. However, driving change involves much more than just overhauling business processes.

Reviewing Existing IT Structures

Review existing IT structures within and outside the organization to create an inclusive structure. IT organizations must address a range of IT concerns, such as adopting infrastructure standards, securing confidential data assets, establishing security risks,  and ensuring that workplace technologies align with organizational goals. A well-defined structure should ensure that technological issues are identified, addressed, and discussed.

With cybersecurity threats running rampant, remote and hybrid work, and other factors, more organizations are beginning to consider IT restructuring. There are a few key components that an IT organization must consider, including Cybersecurity, Product Development, and Operational before taking on this complex responsibility. It will be beneficial to allow an IT executive to oversee these key components and drive success. However, an IT organization must have the proper resources in place for this process to be successful.

While IT organizations may be tempted to hire in-house resources, organizational leaders must know when it will be better to outsource. Bringing in a cybersecurity analyst while outsourcing your helpdesk and IT support to an MSP can be an effective approach. It is important to have accountability in your core components. As the business landscape continues to change, your technology will need more proactive care. You must have a process in place to address this.

Restructuring offers organizations the opportunity to define and establish measures that support business goals. In addition, an effective IT structure engages the organization in establishing goals and understanding risks, as well as helping the organization set priorities and allocate resources.

Have a Clear Idea of What Results You Want to Achieve

Delivering a sustainable IT organizational restructure includes efficient structures, intelligent creation strategies, and organizational KPIs. The best way to restructure your IT organization for maximum productivity is to implement tools that will not only measure productivity but give your organization real KPI metrics that allow you to make good management decisions. Once you generate your KPI metrics, you can adjust your workflows and implement new solutions that will help you automate the workflows and maximize productivity.

It is very important to establish the proper metrics that will allow you to fine-tune these changes to maximize productivity. Establishing your metrics is an effective approach since you can see in real-time the impact these changes have made on your overall productivity. How can you implement this strategy? The best way to implement this type of strategy is to review the KPI metrics before any changes are made and review your workflows to determine if improvements need to be made and what steps you should take to make these improvements.

In some cases, improvements may be needed across the entire organization or the improvements need to be made on an individual basis. However, the best way to implement this strategy is to make sure that the affected groups or individuals have a voice in the process. Many IT organizations have automated many of their processes to help maximize their productivity. Through automation and KPI’s, you will place your organization in a better position to fine-tune your procedures.

Staff Responsibilities and Expectations

Staff members assigned to specific responsibilities have the ability to interact with individuals and groups outside the organization to obtain valuable insight to help the innovation process, translating organizational activities within and outside of the IT organization. IT communication staff should educate those within the organization about technology concerns, share information about IT emergencies and downtime, and notify the organization about upcoming projects, programs, and initiatives.

To achieve this level of communication within the organization, you must be sure you have the right people in the right places. It would be harmful to your organization to have people in positions they do not excel in or do not have a passion for. Once you determine who should be placed where you can work on KPIs or traditional reporting on common issues. If you are unable to get the staff you need, then you could consider bringing in an MSP to take on roles that need to be filled. If you do not have the tools in place to monitor productivity in real-time, you will need to implement dashboards and web services to support these efforts.

Tools to Help IT Organizational Restructuring

Today, expectations about technology are constantly rising. Staff members connect both workplace and personal devices to a network, and reliability is crucial. They also use a variety of tools and applications and want to push the management system’s capabilities. Staff members want reliable wireless and wired infrastructure for work-related responsibilities, which are done by using multiple and rapidly advanced computing devices. IT organizations need a dependable network and data mining capabilities to support effective business process management and data-driven decision-making.

Two major measures that can be addressed are tooling and service desk expertise. For tooling, IT organizations can invest in remote control and auditing software, allowing the IT organization to gain a better understanding of the supported equipment. Remote control and auditing software will also enable IT organizations to get the first contact immediately and quickly onto the machine that is having the issue and address it. IT organizations can also invest in service support software that combines the configuration management database and incident management ticketing.

For organizations that want to take an ITIL-heavy approach, one of the areas to focus on is first contact resolution rates. An IT organization’s service desk performance should not include first contact resolution for a machine that has died or is requesting new equipment. These things take time and need to be approved. When done properly, the IT organization’s tooling will support everything that needs to be accomplished, but expertise is needed to complement that.

Has IT Caught up to Your IT Organization’s Vision?

Each time your IT organization changes direction or makes any major changes, your IT needs to be able to keep up. The keyword is ”major.” You aren’t going to conduct a major restructure every time the organization makes any type of change. If your organizational leaders decide to focus on expanding the service portfolio and focusing on core relationships, this shift in focus will have a major impact on how your organization structures itself to deliver on these goals. Therefore, it is important to ensure IT restructures itself accordingly.

Today’s IT organizations must be agile, be active and engaging in decision making, align services to organizational priorities, communicate effectively, and respond to emerging technologies. Understanding and assessing the direction of organizational change is a great place to start. An assessment of your IT organization should clearly define your IT organization’s challenges and opportunities. You must have a defined plan that includes assessment outcomes, organizational principles, steps for implementation, and timelines.

To be able to respond to business disruptions, individuals and groups within the organization must be agile and must be able to adjust to changing conditions in the business landscape, seeking to achieve maximum productivity and the best results whenever possible.

For more ways to secure and optimize your business technology, contact Palindrome Consulting.

Thanks to our colleagues at DataEcon in Dallas for their help and support of this article.