“Innovative CIOs with bold leadership styles are the key to re-imagine IT for achieving the art of possible.” ― Pearl Zhu

For years the industry has buzzed about how businesses must adopt modern IT Operations management (ITOM) processes and systems or risk falling behind their competitors and, possibly, becoming completely irrelevant.

Despite the massive momentum behind the ITOM Transformation movement, there are CIOs who still haven’t begun to implement those changes and are starting to feel the pressure. So, what’s a CIO to do? Managing an enterprise-wide IT environment is already challenging enough, as applications, services, storage, and networking each present unique operational and strategic challenges.

But transforming an entire IT environment without interrupting existing operations? That seems like an impossible task.

Why a transformation is really critical

Industry analysts estimate that by 2020, 80 percent of IT infrastructure and operations leaders will have failed to capture more than one-third of new, CEO-directed IT/digital investments due to antiquated ITOM practices.

For many businesses, the policies governing their IT operations were written years ago, and their IT teams are unprepared, or incapable, of instituting transformation. This often means there isn’t any way at all for those businesses to adapt on their own. In particular, many organizations still rely on legacy business processes and technologies that aren’t able to keep up with the evolving demands of a growing business.

Modernizing IT infrastructure and processes—aligning IT operations with industry standard frameworks—can help companies reduce their IT operations costs by as much as 30% and gain the agility and efficiency required for remaining competitive in today’s global landscape.

The demands of a transformation initiative—managing the people, processes, and technologies—will continue to grow and change more frequently than ever before. There’s no stopping it, and CIOs who want to stay relevant will jump to implement effective change even though it may seem difficult, to begin with.

Why are CIOs putting off the digital transformation?

Even if the necessity is apparent, many IT leaders are still delaying digital transformation for a variety of reasons. Despite the fact that legacy systems and processes eat up nearly 75% of an IT budget just to maintain the infrastructure, many CIOs are dissuaded by the “pain” of change.

For many, that “pain” manifests as the fear of risk. The risk of making a mistake that can blow the rest of the budget or, worse, making one that negatively impacts customers, leads to downturns in revenue, and a negative perception of both the company as a whole and the IT team in particular.

For others, the “pain” is simply an aversion to change or deviating from the way things have always been done, owing to the “if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it” mentality. The reality, however, is that CIOs’ avoidance to the pain of change comes down to the fact that many of them simply don’t know where or how to begin an Itom Transformation initiative, so they stand pat until it’s forced upon them.

However, those who embrace transformation efforts sooner than later will benefit from reduced IT complexity that improves both productivity and profitability. They’ll also enjoy greater visibility across the entirety of the IT infrastructure, making it easier to take pre-emptive or immediate corrective actions to minimize risk and maximize efficiency. The end result of these benefits is that IT will be better positioned to be a leader for the business instead of just a support team.

Five tips to ITOM transformation

Venturing into uncharted territory can be terrifying. And for CIOs or other IT leaders, it can be especially so knowing that failing to guide their organization smoothly through the ITOM transformation process could wind up costing them their jobs. To that end, NetEnrich, a global leader in IT operations transformation initiatives, has compiled a list of the five essential best practices that will help prepare any CIO for ITOM transformation in a downloadable eBook.

Download “5 Best Practices for IT Operations Transformation” to learn more about:
1) Creating an applications transformation and sequencing model
2) Developing a policy-driven lifecycle management approach
3) Adding intelligence to your operations
4) Automating and orchestrating IT process
5) Delivering operations as a service (OaaS)

Download Now

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