The Huge and Hidden Value of Proactive IT Management

In his 1850 essay, "That Which Is Seen, and That Which Is Not Seen," economist Frédéric Bastiat imagined a scenario where a boy throws a brick through a shop window, and the shopkeeper must pay for the window to be repaired. This might seem beneficial for the economy. It creates work and revenue for the glazier, which then circulates through other goods and services. So, it appears that this destruction has value and a positive impact, right?

Wrong - because this overlooks the hidden opportunity cost. The shopkeeper now has less to spend on purchasing new goods, investing in his business, or saving, not to mention the lost custom and negative brand impact. Money has simply been redirected from more productive uses to repairing destruction.

When it comes to workforce IT, we spend so much of our time and energy focused on what broke and how quickly we fixed it - despite our value being so much more than this.

Plus, as Gartner reports, worldwide IT spending has been forecast to grow 7.5% in 2024 - well above inflation, to reach a total of $5.26 trillion. Given that larger budgets typically come with greater responsibility, IT leaders will be under more pressure than ever to prove the positive impact their teams are having on the organization by delivering smarter, faster, and more reliable IT services.

How managed solutions amplify and demonstrate IT value

One of the most effective strategies for increasing the business impact of IT and helping communicate this value is the evolution from leasing workforce devices as a service (DaaS) to a more sophisticated ‘Managed Solutions’ approach. DaaS is well understood as a device-centric approach that applies a break-fix service model, with reduced capital expenditure recognized as the primary (financial) benefit.

However, Managed Solutions take a more data-driven, holistic, and user-centric approach. It involves defining and designing workforce IT architecture, deploying everything together so it works seamlessly, and continuously monitoring real-time system health and device performance through an integrated telemetry and data platform. This enables both automated and proactive maintenance.

Doing all this together has a transformative effect on ROI and employee experience. For example, within our own organization, we have identified 97% of meeting room issues across more than 1,400 collaboration spaces before they could be reported and resolved 80% of print device notifications remotely across more than 1,000 machines[1].    

So, you can see how this more modern and proactive approach, leveraging device telemetry, data-driven intelligence, and real-time reporting, helps our IT teams get the strategic credit they deserve for the problems they prevent rather than just the volume of helpdesk tickets resolved.

Cometh the hour, cometh the man(aged solutions)

Two more areas of emergent value for managed IT solutions are accelerated crisis response and optimized IT spend.  

By enabling organizations to quickly adapt to unforeseen challenges, safeguard operations, and enhance overall efficiency, accelerated crisis response is not just a necessity but a critical component of organizational resilience. This forward-thinking mindset is an often overlooked linchpin for navigating organizational IT crises with speed and confidence. Embracing an agile culture can transform challenges into catalysts for growth, providing a significant competitive advantage.

Having a comprehensive understanding of the way workforce devices are being used also allows for virtual compute, hardware, and software to be more accurately sized for a given function, individual staff personas, or team specialties. This, in turn, means fewer over- or under-specified devices, more efficient energy usage - and better optimized IT spending. 

All of which is why a deeper understanding of cost versus value is beneficial when it comes to workforce IT. Adjusting service level agreements (SLAs) to assess the percentage of issues that are preventatively addressed could be the start of a broader strategic shift. One that transforms the value workforce tech and IT teams can create - and are seen to create for their organization, by protecting and improving the employee experience.

While we can measure the amount of downtime we reduce or how many more calls our sales teams are able to make, it’s much harder to quantify the impact of staff not having to work on holidays or missing their daughter's ballgame. Yet, the hidden opportunity costs and benefits of these moments are equally critical, and IT teams work tirelessly behind the scenes to protect this balance.

Ultimately, Managed Solutions is about more than just improving workflows and optimizing device performance. It’s about enabling people to do their best work and protecting what truly matters - which is, after all - why many of us go to work in the first place.

[1] All statistics based on internal HP data