IT Collaboration: How to Resolve Issues as a Team

As business technologies continue to grow in sophistication, IT leaders must introduce new management tools and processes to keep their operations running smoothly. Unplanned outages and lax security standards leave organizations open to a variety of financial and reputational damages, dropped productivity and missed business opportunities. These issues are especially concerning for companies that rely on public-facing applications to deliver value to customers and other stakeholders. Of course, problems with employee technologies and software can also impact efficiency across departments, preventing knowledge workers from completing business-critical tasks.

Historically, IT professionals have been responsible for every facet of their organizations’ technology strategy. However, as cloud computing and automation bleed into other departments, companies are starting to rethink their approach to IT management, tech support and remote troubleshooting.

How a lack of IT collaboration impacts business performance

Managing today’s core business technologies requires input from a wide range of stakeholders with very different roles and perspectives. Marketing and sales representatives rely on customer resource management platforms to cultivate profitable relationships and track B2B interactions. Project managers use enterprise resource planning software to monitor supply chains, assess financial performance and forecast future sales. And customer service representatives depend on stable voice-over-internet-protocol solutions to answer calls and resolve customer complaints.

In all cases, technology provides a means of finding proactive solutions and achieving positive results. But there’s one problem IT can’t solve on its own: A lack of collaboration between IT staff and other departments.

The disconnect between IT professionals and other internal stakeholders can create management bottlenecks that complicate tech support initiatives. When IT staff aren’t aware of the true impact of software, application or computer problems, they can unintentionally shift these issues to the back burner. According to Myles F. Suer, head of global enterprise marketing at Boomi and CIO contributor, this disconnect is often caused by poor IT alignment, a lack of transparency and other organization-level shortcomings. To overcome these deficiencies, companies should strive to create a culture of collaboration, both in and outside the IT department, that can help enhance their IT posture and expand their problem-solving capabilities.

Creating a culture of collaboration

Building teamwork within the IT department is one effective way to reduce the volume, frequency and resolution time of tech support tickets. This is especially important in the current business landscape, where millions of workers have been forced to shift to remote working for the foreseeable future.

According to one survey from Pew Research, roughly 93% of polled U.S. adults say that prolonged interruption of  their internet service would be a major problem in their daily lives. While organizations don’t have any control over internet service providers, the software and cloud-based platforms they use are equally vulnerable to disruption unless the right support frameworks are put in place. It’s also important to consider how minor computer problems with company-owned laptops can lead to costly inefficiencies, both for end users and IT support staff.

The rapid transition to teleworking brought on by the COVID-19 pandemic has created new challenges for today’s digital-centric businesses. In the past, IT support teams could manage in-office workstations directly. Now, tech workers are having to dial into employee devices remotely to diagnose performance issues and fix their computer problems. End users have suddenly become responsible for a variety of IT management tasks, from setting up virtual private networks to applying software patches. At the same time, tech support teams are being overwhelmed with low-priority requests that take much longer to resolve from a remote location.

Instead of assigning a deluge of support tickets to individual representatives, companies can make significant improvements by structuring their team around a collaborative framework. One study by the leadership development and training company Fierce, Inc. found that 86% of survey respondents blame workplace failures on a lack of collaboration and ineffective communication. By promoting teamwork within the IT department, business leaders can eliminate management bottlenecks and streamline support efforts. Of course, having the right management tools can make a huge difference when it comes to large projects and company-wide updates.

How Faronics’ supports collaborative troubleshooting

Moving toward effective IT collaboration requires significant visibility and control over employee workstations and the software installed on them. With Faronics’ Deploy application, IT staff can monitor OS updates, software patches and device performance in real time, cutting down on the guesswork. Through one centralized console, IT administrators are able to automate patch delivery for Windows and Mac machines, send batch updates for key business applications, track the usage of all in-network IT assets and much more. 

Using the Deploy platform, distributed IT support teams can resolve a large number of tickets in a fraction of the usual time. This not only enhances departmental collaboration but can also help cut down on low-priority requests and the steps tech support professionals take to resolve them. With advanced inventory and data analytics, IT leaders can assess which computer problems are most common and create best practices for self-resolution. And thanks to Deploy’s cloud-based architecture, authorized users can access IT management workflows from any device with an internet connection.

To learn more about Deploy’s collaborative capabilities, explore our product page or start a free trial today.