6 Early Warning Signs of an Under-Resourced IT Organization

Image by John Klossner

It’s no secret that your IT organization is crucial to your company. But are they getting all of the resources they need? Here are six warning signs that your IT organization may be under-resourced and on the brink of a crash.

Workloads and time constraints: too much firefighting, not enough proactive work

Is your IT team always fighting the same fires, resolving the same problems, or managing the same situations? IT teams should be able to be proactive, not just reactive. Not being able to work ahead puts your organization at risk of productivity dips and security threats. However, because IT teams have so much on their plates, they don’t have enough time to put into place proactive measures (which then leaves them without enough time to clear their plates, which causes them not to have enough time to be proactive, and the cycle continues).

You may hear your team say, “I don’t have enough time to invest in saving time;” therefore, they can’t set up automation, program cool tools, or try out new software that could save them time. If your IT team is experiencing delays, missed projects, or otherwise impossible deadlines, it may be time to invest in the automation tools they need to succeed.

Budgeting: prioritize your IT team

If your IT organization can’t keep up with the growth of the business, it’s a sign that they may need more resources. If they’re unable to scale quickly, it could lead to problems with data management, customer service, and more. Often the source of this inability is a lack of budget to cover new tools, hires, and training. An added focus on being finance-conscious is just another roadblock to your IT team’s roadmap. If your organization has no budget for your IT team, it’s a sign that you may need to re-prioritize (and soon).

Low morale among IT staff (i.e., thank your IT person when they grant you access)

Low morale among IT staff is a common issue that is often caused by a variety of factors. Overworking, a lack of recognition, and inadequate compensation are all common sources of low morale in the IT industry. While thanking whoever helps you get your Slack account back won’t fix all of the underlying problems surrounding low morale, recognizing this problem with morale before it snowballs into disaster is crucial to the satisfaction of your employees and the continuity of your organization.

Stop turning your IT experts into security professionals

Chances are you have a security team, so why is the I in IT starting to stand for identity and access management? IT wants to be able to help more with security, but when everyone’s pinging them for access, they have to prioritize. Security seems further away the larger the company gets, making communication difficult. However, your IT expert is already exactly what their title says: an IT expert. If you find they’re being made responsible for security more and more, you may be edging closer to catastrophe.

Too. many. tickets.

Where there are SaaS apps, there are IT tickets. However, if your IT team is inundated with security tasks, budget cuts, and time constraints, it’s easy to become overwhelmed and unable to keep up with the sheer amount of tickets. These problems are also exacerbated by periods of mass onboarding and offboarding and a lack of security tools. When this happens, your organization may run into a wealth of problems: longer response times to support tickets, requesting backup from security, and delayed access to business-critical data.

The bottom line: nothing is integrated or visible

Between shadow IT, repetitive manual tasks, and ever more SaaS, integration and visibility are two of the biggest issues affecting IT organizations today. Integration allows for faster and more effective communication between different systems and a more efficient workflow and streamlined processes. However, when there’s a growing amount of software and a dwindling level of integration, it becomes nearly impossible to keep track of everything. This translates to visibility concerns, and the most significant question is: who has what software, and how’d they get it?

If you’re looking to help out your IT team by investing in some good tools, we suggest starting with one that helps with access management, like Crosswire. Instead of manually provisioning 20 people to [email protected], tools like Crosswire gather permissions across different enterprise applications to implement rule-based access without human intervention. Crosswire automatically provisions access and identifies anomalies, providing the IT infrastructure to manage authorization at scale.

Stop turning your IT experts into security professionals and help them automate the things that don’t need to be on their plate, like access management, so they can get back to doing their jobs.

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