Tackling Wasted Time in IT: Handling Challenges in Unified Communications and Collaboration

With the rise of digitized innovations and our overall, ever-increasing reliance on unified communications and collaboration (UC&C) platforms, the IT landscape has witnessed major shifts in its own complexity. IT teams worldwide often struggle to manage these complex environments, leading to time inefficiencies and added stressors.

In this vein, a recent study by IR (with its focuses on performance management and analytics for UC&C, IT infrastructure and payment ecosystems) paints a vivid picture of the pressures that IT professionals are currently under as they grapple with evolving UC&C environments.

The study, titled 'IT Time Crunch,' reveals major statistics about the time spent by IT professionals - namely, time they lose to unnecessary UC&C tasks. It found that 25% of the professionals surveyed waste over one working day each week on largely needless activities. (Nearly 70% consume at least four hours per week.) This data is even more notable against the backdrop of 50% of respondents reporting increases in their daily workload.

John Ruthven, CEO and Managing Director of IR, expressed his concerns over the findings, stating, 'It is shocking that 1 in 4 of the surveyed IT practitioners waste a full day a week needlessly on UC tasks. This in turn has a tremendous impact on costs and productivity. IT teams need added visibility and controls to manage complexities in their UC&C ecosystems.'

The research encompassed 214 IT professionals from the United States, the United Kingdom, and Singapore. Nearly 40% of the participants work in organizations with more than 10,000 end users, indicating that one problem is especially pronounced in larger-scale operations.

Among the challenges reported, time wasted troubleshooting issues stands out. These issues are often not clearly apparent until they are formally reported, making steps in preemptive actions more difficult. This increasing workload has significant effects on IT teams, pushing them into a reactive 'fire department' or "fire drill" role within their organizations. Some respondents even reported changing roles or leaving jobs over the past three years in search of better work-life balance and improved working conditions.

Given these challenges, what is clear is that solutions aimed at better monitoring and performance management can provide substantial relief for IT teams. By identifying the root causes of problems, these tools can prevent needless work hours from being lost to inefficient processes. Thus, improving the efficiency and job satisfaction of IT professionals grappling with complex UC&C environments.

[ Back To TMCnet.com's Homepage ]