Peak Performance Blog

Improved Operating Model

Operating at scale demands adjustments, if not significant changes, to the IT model. CIOs must respond to this demand by expanding IT resources from a single, back-office department, into a more holistic, process-driven and measurable approach. Strong governance and clear performance requirements need to be implemented across the entire organization. If not, companies could face the dreaded Shadow IT problem - a disorganized and decentralized mess that is arduous to manage and difficult to scale.

Nowadays, DevOps is one of the hottest buzzwords in the IT industry. It's the new standard of how IT companies can produce excellent outcomes in a faster, more natural way. By combining the benefits of DevOps and cross-functional teams, you can get to peak performance. In this article, we offer you some tips on how to do it.

It’s possible for a company today to outsource just about any IT operation. But businesses have different budgets, priorities and objectives, which means they vary widely in what IT processes they should outsource, to whom, and for what purpose. They must make educated choices about processes to outsource, and outsourcing partners, since a hasty or ill-thought-out decision could result in years-long lock-in to an unsatisfactory agreement, surprisingly high costs, and failure to meet strategic business goals.

When a company chooses to outsource its IT help desk, it must take care to investigate providers completely. Things that look attractive on the surface -- like cheap level-one ticket servicing, for example -- could hide ugly surprises, like poorly trained staff and frequent ticket escalation. It is important to find an outsourcer committed not just to excellent ticket servicing with minimal escalation, but also prevention of issues and continuous improvement. 

Auxis has grown over the years, so have the needs, demands, and expectations of its clients. We believe that it’s imperative that aligning IT services with the needs of our client’s business should be a mutual vision. As Auxis ITO Operations has adhered to the IT Information Library (ITIL) framework over the last decade, it has been done so using a combination of ITIL v2 and v3 with the sole purpose of implementing a “best practices” framework to improve IT services and customer satisfaction at all levels and also to meet and exceed service expectations by being more agile and working more efficiently.

Why well-designed processes don’t limit IT’s abilities, they enhance them Thoughtfully-designed processes are an essential part of any successful enterprise – streamlining tasks and making sure resources are put to optimal use. But when it comes to IT, business processes are often viewed with suspicion – considered nothing more than bureaucratic controls that limit the creativity of tech professionals.

No business wants to become the next data breach poster child. And companies are right to be concerned: in 2018, data breaches cost American businesses an average of $7.91 million – significantly higher than any other country.

Let’s face it, if you’re in IT, then you know that DevOps is one the hottest buzzwords in the IT space – and it’s quickly emerging as the new standard for how IT organizations can produce excellent outcomes in a faster, easier way. But like any emerging concept, confusion surrounds how to run DevOps for peak performance – and many business leaders are unclear about what DevOps even entails. So let’s get to it.

8 characteristics of high-performance service desks driving productivity, efficiencies, and cost savings

 Today, any CIO can tell you that one of their biggest concerns is the growing lack of IT talent in the market.  With the massive uptick in cloud and mobility in industries across the board, the demand for both highly specialized and more general IT skills is creating a huge headache for businesses that are trying to remain competitive.  Just look at any company's job listing page and you'll likely find that there are more openings for technology jobs than any other department.  In fact, in the IT security space alone, Cybersecurity Ventures issued a 2017 report claiming that the workforce shortage will reach 1.5 million by 2019, more than 209,000 jobs in the U.S. are currently unfilled and that postings are up 74 percent over the past five years.

Help desk outsourcing has become more popular. Why? Should you Outsource your Help Desk? While help desk services are essential for businesses of all sizes, operating one in-house is essentially a non-core function of your organization. In other words,

In today's cloudy and mobile world, people expect to be able to access what they want wherever they are on the network and from whatever device they choose. To satisfy this demand, businesses need to become agiler and have the ability to scale resources up or down on-the-fly. Procuring the infrastructure to enable these elastic environments in-house, however, can be extremely expensive and time-intensive, and you often end up with more resources than you need - in other words - IT becomes a drain on your budget. In fact, organizations are often paying around 40 percent of the IT budget for over-capacity, according to a recent article by CIO.

If you have ever worked in a restaurant or owned one, you are probably well aware of the fact that profit margins can be extremely low. 

If the cloud is not on your roadmap, it should be. While server sales are falling flat, the cloud market is booming. In fact, Gartner predicts that the worldwide public cloud market alone will grow 17.2 percent in 2016 to $208.6 billion, up from $178 billion in 2015. Of that, the highest growth will come from infrastructure-as-a-service (IaaS), with the firm estimating a jump in sales of 42.8 percent in 2016.  Software-as-a-service (SaaS) is also expected to grow significantly in 2016 - at a rate of 21.7 percent - to reach $38.9 billion.  With these staggering projections, as well as the fact that Amazon AWS reported 2015 sales of $7.88 billion in 2015, cloud is something no business can afford to ignore.

In today's cloudy and hyper-connected world, IT executives are being tasked to do more in the face of ever-shrinking IT budgets. 

In an increasingly omnichannel world, customers have a wide variety of channels to choose from when making purchases. Thanks to Amazon and other ecommerce innovators, those same customers also expect to receive their purchases almost instantaneously, regardless of what channel they are accessing. To illustrate this change in demand, a recent report by Technavio estimates that the market for same-day delivery in the US will hit $987 million by 2019.  Today's customers are also increasingly opting for the buy online and pick up in-store option, with 82 percent of respondents of a recent Temando survey stating so.

Technology is at the heart of everything your business does, even if you don’t realize it.  In fact, in just the last minute, there were over 149 million emails sent, 66,600 Tumblr posts, 431,000 Tweets, 125,940 Skype calls, 43,000 Instagram uploads and over three million Google searches amounting to over two million GB of internet traffic.