For over a decade, SchoolDude has been working hand in hand with thousands of IT and operations professionals in the United States and across the globe. From working hand in hand with IT leaders across the country, we’ve found that improving operations is a cycle, not just a linear process, for continuous improvement away from reactive mode.
The Reality of IT in Education
Time over personnel is always a challenge for IT departments. Limited time and scope of resources, plus last minute tasks, can erode your efforts to focus on the bigger picture. Especially in the education environment, you’re expected to do more with less resources, all while maintaining your same level of service and tackling everything on your to-do list.
On average, many organizations only have one IT technician per 100 employees, and in schools, we know this ratio can be even higher with unique obstacles often due to budget and resource constraints. However, it’s still possible to be a highly effective department with clear data on your current workflow management, state of your IT assets, and your overall effectiveness as a team. This data is especially useful when it comes time to present budget information for upcoming fiscal years by giving you accurate and detailed information.
By arming yourself with the right information, you can make better decisions going forward to protect your valuable, and limited, resources, and ensure that you’re making the most out of your organization’s funding; however, if you’re still only addressing the break/fix tasks that come up during the day instead of focusing on proactive work (which actually saves money in the long run by planning for upcoming needs and replacements in advance), you won’t be able to effectively run your department or collect data that can help you preserve your resources.
The Long-Term Damage of a Reactive State
For technicians, tackling all of the tickets and requests on your plate for the day – not to mention all the last minute tasks and trouble tickets that seem to pile up even quicker – can easily become overwhelming. Schools need to carefully protect their investments and be good stewards of their budgets, making the need for better processes, visibility and organization vital to IT departments.
By focusing only on last minute assignments without prioritizing what’s most important, you can’t think about the larger, long-term projects that will be the most beneficial to your organization – and unfortunately, this reactive state is still all too common in education. According to the 2017 K-12 IT Leadership Survey Report by the Consortium of School Networking (CoSN), 52 percent of school chief technology officers (CTOs) currently spend more time problem-solving technical issues than working in a proactive mode. A significant portion of CTO respondents say their IT staff is stretched too thin to get to critical areas including "integrating technology into the classroom" and "implementing new technology,” two of their most important student-focused tasks that they can't accomplish.
Doing More – without Working More
The last thing you need is more work on your plate. That’s why best practices for long-term success work hand-in-hand with your help desk and asset monitoring solutions and, with the right execution, will actually free up more of your day by automating processes and eliminating the majority of reactive work. With a full platform of software solutions, SchoolDude’s technology management suite is uniquely suited to meet the needs of IT professionals in education. We offer three management solutions that work seamlessly together: Help Desk, Insight, our asset administration solution, and Mobile Device Management.
The platform is easy to implement and use, and tracks and records all the information you need – allowing your IT team to better streamline everything from their ticketing processes to their IT asset inventory. Visit us at Booth #2447 to learn more about how our solutions will streamline your operations so you can steer your team toward continuous improvement!