How product-led IT operations teams are driving greater efficiency for their organizations

Product-led IT teams focus on optimizing the digital workplace—using tech to make tech easier and more value-driving for their employees to use. They’re using the power of digital adoption solutions (also known as digital adoption platforms) to onboard employees, support them in their tech needs, and manage knowledge around workplace software and how best to use it. 

A core part of this work happens through IT operations teams. IT operations (or IT ops for short) is a function within IT that covers the processes and services around managing technology for users. Although what falls under IT ops’ precise role and responsibilities varies by organization, it generally covers quality assurance and service management for workplace tech. In other words, IT ops teams generally oversee the tasks and processes necessary to maintain overall IT infrastructure.

Why efficiency matters for IT ops teams

IT operations teams are often responsible for partnering with application managers to ensure that workplace software is generating value for employees and being used in the ways intended. That means providing support for managing tooling like digital adoption solutions—which aid in onboarding, analytics, and general monitoring of the performance and operations of workplace software. It also means helping coordinate and manage new release updates to internal-facing apps and keeping employees informed of their deployment. 

Although IT ops’ roles and responsibilities may feel removed from those of their non-technical colleagues, the work they do ultimately translates to empowering employees organization-wide to do their best work. Ensuring seamless, friction-free delivery of workplace software and tech is a must for companies today, and it lays the foundation for greater efficiency both within IT and across the organization as a whole. 

How IT ops teams drive efficiency 

In today’s digital workplace, the easiest and most effective way for product-led IT ops teams to help their organizations drive efficiency is with a digital adoption solution. Harnessing the robust analytics these solutions provide gives teams actionable insights into how users are engaging with software—both within individual apps and across sets of them. Armed with these insights, IT ops can develop operational metrics, best practices, and performance goals related to key processes, workflows, and other services. A digital adoption solution also assists IT ops in managing software license utilization and compliance–ensuring that the company isn’t paying for more than it needs, and that the software is being used as intended. 

Beyond these uses, there are two additional key ways in which digital adoption solutions help IT ops teams increase efficiency: 

Supporting new product and feature releases 

Employees are more efficient with software when they’re fully aware of precisely what it offers and what has changed in terms of its features. For this reason, the knowledge management role that IT operations plays is an important one in helping drive user fluency and efficiency. 

In non product-led organizations, release management and updates have tended toward the chaotic. In the traditional setup, organizations send out release notes via email or an internal messaging system. Most employees ignore them, and the notes become quickly forgotten—their location all but unknown, and the notes themselves therefore inaccessible after the fact. By the time an employee actually finds themselves needing to use the new software program, feature, or functionality, they have no idea where to go or what to do, and the IT service desk becomes bombarded with support ticket requests that eat up precious time and resources. 

It doesn’t have to be this way, and for product-led IT ops teams, it isn’t. Rather than put themselves in a position of being flooded by support ticket requests, these teams work with application managers to proactively put release notes and related support in the place where it makes the most sense to do so: the app itself. Using a digital adoption solution, IT can create an always-on resource center which employees can consult whenever they feel the need to. This resource center serves as a single source of truth for all things related to that app, letting employees get back to doing the work that matters and freeing up IT service desks to work on more pressing and serious issues. 

Automating tech support via in-app guidance 

The same product-led principles that apply to the resource center example above hold true for IT service support in general. Many IT ops teams assist their service desk counterparts in managing the ticketing system and troubleshooting support requests and IT-related issues. A digital adoption solution helps them drive greater efficiency by automating key support elements within the app, and analytics and customizable targeting helps ensure that support goes to the people who need it (and doesn’t bother people who don’t).

Say an IT issue arises around a particular sales workflow. IT ops teams can use a digital adoption solution to target users by metadata (role, location, etc.) or behavior (e.g. if it’s their first time undertaking a workflow or using a given app). This allows IT ops to be highly granular—for example, only targeting the sales representatives or team members who regularly engage in a particular workflow, with whatever support or information they need—ensuring help gets to the right teams, in the right place, at the right time. 

Planning with more rigor for the digital workplace of tomorrow

In addition to helping with day-to-day support issues, IT operations teams also engage in long-term strategic planning around how the tech needs of the business may change and what IT needs to do to make that change happen efficiently. Again, a digital adoption solution is crucial here. Not only can user analytics illuminate usage trends that are invaluable for informing the company’s IT ops strategy, but a centralized source for managing feedback can also give IT a window into the sentiments, concerns, and priorities of employees. Using both this qualitative and quantitative data, IT ops can assess what’s working operationally, what needs to change, and what tech priorities should inform the overarching IT roadmap.