Time consuming IT tasks you can avoid. What to do?

There are many mundane IT related tasks you have to take care of again and again. They quickly become the most hated part of our jobs – we want to solve interesting problems where we can come up with solutions. Doing the same thing again and again is just a waste of resources. There are many tasks you still have to do manually, but many of them can be automated these days. As automation gears up, its importance escalates in the world of business. If you haven’t started automating the most frustrating tasks you have to complete, you need to start now.

Automate Storage Management

Storage is an area of IT which isn’t complex but is very integral to the whole process. It isn’t complicated to understand what you need to do – either you are running out of storage, or you have enough of it. If you are using a cloud system, then you should set it up to automatically increase storage when needed. You also need to set alerts for when you reach a certain level of disk usage – this will allow you to decide whether you need to increase storage or delete some data. Not having enough storage can bring the whole organization to a stop, so this is an important task to automate.

Automate computer shutdowns

We waste an unbelievable amount of energy every day. We’ve all seen computers being left on in offices even after the people have gone home. Computers take a good deal of power to run. Not only is the waste bad for the environment, it also significantly increases the electricity bills of your organization. That is why you need to enable remote shutdowns of computers after a certain time if they have been idle for a long time. This will save on energy costs.

Automate SQL Queries

The problem with SQL queries is that you often have to wait around for something that should be possible in a few seconds. The actual task takes seconds, but finding someone free to run the query and then collect the results to send out in an email is a waste. The most common queries being run should be totally automated. If the queries are required around the same time you can set them to run at a particular time and you can receive the results in your email automatically.

Sort and Format Data

If you’re in a big organization, then this is already a necessity; if you are in a small organization, this will soon be a necessity. Data management is essential not just to have records but also for making decisions about the future of the company. Manual data entry should not be required anywhere, not with the pattern matching and more that most databases and systems are capable of these days. Your data collection should be automatic, it should be parsed automatically, and the results should also be available automatically.

Reporting

Automated reports are one of the best parts of using good cloud architecture. Manual report making isn’t just slow; it can be inaccurate as well. Important business decisions are made on the basis of these reports, meaning it is necessary to have the reports be as current and accurate as possible. These days, business solutions create reports and send them out without needing any human intervention – and that is how it should be.

Using Automation Properly

The beauty of automation is that you can do it yourself. Any competent programmer will be able to grasp what needs to be done to automate more tasks after studying the system. The issue is that many people don’t want to automate – they think that if they automate too much then they will become redundant. No one wants their job to be automated. This isn’t just the employee’s fault; this is the employer’s fault as well. Imagine, there are people who can make your system more efficient, but they are not doing fearing they will lose their jobs.

Conclusion

Companies need to tie rewards to automation and promote the people who focus on automation. This will create a positive feedback loop where people will know that the more they automate, the better they are considered. Things that used to take hours will suddenly start happening instantly because you set the right rewarding system. Remember, someone who can automate tasks is a very important member of your team. Being able to automate something first requires understanding it completely, so the people automating tasks are some of the most insightful and intelligent people in the company.

Learn more on automation from out previous blog post focused on boosting collaboration and productivity with automation.