Mismanagement of human capital combined with lack of board level awareness is a major blocker

London, February 20 2013: Research commissioned by IPsoft has revealed that 69% of IT decision makers would prioritise modernising their IT infrastructure if their IT staff had more man hours at their disposal, with many more citing deployment of new applications and configuration and installation of new technologies as key areas they would like more time spent on. The Vanson Bourne research study, commissioned by the expert systems specialist, surveyed UK IT decision makers in a bid to understand more about what value additional human capital would bring to businesses.

"Too many organisations today are failing to invest time in improvements to existing IT infrastructure, often because they don't have the resources available to do so," comments UK MD Terry Walby. "In many cases those skills exist within a business, but they are often tied up with dealing with low level tasks related to running, rather than improving, IT. This survey revealed that staff only regularly use about half of their applicable skills, so if companies looked at smarter ways of freeing up existing resources they could prioritise change activities that would really make an impact to the business."

Despite the criticality of IT not just to running the business, but to driving innovation, the research also revealed that 57% of board level executives admit to not knowing what skills their IT teams are armed with.

Walby continues, "Part of the issue is that often businesses don't spend enough time considering how to best use the talent they have at their disposal. Firstly, a greater awareness of capability from the top down is fundamental. Then, organisations should look to automation to relieve skilled staff of more mundane activities, and facilitate the more intelligent and efficient use of human capital. With early adopters consistently seeing over half of IT support tasks delivered with no human intervention, untapped potential within existing IT staff can quickly be released by following this approach."

Bob Tarzey, Service Director at analyst firm Quocirca concludes, "It appears that in many cases the wastage of skills is simply accepted by IT managers. Whilst this continues, IT departments will be less able to focus on the delivery of innovative new applications, to the detriment of the businesses they serve." The impacts of this are explored further in Quocirca's whitepaper "The wastage of human capital in IT operations".

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Notes to Editors

About IPsoft
IPsoft is a global managed services provider of autonomic-based services. The company's mission is to power the world through expert systems, and to that end IPsoft leverages self-learning, self-healing cognitive systems across IT Operations, Cloud Orchestration, Fraud Prevention (FAS) and Business Process Automation. The unique autonomic proposition effectively manages operations while reducing human error and providing enhanced service levels. Headquartered in New York City, IPsoft has operations in ten countries across North America, Europe and Asia Pacific supporting enterprise customers, service providers and telecommunications companies.
For more information about what IPsoft does watch this video

About the primary research
The research presented in this press release was based on 100 interviews with senior IT managers in UK enterprises split across four industries: financial services, manufacturing, RDS (retail, distribution and transport) and other commercial. All the businesses had 1,000 plus employees.

Contact information
If you have any questions please do not hesitate to contact:

Russell Lindsey / Joe Johnston
Rocket Communications
0845 370 7024
IPsoft@rocketcomms.net