"That which gets measured, gets done.” All IT leaders have heard this well-worn phrase, typically attributed to management guru Peter Drucker. It means that you can’t manage a business issue unless you first identify and monitor it. You also need to benchmark your progress against both your own prior results and those of your competitors, so you know both where you stand and how to improve. Knowledge is power, allowing you to make better decisions.
Measuring IT operational maturity
IT operational maturity is basically your ability to effectively leverage technology to achieve its overall business objectives. It’s important because it directly impacts customer experience, employee experience, customer and employee retention, operational costs, strategic business capabilities, and more.
IT teams with a higher level of operational maturity can resolve user issues quickly, prevent issues from happening in the first place, and act as a key strategic partner for the entire organization. Having a high level of operational maturity helps your business perform better and compete better than businesses with lower maturity levels.
GoTo and Qualtrics surveyed 315 IT leaders at small and midsized businesses (SMBs) about operational maturity with respect to IT support and service management. We developed five distinct levels of operational maturity that offer IT leaders a strong baseline to measure where they are today and build a roadmap for future improvement of their IT operating model.
What does the IT maturity model measure?
Our maturity model measures the capabilities and effectiveness of an IT team’s people, processes, and technology, and how they create value for the business with support and service management. Maturity levels may range from low-level chaos (at Level 1) where issue resolution times can take hours or days, to high-level strategic partnership (at Level 5) where IT prevents issues from happening and helps the business grow.
Are you among the 9% of “Level 5” organizations where IT is a well-oiled machine that's a full strategic partner? Are you among the 10% of “Level 1” organizations where IT support is ad hoc and lacking documentation/standards? Are you somewhere in between, among the 81% of organizations represented within Levels 2 through 4? And what exactly does each level need to keep pushing forward in their IT maturity journey?
Find your IT maturity level in 5 minutes or less
Our interactive quiz consists of only 5 questions. Taking the quiz takes just a few minutes and will enable you to see exactly where your IT team ranks among peers. We'll also provide you with customized, actionable steps to reach the next level of maturity.
The questions are all multiple choice and will ask you about:
- Your current state of IT support.
- Your approach to device management.
- Your remote access capabilities.
- The degree of integration among your IT support tools.
- Your ability to manage endpoints.
Answer 5 simple questions, and we’ll immediately tabulate your scores, telling you what level of operational maturity you currently have now, on a scale of 1 to 5. We’ll then tell you how your results compare to other IT organizations and offer customized recommendations to help improve. Is that worth a few minutes of your time?
Use your quiz results to drive improvement
You can use your quiz results and our next steps readout to:
- Gain a customized benchmark of your IT function's current performance and maturity, compared against your peers.
- Identify key performance gaps and prioritize the next steps you should take to improve your IT team’s capabilities.
- Begin implementing technology and processes/practices to improve your IT capabilities and generate tangible, business results.
Measuring your IT maturity allows you to enhance your impact on users, your IT staff, and your entire organization. Take our IT Maturity Quiz now.
