Your complete guide to IT automation using AI: 5 steps to scaled efficiency and profitability

$4,072, per employee, every year. 

According to a recent survey, that’s what companies are paying for time spent trying to resolve tech issues.

And that doesn’t mean that all the technical problems that arise are getting fixed. The same survey noted that only 27% of employees even ask for tech support.

Electric

Clearly, there is a lot of room for IT departments to become more effective and efficient. In fact, approximately one in three IT leaders is focusing on streamlining IT tasks in 2024. Automation via AI plays an essential role in boosting efficiency, but how exactly can you integrate AI-based automation in IT to get the results you want? Let’s take a step-by-step look at the process.

Your step-by-step guide to IT automation using AI

IT departments are the hidden engine in any modern organization. The IT team works behind the scenes to ensure that every device, network, and software is humming along, that employees know how to use them, and that data is safe from cyber attacks. With IT automation using AI, the performance of the IT team can skyrocket. Here’s how to make that happen.

Step #1: Analyze the data you already have

Your IT team probably spends a lot of time analyzing data, coming up with strategies for testing and implementation, and then analyzing some more. With an AI platform, data analysis never stops, even when the IT team has logged off and gone home.

That’s because the platform does it for you. AI It has the capability to analyze enormous amounts of data from multiple sources — then run tests to validate the findings — before you even finish reading this article.

This empowers IT teams to perform better, with more accurate data-driven insights and actions.

Step #2: Automate rote tasks

Once your IT automation is up and running, you will really start to feel the impact by automating routine and mundane tasks. Here are some examples of IT tasks that can be easily automated with AI:

• Setting up “out of office” emails
• Answering repetitive emails
• Updating software
• Solving printer problems
• Managing user access permissions
• Restarting routers
• Software patching 
• Searching for details regarding customer history
• Resetting passwords

When rote tasks are handled automatically by AI, IT teams have much more time for meaningful work, like innovating new products — but that’s really just the beginning of what AI can do for you.

Atera dashboard

Step #3: Detect IT issues

A key benefit of AI is its ability to detect IT issues that are not obvious to human discernment. Beyond identifying anomalies and issues, AI automation can even work to resolve them with limited or no manual intervention. Here’s how the process works:

• AI learns the baseline of your IT infrastructures.
• It detects patterns or actions that do not align with the baseline.
• It performs a root-cause analysis.
• AI prioritizes issues by urgency and their impact on your operations.
• It also alerts you in real time so you have visibility of the status of your IT systems.
• Issues that can be resolved by AI are completed. If manual intervention is required, the AI system escalates the ticket, and notifies you so you can get involved.

Step #4: Optimize IT issue resolution

IT automation using AI optimizes issue resolution in two ways. First, it helps your human team members to do their job better. For example, AI summarizes IT tickets and customer histories, provides real-time, data-based device diagnostics, and offers suggested solutions to make the IT agent’s job easier.

AI can also completely resolve some issues for IT teams, leaving more time open to focus on higher value tasks. For example, AI can:

• Communicate with customers/users via voice or text, in your selected tone of voice.
• Generate knowledge base articles.
• Create context-specific scripts and precise terminal commands.

Step #5: Continue enhancing IT intelligence

The more you leverage IT automation with AI, the more your AI software understands how to help you meet your goals. Here are two ways to make your AI smarter:

• Feed it more data: Get everyone on your team to use your IT software on a regular basis. The more you use it, the more the system will understand the nuances, key elements, and patterns of your operations.
• Improve data quality: Constantly monitor your AI, change definitions and decisions, and update conclusions when necessary. Your AI needs you to steer the ship and provide feedback to improve the quality of data and data analysis. This way, it can offer more accurate solutions and predictions.

How IT automation using AI helps companies grow to new heights

“Almost all companies are active in GenAI to some degree, but widespread use remains limited.” 

According to the PwC 2024 Digital Trends in Operations survey, only 20% of companies are using GenAI in many areas. Six percent are still not using it at all.

PwC

Your company can be the one that does it differently, and stands out as an AI automation star.

Come behind the scenes with Atera’s customers to see what’s possible when you truly lean into IT automation using AI. Check out these stories about how Atera’s AI-powered IT management platform has helped these companies boost productivity, efficiency, and scale:

• How Trapp Technology (Inc 500 IT Services company) achieved exponential growth
• How SWNS Media Group (which serves the biggest publishers in the world) doubled its productivity
• How Jones Plastic (a global manufacturer) fast-tracked to scalability and agility

You can find more stories here. 

Meanwhile, here are some numbers to inspire you: Atera customers have been shown to resolve 10X tickets, 95% faster. Many have cut average resolution time from hours to minutes. This enables them to scale from tens of resolved IT tickets to hundreds, every day.
Do you want to achieve similar results in your organization with IT automation and AI?  Start your free trial with Atera and get moving on your AI journey to growth.