By Shirish Nimgaonkar, President of Nanoheal

The skills gap emerging among applicants for IT vacancies has not slowed the expansion of hardware and software product lines. So, besides their strong demand for IT professionals, companies are also competing for customer-support staff to shepherd their newest offerings into the marketplace. 

At the same time, millions of employees have hunkered down in remote workspaces, never to return to their original offices; and that, in turn, requires their employers to invest in additional hardware — along with additional staff or contractors to maintain the reliability of their devices.   

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IT costs seen mounting

To prevent IT expenses from eating into other budget lines, there needs to be a way of easing the pressure on beleaguered techs who have to hold operational problems at bay without enough staff for a rapid response to every problem.

Ordinary automation might help mitigate workflow blockages by facilitating workarounds; but that is only a temporary fix, at best. A far more effective solution involves, among other things, the installation of automation software with the architecture to find and repair network problems before they occur.

Network outages can be tremendously expensive. Technology that is unable to identify and resolve application performance issues can cause long-term declines in productivity, which occur when repetitive outages depress employee morale and, in turn, their efficiency. 

Nevertheless, millions more Americans will be working remotely (hybrid or full-time) by 2025, adding substantially to the intensifying pressure on network reliability.

Cognitive AI for scrutiny

One solution already proving itself among IT giants deploys artificial intelligence (AI); namely, a versatile, automation platform featuring real-time analytics and cognitive AI for continuous diagnostic scrutiny. Because of its oversight within multiple applications and network issues, and a knowledge base uploaded into the platform, self-healing workstations can ferret out and repair software problems anywhere in the networks, Additionally, because of its intelligence, the software can prepare myriad solutions to potential problems and solve them even before they manifest.

To perform its cognitive feats, the AI platform must first be loaded with all the technical support data available for a given process or program. In the next step, an expert in cognitive AI utilizes a no-code framework to create new automation templates that will help identify and resolve the problem predictively. This way, the expert can also monitor the experience of the user to encompass, guide, and monitor work and data flows identified as priorities. 

“Holistic” monitoring

As it runs in the background, the platform maintains a “holistic” perspective on system health. Its preventative measures aren’t limited to exceptionally powerful hardware, however.  The software and its smart features are suitable for any type of device, from PCs and phones to Peloton.

The versatility of a smart automation platform is especially helpful to employees working in the field because the platform will help ensure that their network links remain open when they’re in the midst of on-site tasks; for example, key-punching inventory or troubleshooting an equipment problem.

If a network issue holds up specific tasks by, for example, disabling password verification or some other data-downloading step, field employees will still have the ability to access their dashboards and track the progress of repairs to the network, applications, or connectivity.

Employee satisfaction

Besides helping employees budget their field time as efficiently as possible, the status reports provided by the dashboards promote efficiency and employee satisfaction by ensuring that they have as much transparency in their working environment as upper managers have in theirs. 

In fact, a self-healing workstation provides everyone with additional headroom for their work because it spares employees the frustration of excessive response time to IT tickets. Naturally, when a ticket requests the restoration of a critical program — email, for example — employees will expect IT to repair the problem ahead of any others. By installing intelligent repair software that is loaded with the required knowledge base, the company can fix the issue with no human intervention before the user is held up by the problem.

Enhancing the digital experience

Whatever problems the platform finds and repairs, all the information about the service will be distributed throughout a company’s networks to ensure that a patch is installed wherever the same flaws exist — especially where a company may be relying on faulty or obsolete technology. 

By slashing the number of time systems have to spend off-line, self-healing work stations “recapture the value” of the hours employees previously spent waiting for repairs. In fact, workplace service architects believe that, when used in tandem with cognitive AI, analytics, and a robust database, automation is the best approach to substantially enhance a user’s digital experience by eliminating most of the pain points they would otherwise have to endure.

Nanoheal is a patented predictive and cognitive workplace automation software for technology support providers, Managed Service Providers, large OEMs, and SMB IT helpdesk providers.