Siloed data undermines DEX, security

Terence van Schalkwyk, senior business analyst at Allan Gray.
Terence van Schalkwyk, senior business analyst at Allan Gray.

Fragmented data makes it difficult for organisations to enable a good digital employee experience, and worse  it can hamper security and compliance.

This is according to speakers at an executive forum in Johannesburg, hosted by Think Tank Software Solutions in partnership with Ivanti and ITWeb.

Eric McGee, technical sales engineer at Ivanti, noted that fragmented and siloed data hampered visibility and access to the right data, when employees needed it. 

“Silos keep organisations from being strategic and innovating. When IT teams can’t access data readily, it negatively impacts IT operations, security and compliance, and digital employee experience,” he said.

Organisations need to democratize IT data – such as information on device, application, and network performance – and leverage AI and automation to proactively detect and resolve issues, McGee advised.  They should also implement ticket prioritisation and routing tools to address high-priority issues first. This, he noted, enhances both digital employee experience (DEX) and cyber security and compliance.

McGee highlighted findings of Ivanti’s 2024 Digital Employee Experience Report, which found that 93% of security professionals say prioritising DEX has a positive impact on an organisation’s cyber security efforts.

Ivanti also found that when employees encounter tech friction or feel frustrated with the tools they are asked to use, they will bypass established protocols and resort to unsafe workarounds.

Robin Rowe, director of product management at Ivanti, outlined how the Ivanti Neurons Platform was purpose‑built for IT and security to help IT teams overcome digital friction and improve DEX. Ivanti Neurons aggregates and monitors device, support and security data into actionable analytics so organisations can optimise service performance at scale. Rowe highlighted capabilities such as the ability to measure any facet of IT service, with DEX scores, qualitative feedback and self-healing capabilities.

“Democratised data means turbocharged support,” he said.

Deon Van Der Walt, business solutions manager at Think Tank Software Solutions, demonstrated Ivanti Neurons’ features, noting: “As a low code/no code platform, it helps organisations shift left.”

Ivanti customer Terence van Schalkwyk, senior business analyst at Allan Gray, said that Ivanti’s scalability and user-friendliness enabled his organisation to deploy it for much more than IT service management.

“We quickly realised we could use the product for more than ITSM. It’s easy to customise, integrate and use, so we have harnessed it for business tools like operational tasks, employee equipment tracking, education fund management, travel management, CPD tracking and staff event management and registration,” he said.

Van Schalkwyk said the key Ivanti tools Allan Gray makes use of include Business Rules, Workflows, Rest API and Dashboards.

“We are looking at building out more dashboards to empower users, and how to use AI to enrich and analyse data,” he said. “With Ivanti, what we are able to do to get data to our end users is powerful.”

Please visit Think Tank Software Solutions for more information. 

The Democratising IT Data Executive Forum, hosted by Think Tank Software Solutions in partnership with Ivanti and ITWeb, took place on 12 November in Johannesburg.