Let’s be honest: As employees, we often search for the quickest path to success. This can enable high levels of productivity, but when dealing with broken or inefficient processes, focusing only on the fastest way to get things done can result in shortcuts, workarounds, and rule-breaking that make things much more complicated in the long run.
Completing work via the ‘fastest’ or ‘easiest’ route is how shadow IT becomes ingrained in organizations.
Shadow IT is the label for any hardware or software used within an organization that is not supported by the company’s central IT department.
In a typical mid-size business, this might look like employees:
- Using their personal cloud-based storage accounts to store and share files instead of company-approved solutions.
- Working from their personal devices on the business network without taking the required security measures.
- Subscribing to software-as-a-service (SaaS) apps like social media monitoring and analytics tools without IT approval.
- Hosting meetings on their preferred video-conferencing platform instead of the company-sanctioned one.
Why employees turn to shadow IT, and why it matters
If your organization’s technology approval process is overly onerous, employees may start to make their own software purchasing decisions. And when employees take shortcuts or install and use unsanctioned software, your business could face everything from inflated software costs to security risks.
When you use unsupported technology, you risk introducing security and compliance issues. In fact, 76% of small-to-medium businesses (SMBs) see shadow IT as a moderate-to-severe cybersecurity threat. This kind of issue can have big ramifications for your business—IBM estimates that the average cost of a single data breach is $4.45 million.
But security risks aren’t enough to stop companies from experiencing shadow IT. A Gartner study predicts that by 2027, 75% of employees will adopt, modify, or build technology outside IT’s visibility—a jump from 41% in 2022.
This begs the question: “Why is shadow IT on the rise?”
One reason is that people feel like they’re too busy to go through the proper channels, according to Wayson Vannatta, CIO at Nintex. Or maybe they hesitate to “bother” IT—or they do ask and get a “no”—and instead seek out alternatives on their own.
But all of that is still just a symptom of the bigger issue.
More than anything, shadow IT stems from broken and inefficient processes. Half of SMBs that have discovered shadow IT at their company say it formed due to a lack of understanding or awareness of the correct process for getting new technology.
According to our study, The Reality of the World’s Most Broken Processes, “More respondents singled out the IT department than any other as having broken systems and processes.” And when users’ requests for new equipment or software take too long or go completely unnoticed, they turn to shadow IT.
This causes a vicious cycle where a worker fails to notify IT that they’ve turned to their own under-the-radar tech, and the support team continues to work on the case, leading to:
- Security concerns around unauthorized software in the organization
- Lost time and resources for the IT employees working on the service request
- The spread of shadow IT practices across the company
Avoiding these issues requires getting at the primary cause: inefficient processes.
Automating inefficient IT processes
The right technology helps eliminate broken and inefficient processes—but change doesn’t come overnight. These processes are usually deeply embedded in company culture, making them difficult to fix.
To alleviate the issue, businesses should look to automate, orchestrate, and optimize their workflows, starting with IT service request processes.
An IT service request is any request from a user for something new—most commonly information, help and advice, or access to a service. For example, a user may contact the IT service desk to install a new software program or grant them access to an online portal.
Automating your service request process can help speed up request fulfillment and decrease the use of shadow IT.
Here are four tips to help you get started:
- Break down the process for fulfilling service requests into structured steps categorized by status: open, assigned, in progress, pending, complete, and closed. Then, look for bottlenecks and issues. While there may be delays in assigning a request to an appropriate staff member, inefficiencies are also common in the ‘pending’ stage—where waiting on approvals and reviews from numerous team members leave requests stuck in limbo.
- Troubleshoot and automate once you’ve traced inefficiencies to their point of origin. For example, say the hold-up is getting a response from the assigned staff member. You could program your system to automatically send them a reminder email after several hours without a response. Or, if your team spends more time on Slack or Teams, you can trigger a message to go there instead. Then, after a few days, your process automation platform can escalate the ticket to a manager to ensure it gets handled before the employee turns to shadow IT.
- Loop in your employees. Once you’ve automated the service request process, make sure employees are aware of the changes. This shows them that you care about their experience and that you’re working to ensure they can access the software, repairs, or assistance they need. Then, seek out their feedback via quick surveys to let you know how they feel things are running.
- Monitor and optimize your process automation. “Processes shouldn’t be set-and-forget,” Wayson says. “Not only do you need a simple-to-use process that people know about, you must also maintain and fine-tune the process.” Make it a priority to revisit your new process on an ongoing basis, like weekly or monthly. As you continue to optimize the process, the turnaround time for requests will decrease further. This also benefits your IT department because they can focus on tasks requiring more attention.
How one company improved more than 300 business processes
French solar company Apex Energies turned to Nintex to digitize and improve their processes. The software allowed them to create accurate, detailed process maps, which they shared company-wide to encourage cross-functional collaboration. Team members can add comments to report errors and suggest improvements, and operational staff can make process changes.
The IT department, in particular, has seen significant changes from process management implementation. They use their detailed process maps to detect repetitive and time-consuming tasks and discover new tasks to automate.
“Nintex Process Manager lets us oversee, adopt, and quickly implement changes to our processes. The software is an important enabler of our rapid growth, helping us transition to a continuous processes improvement model as we strive for operational excellence.”
—Mina Boulkarakir, QHSE Manager at Apex Energies
Use the right tools to reduce shadow IT
Nintex makes it easy to improve your IT processes and automate sophisticated workflows. Not only can you map and document your current processes to see how they can improve, you can also automate any inefficient workflows you discover.
Nintex’s easy-to-use, drag-and-drop interface turns an otherwise technical task into a visual one, meaning any employee can build IT-approved automated workflows to remedy broken processes and make their everyday work more efficient.
By giving your team members the ability to improve their processes, you empower them to problem solve—and help reduce the extent of shadow IT in your organization.
Get in touch for more information about how intelligent process automation software can benefit your organization.
