Top 6 reasons why you need an excellent IT documentation

We often speak about the importance of having an IT documentation but what are the benefits? I’ve put together a list and want to share it with you! Without any further ado, here are my top 6 reasons for working on the IT documentation.

1. Because it brings order and control

Every IT department document their IT infrastructure in some way. Most commonly it’s kept and manually maintained in Excel spreadsheets. This might be OK as a start but since it is manually managed it will eventually grow into a burden to keep it up-to-date. With automation you will not need to worry or suffer from head aches knowing that you’ll have to spend your time on documentation routines.

2. Because time is money

Always having a trustworthy updated IT documentation saves time, and since time is money this should be a must have for organizations. Instead of spending way too much time by locating, collecting or requesting information, the information is already available and accessible at any time.

An updated documentation gives you opportunities to manage projects and see operational costs over a long time, and good ground for internal chargeback that can be easily shared with the different departments. In the long run this results in cost savings and cost optimizations.

3. Because of regulations and contract needs

SLAs, True Ups, GDPR, audits, reports for stakeholders and clients… The list can go on forever. The bigger the IT, the more the business is subject to regulations and compliance demands from external (and internal) parties. You always need to be prepared to be audited and provide the requested information.

4. Because of turnover of staff

Colleagues may come and go, and hopefully don’t leave with the IT information. Humans aren’t perfect. We sometimes forget and some days we are plain lazy, which sadly leads to the documentation getting the short end of the stick. If the IT architect, with the infrastructure map in his head, suddenly leaves your organization it’s quite the predicament.

5. Because emergencies happen

When hell breaks loose, we all know it happens eventually, you’ll need instant access to crucial information. There’s no time to spend hours searching for information of the setup or hopelessly trying to reach colleagues to ask how and if they’ve made any changes. Every minute of downtime costs money.

6. Because using automated IT documentation is really easy!

Managing a good IT documentation have been a very tedious and boring task for a long time and pretty daunting for most people. But it doesn’t have to be today, because there are tools and software that does this for you automatically – like vScope!

The Quick & Easy Solution – vScope

There are of course far more reasons than those mentioned here, but you get the general idea. The point of IT documentation isn’t to reduce or remove human involvement, but to stimulate and make it more efficient.

vScope is agentless and automatically inventories and maps the entire IT every day. It is a common platform for the organization. Employees can access necessary information without any need for scripting or asking a colleague for help. By having an automatic daily IT documentation every day you free up both time and can work more proactively, since you always know what the IT looks like over time.