Breaking Free from Reactive IT: A Path to Proactive IT Operations 

In the ever-evolving digital landscape, many IT organizations find themselves trapped in a reactive cycle with IT operations. How can you break free from this IT hamster wheel? Lakeside Software recently brought together IT veterans to share insights and best practices on implementing a proactive IT strategy during the webinar “5 Signs You’re Still Running a Reactive IT Organization.”  

Geoff Hixon, VP of Solutions Engineering at Lakeside, and Mike Flanagan, Global CIO of Compucom, shed light on how enterprise IT organizations can finally emerge from the costly and stressful weight of reactive IT and, in turn, set up their organization to adopt a more proactive, data-driven approach. 

But first, what are the five signs of reactive IT? Both speakers identified several telltale signs that an IT organization is stuck in reactive mode: 

1. A “Sky is Falling” Culture 

When everything is labeled as a priority, nothing truly is. IT teams spend their time fighting fires rather than preventing them by proactively addressing root causes. Because teams are so reactive all the time, they simply don’t have the time to be proactive, however. Geoff Hixon emphasized that, “IT faces constant technological change, yet they are still operating the same way they did 10-15 years ago.” 

2. Operational Inefficiency—Often Caused by Burnout 

Being in reactive mode all the time leads to staff burnout. At the same time, overwhelming workloads prevent IT teams from focusing on strategic, transformational projects and proactive measures. How can a team be reactive when it’s trying to maintain legacy systems and working on a ticket-by-ticket basis, which is also very costly? 

3. “Swivel Chair” Syndrome 

Organizations accumulate multiple point solutions for a host of individual problems, leading to inefficient workflows and finger-pointing between teams. In the case of IT, investigating issues without visibility across the IT estate often leads to reliance on too many tools and applications to investigate issues and research root causes, exacerbating inefficiency and the risk of impacts on user productivity and/or business disruption.  

4. Lack of Visibility 

Without proper visibility, major IT transformation initiatives (e.g., Windows 11 rollouts or M&A integrations) are fraught with inefficiencies and risks. Unseen costs and misaligned strategies also derail progress toward innovation. Never getting ahead of a “you don’t know what you don’t know” culture keeps enterprise IT in a reactive state. 

5. A Reactive Mindset 

Many IT organizations struggle to adapt internally. Indeed, as both Hixon and Flanagan discussed, there is still much work to do to push a mind shift toward proactive IT. While IT teams readily adapt to new technologies for users, they often resist changing their own operational methods. 

A Pragmatic First Step to Proactive IT 

Many IT leaders feel overwhelmed by constant firefighting. The first step toward proactive IT is taking a prioritized, incremental approach. Mike Flanagan advised that, “You’re not going to start by boiling the ocean.” Instead, focus on one high-impact area at a time. He added that, “By breaking down those plays and then prioritizing, you can create a path ahead—one that is an iterative process so that you can keep getting more and more proactive as you go through those priority actions.” 

Although high-priority use cases will vary by organization, some examples include reducing IT ticket volume and implementing automations for common issues across the IT estate. Flanagan further advised to develop a playbook for the key actions you’ve identified and then follow a methodical approach to implementation. By executing structured plays and revisiting data-driven insights regularly, IT organizations can gradually increase efficiency, reduce IT risks, and simplify complexity. This approach  

allows IT teams to demonstrate quick wins while building momentum for broader transformation initiatives. 

The Importance of Complete Visibility for Proactive IT 

Both Flanagan and Hixon agreed that gaining visibility into IT environments is what enables data-driven decisions and prioritization, as it helps identify inefficiencies and issues for which you can automate fixes, ultimately reducing ticket volumes. Geoff Hixon emphasized that, “Visibility is the foundation for transitioning to proactive IT.” 

Visibility helps IT leaders move from reactive mode to strategic planning, giving them confidence to innovate and transform, rather than being stuck in maintenance mode. After all, you can’t solve what you can’t see. This holistic visibility enables IT to deliver a super digital employee experience (DEX) as part of their proactive IT strategy. 

The Power of Data for Maturing Proactive IT 

An essential theme throughout the discussion was the need for endpoint data and data insights about the performance and health of the IT estate. Without the depth, breadth, history, and quality of data, IT leaders are “playing darts in the dark.” More than 60% of IT issues go unreported, making it critical to capture deep, broad, and historical data that can empower IT teams to adopt a proactive approach.  

Data-driven insights allow organizations to identify high-impact issues while not overlooking smaller, incremental optimizations that contribute to long-term efficiency gains. With real-time insights, IT teams can detect anomalies before they escalate, shifting from a reactive, break/fix model to proactive problem prevention. 

This data can power AI purpose-built for IT. “Every decision we make in life uses data to support it,” noted Hixon. Think about it: “A single $50 mistake at scale will cost you millions,” he said. Clean, well-structured data ensures that AI-driven insights are trustworthy and actionable. Without reliable data, AI models may produce misleading results, leading to poor decision-making. To maximize the benefits of AI, IT teams must establish strong data governance practices, ensuring consistency, accuracy, and accessibility across all systems. 

Using Automations to Fast-Track Proactive IT 

During the webinar, Hixon referenced a fascinating study by Happy Signals from 2019-2023 based on more than 9 million responses to IT incidents found that just 13% of tickets are high-impact tickets resulted in 80% of lost enterprise productivity. That means that 87% of IT incidents are simple to find and fix. The really impactful problems are really hard to find, hence the need for data-backed visibility. Hixon mentioned that automation and AI-driven solutions can solve for the easy, low-impact issues (87% of tickets) in order to free up teams to attend to more complex issues using AI-based root cause analysis, such as enabled by Lakeside SysTrack.  

Expertise Matters for a Successful Proactive IT Strategy 

Beyond data collection and analysis, IT teams need skilled professionals who can interpret data insights and implement effective fixes. Dashboards and reports are valuable, but without the right expertise to act on them, their potential remains unrealized. Investing in upskilling IT personnel and fostering a data-driven culture ensures that organizations can effectively bridge the gap between data insights and meaningful action. 

The End of IT as You Know It 

As organizations continue to evolve, the shift from reactive to proactive IT isn’t just about implementing new tools—it’s about fundamentally changing how IT teams operate and think about their service delivery. By embracing data-driven decision making, automation, and AI, organizations can break free from the reactive cycle, ensuring always-available devices and delivering a super digital employee experience. Indeed, it’s the end of IT as you know it. IT leaders must challenge the status quo of reactive IT, encouraging a mindset shift and culture of proactive IT. 

To learn more about implementing a proactive IT strategy, watch the full webinar replay on-demand.