Type “changing role of IT” intoGoogle and you'll get close to half a million hits. There's noshortage of online discussion on this topic. You can learn how ITis transforming from a technology gatekeeper to a service broker,how the CIO is changing from a plumber to a producer, or how IT ischanging from “the infrastructure team” to “the next big ideateam,” to name a few. In short, IT is being called upon to be theinnovators.

All of this sounds very enticing, doesn't it? Not only is ITbecoming increasingly important to the success of any organization;the field of IT is becoming much more interesting and exciting. Allsigns are that this is a great time to be in IT.

Credit unions are no exception to this rule. For years I've beensaying that technology is the great equalizer among financialinstitutions. With the right tech investment, any credit union ofjust about any size can compete with the biggest banks in thecountry.

What's changed over the years, however, is that having a solidtechnology investment today means more than buying the rightsoftware package, installing it on a server, and maintaining it.Today's C-level credit union executives look to IT to come up withinventive solutions that are tailored to the specific needs of thecredit union. In other words, the modern IT shop doesn't justmaintain; it creates. All of the Google results I mentioned abovepoint to this very fact.

Any of these articles will tell you what you should betransforming your IT operation into, but in my opinion, not enoughwords are devoted to how you're actually supposed to get there.Remember all those tedious, manual processes that seem so out offashion in this new world? Surprise! They still need to get done.There are still plenty of mind-numbing maintenance tasks thattechnology workers need to complete.

I'm willing to bet that your CEO, upon realizing how essentialit is that you transform IT, didn't double your budget or tell youto hire 10 extra employees. No, for better or worse, that old adageof “do more with less” still haunts us. Chances are you're expectedto broker, produce and come up with the next big idea, and continueto maintain the old systems and processes, all with the same staffand same budget.

That sounds impossible, doesn't it? Suddenly the glamorous, newworld of IT isn't so glamorous.

This is when you need to start thinking about IT automation.When many people think of automation, they picture long assemblylines – or maybe they even picture Lucy and Ethyl in the candyfactory. Those who are a little more tech savvy might think I'mtalking about job scheduling software. I'm not. Comparing jobscheduling to full IT automation is like comparing a Happy Meal todinner at your favorite steakhouse.

If a task or process is mundane and repetitive, chances are itcan be automated. I know of one credit union that moved from a jobscheduler or a full-blown IT automation package and in doing sowent from maybe 15 automated processes to more than 4,000. What'smore, they made this transformation in about four months.

For example, this credit union had made several previousattempts – using several different products – to automate ACHprocessing. The credit union finally decided it was futile, andaccepted that they would need to bring an operator in at 5 a.m.every day to run this process. Now, thanks to robust IT automation,the credit union has fully automated its ACH processing, eliminatedhuman errors, and has given one lucky operator some extra time inbed.

Likewise, this same credit union was able to automate itsend-of-day processing. This six-hour thrill ride was also runmanually and, as such, also required the attention of a humanoperator during very early hours. In this environment, one humanerror could easily compound itself into several other errors. Bydeploying an automation solution that can run non-dependent tasksconcurrently, the credit union not only fully automated itsend-of-day processing; it reduced the total run time from six hoursto five.

The thing to remember is that the time you save by automating isincremental. Automate one process and you may only save a fewminutes. Automate 4,000 processes and suddenly you've freed uphours and hours of time. As a case in point, the credit union Imentioned earlier was able to automate about 70% of its ITworkload, eliminate weekend shifts, and reduce headcount.

The bottom line is this: Innovation doesn't happen in a vacuum.Somehow you need to make it happen in the middle of all the dailyhubbub – using the same resources and same budget as before, allthe while maintaining the same systems and processes as before. Theonly way to make sure your employees have the time to stay focusedon the strategic is to make sure you have the right IT automationsoftware focused on the tactical. This way, everybody wins.

Kathy Hooker Burress is president of SMA USA in Kingwood, Texas. CONTACT:[email protected]or 877.762.6584.