Across the pond, a study of IT claims that UK businesses lose 31 days from poor IT management. Of course, that’s the attention grabbing headline [it works, doesn’t it?], and the findings are not nearly so catastrophic. The lesson learned is that IT is a great asset, but like any asset in an organization, it requires time and money for maintenance and upkeep. Failure to do so has dire consequences, like diverting resources and lowering productivity.

The culprit is not the hardware or software, but management and maintenance. In fact, any gains in productivity, efficiency, or quality degrade over time because of poor upkeep. In the survey, 77 percent cited that insufficient upkeep wasted an estimated 13 percent of their investment in IT.

Why? Projects are high profile while operations are considered monotonous and ho-hum. Smaller firms offer divert resources from operations for projects, and service suffers and gains aren’t fully realized. Operations, however, are what keep people productive and work going out the door.

So besides giving operations its due, split IT staff along projects and operations responsibilities if your organization is large enough, or call on outside help for projects when necessary.