Automation technology doesn’t work automatically.

IT managers need to grease the wheels a bit to enjoy the benefits of automation. The tools available today rely on IT managers understanding what they have in their environments, what it all does and what they need it to do on its own. Inventorying infrastructure and system components and understanding all their requirements would challenge even the most savvy IT guru.

Here are tips on how to get automation technologies in place and working for you.

1. Identify repetitive tasks

Not all IT automation tasks lend themselves to automation, but there are a lot that fit the bill perfectly.

Automation has long been used to monitor systems and run batch jobs, but today’s automation expands the premise to manual processes that become redundant pretty quickly. Consider server provisioning. In a data center with hundreds of systems, pushing out operating systems, applications and software updates on a one-administrator-per-one-machine basis gets old fast.

“IT managers can easily identify the things they work on far too much and use automation to ensure that once the job has been accomplished successfully by them, the software can take over and repeat their work” says George Hamilton, director of Yankee Group’s Enabling Technologies Enterprise group.

2. Earmark consistent problem areas

Another winning candidate for automation is the nagging issue help desk operators keep hearing about from users.

Marvin Stone, CIO at New Century Title Insurance Co. in San Diego, says he evolves his use of Opalis Integration Server as his user community demands. He says he regularly checks in with the help desk on the top five complaints from users and instruments Opalis to address issues as they crop up.

For instance, Opalis will alert sales staff that their customers may be experiencing problems when third-party services on a Web site have failed. The software also can post a notification for customers on the Web page that explains services may be affected because of the failure.

“It’s a way of getting ahead of the customer calls and improving service,” Stone says. “We look at Opalis as our Swiss Army Knife. We try to solve a lot of problems by using that automation first.”