How DEX and ITAM Transform IT from Reactive to Proactive
Monday: the CEO complains their laptop is slow. Tuesday: the billing software stops working. Thursday: the sales team misses a crucial meeting because Microsoft Teams crashes. This cycle of “fighting fires” is, for many IT departments, the “norm.” It’s a reactive state, where the team’s value is measured by the speed of its response to problems, not by its ability to prevent them.
According to Leandro Silva, CEO of Almaden, there is a better path. Discover his insights on the TI CAST, where he discusses the powerful combination of DEX (Digital Employee Experience) and ITAM (IT Asset Management).
The False Security of Ticket Reduction
Many IT departments measure their success by a reduction in the number of support tickets. However, Leandro Silva, CEO of Almaden issues a crucial warning:
“If you capture a spectrum of 100 technology problems… only 30 of those 100 become support tickets. The other 70, the user suffers with it, they suffer in silence… it’s the so-called friction that exists between the user and IT.”
By celebrating a reduction in tickets, the department is, in reality, only managing the tip of the iceberg – the 30% of problems that became visible. The remaining 70% represent a hidden erosion of productivity, team morale, and trust in IT’s ability to deliver a quality service.
ITAM: The Data Source for Proactive Visibility
How can you see these 70% of invisible problems? The foundation is ITAM. Leandro explains:
“You can’t measure what you don’t know, right? We don’t know what we don’t know… especially when we talk about experience. So, the role of ITAM is to ensure the technology area knows what technology exists within that company. And I’m talking about hardware, I’m talking about software, I’m talking about licenses, I’m talking about network, and I’m talking about everything.”
ITAM is the single source of truth. It is the system that answers basic yet vital questions: How many laptops do we have? Which ones have less than 8GB of RAM? Which software licenses are about to expire? Without these answers, IT is operating in the dark. ITAM turns on the light, providing a detailed map of the technology environment.
DEX: The Intelligence Layer that Converts Data into Proactive Action
Having the data is not enough. You need intelligence to understand it. This is where DEX comes in, using ITAM as its foundation:
“We already had a lot of… a lot of data [from ITAM]. We just applied artificial intelligence to identify patterns and… bring DEX insights with recommendations, with predictions, with insights.”
This combination allows IT to identify a computer that is likely to fail next week, software that is becoming unstable, or an employee facing chronic issues – before they turn into a complaint or a drop in productivity.
Conclusion
The journey of transforming IT from a reactive cost center to a strategic business partner starts with visibility. The duo of ITAM and DEX provides exactly that: the first maps the entire technology estate, and the second uses that information to predict and prevent problems. The result? Less time fighting fires and more time invested in initiatives that truly drive the business forward.
