As IT staffs discuss how to handle growing IT requirements often with flat IT budgets, one topic that always emerges is more efficient ways to manage the infrastructure.

Nowhere is efficient management more important than it is at branch offices. When there is a problem at a remote site, IT staffs either send an internal person to the site to resolve it, pay a third-party partner, or hope centralized tools can resolve the problem. Either way, by automating some of the simple fixes to problems, companies can save money.

The majority of companies are well-poised to take advantage of centralized tools that automate simple repairs. Nearly 94% of those participating in Nemertes’ Unified Communications & Collaboration benchmark say they manage their branch offices exclusively from a central location. This figure has doubled since Nemertes’ 2005 Convergence benchmark, when 45% of companies managed their branch offices centrally.

Typically, IT staffs implement probes or other remote-management and monitoring tools at the branch offices, and handle updates and troubleshooting from a central site—usually headquarters or the data center. They also have options for remote or telecommuting IT staff to access the centralized tools via the Web.

The majority of IT staffs welcome the ability to automate select repairs centrally, using policy settings that detail when and under what circumstances such repairs should take place. Sixty-two percent say they would like some automation in their centralized management tools used for their branch office locations.

The key, they say, is to control repairs down to a very granular level and to be able to manually control if desired. For example, if the management tool detected that a remote site simply needed a router reset, it could automate that function and resolve an issue without human intervention. But, if the problem was happening at a key contact center, IT managers want the option to handle the problem manually.

Nearly 38% aren’t interested in automated repairs because they didn’t trust the management tools, or because they felt there must be great care in selecting what they wanted to automate.

What do you think? Do you trust management tool vendors enough to give up some control of basic fixes in exchange for reduced staff time?

Robin Gareiss is executive vice president and senior founding partner of Nemertes Research. Click  here for the newsletter archive.