According to a new survey by Kaseya, 89 percent of IT groups in mid-sized companies are still in the early stages of IT management maturity and focus on day-to-day IT management tasks that are often time-consuming and manual. The remaining 11 percent have achieved higher levels of maturity and are reaping benefits in important ways for the business.

The survey, based on input from mid-sized enterprises globally, compares the practices of IT departments in faster growth companies with those in slower growth companies, and compares the practices of more mature IT organizations with those of less mature IT organizations. The results provide visibility into the practices IT departments are following to manage not only their complex set of existing technologies, but also new cloud-based infrastructure and applications, mobile devices and more.

The survey findings suggest how IT groups can do more to drive the effectiveness of both IT and the business using the limited resources they have. Results indicate that by using automation more comprehensively for both routine tasks and problem avoidance and by fully embracing cloud technologies, IT groups can spend more of their time on strategic projects that contribute to end-user productivity and drive the success of the business overall.

Other highlights from Kaseya's 2015 survey include:

■ Bigger doesn't mean better. The survey shows no correlation between the size of a company and its IT management maturity level, indicating that companies of all sizes can benefit from investments in maturing their IT operations.

■ Higher IT management maturity levels can be associated with greater revenue growth. For companies who grew their revenue at greater than 10 percent between 2013 and 2014, 36 percent were considered to have reached the highest maturity levels, versus 11 percent for the general population in the study.

■ Two-thirds of companies at the highest IT management maturity levels have formal service level agreements (SLAs). For more than half of these companies, meeting their SLAs is mandatory.

■ IT organizations at the highest levels of maturity are almost twice as likely to report that they drive IT decisions, instead of their CEO or CFO.

"Most IT groups in mid-sized companies find that they don't have enough time to invest in strategic projects," said Loren Jarrett, CMO for Kaseya. "Our survey results suggest that by adopting the practices of mature IT organizations, including automating IT management activities, standardizing and streamlining processes, and leveraging cloud services, IT groups at companies of all sizes can free up more time and resources to focus on projects that will drive results for the business."

Tom Hayes is Vice President of Product Marketing at Kaseya.