As the intelligent automation revolution continues to unfold, it's becoming apparent that businesses need to embrace IT automation at an exponential pace, even if they weren’t just a few years ago.
The questions that arise, of course, are “why” and “how.” Why is automation more important than ever before? And how can businesses, even the ones with tight budgets, take advantage of automation?
The good news is that organizations of all sizes have access to powerful technologies capable of automating complex tasks — even those with human-like intelligence. If your business hasn’t already implemented automation, or more advanced automation, keep reading to learn why it should.
Why IT Automation?
1.Time is of the essence
Time is a valuable commodity and one of the most important resources you have, but it’s often not treated as such. Time has the potential to be one of your greatest assets, and your worst enemy if you don't spend it wisely.
By using IT automation tools such as workflows, SOP management, and more, IT employees can save hours each week by allowing software applications and other online services to perform tasks for them that would otherwise be done manually.
Workers believe that automation reduces wasted time by 69% and recovers hours lost to manual, repetitive tasks by 59%. That leads to a massive boost in productivity, which means a lower cost per unit worked. With service requests and ticket submissions at an all-time high, this matters now more than ever.
Of course, automation isn’t just about saving money; automating tasks frees up more team energy so that businesses can focus on higher risk, higher reward opportunities and produce consistent results on repetitive tasks while minimizing human error.
2. Businesses are on the move
The IT world has been changing rapidly over the last few years. In the era of digital transformation, businesses need to be flexible and agile in order to succeed in today’s shifting IT landscape.
Both digital transformation and the COVID-19 pandemic have shifted the way we work, and it makes sense for companies to automate the processes that don't add value—or at least, those which can be automated without compromising service quality or customer experience. This means that if you weren’t automating five years ago, that should change in the same way the entire IT realm has changed.
3. The need for speed
The need for speed is critical. Speed of service delivery, change, innovation, and scale are all important. End-users expect fast turnaround times when they submit a request of any sort, and automation is critical for teams to keep up with the influx of requests. As the marketplace becomes more crowded, speedy growth and innovation are key components to staying relevant and competitive. By deploying automation, you eliminate potential unnecessary friction that may arise from doing manual work, and speed up important processes that will help your organization run a tight ship to keep up with this fast-paced market.
The Democratization of IT Automation
There are clear reasons as to why automation is more critical than ever. But what about the “how” of automation? In the past, only companies of a certain size could afford to invest in IT automation, as it required custom development and was fairly inflexible.
That’s changed with the rise of low code/no code solutions, citizen developers, and robotic processing automation (RPA).
Citizen developers code applications with IT-approved tools, but don’t necessarily have much coding experience and don’t need to go through lengthy training to learn a coding language.
Similarly, low code and no code solutions provide the chance to build apps and develop software without needing comprehensive coding knowledge. These solutions use intuitive methods, like drag-and-drop modules or point-and-click interface creation, to allow people other than specialized developers to create business-boosting websites and programs.
RPAs make it easy to build and deploy automation that mimics human actions to automate entire business processes. With RPA, anyone can automate digital tasks.
These newer types of web development have led to the democratization of automation. In other words, businesses no longer are required to hire an expensive, specialized web developer team to carry out basic web and application development. Any employee who’s savvy and quick to learn can do that work quickly, flexibly, and for a lower cost.
Just as automation is becoming a necessity for companies of any size and industry, it’s also become a real possibility when it wasn’t before.
Automate IT (Or Else!)
If you're not already automating, it's time to start. It doesn't matter how large or small your business is or what industry you’re in. Automation can and will help companies in any industry grow faster and more efficiently than ever before.
In order to stay competitive and keep up with major changes, automation is key across all departments and can apply to an endless number of use cases, including:
- HR processes: automate onboarding, offboarding, recruitment, and training
- SOP management: standardize operations and centralize procedures
- ITSM workflows: reduce workload and ticket queues using powerful workflows
- Automated ticket approvals: speed up ticket resolution by automatically prioritizing and routing tickets
- And much more
Conclusion
Automation isn't just the future of technology—it's the present. If you're not using automation to improve your business processes or streamline certain tasks within your workflow), then chances are someone else is—and they're getting ahead of you because of it.
The old days of programming by trial and error are over. Now, you can use AI-powered tools to build your own custom automations that help businesses usher in the new era of automation.
