If we asked you how your automation processes were going, would you be able to tell us all about your successes, or would you keep your struggles to yourself? The reality of IT automation is that there are many enterprise-level automation projects that fail.
A recent study by eDSG makes it clear that of the surveyed enterprises, most had trouble with IT automation for a number of reasons. Let’s take a closer look at some of the major trends that have enterprises hung up on automation solutions:
- 85% of the respondents indicated that their organizations struggle with IT Operations Analytics (ITOA).
- 78% of the respondents indicated they don’t have a single integrated view or control over all IT Operations.
- 72% of the respondents indicated that they struggle with IT Automation Silos.
- 87% of the respondents indicated that they have little to no technology solutions that enable their organizations to integrate ITOA and IT Automation between legacy systems that reside behind the firewall and cloud based systems.
- 93% of the respondents indicated that their organizations have little to no technology solutions that enable them to truly monitor, analyze and automate business processes enterprise wide (i.e. across all systems)
- 97% of the respondents indicated that they have no technology solutions to automate Information Governance (IG) policies enterprise wide (i.e. across all systems).
Some of the major takeaways from these results show that organizations have the most trouble when it comes to IT automation, as they either don’t have enough control over their systems to implement it, or they don’t have systems in place that allow them to monitor automated solutions. Another major concern is that their automation ventures don’t have support for legacy systems, which can result in other problems such as compatibility issues.
If you’re not sure exactly what kinds of services can be automated through the use of automation technology, here’s a brief list of some of the best places to get started:
- Transaction processing and repetitive tasks.
- Periodic reporting and data analysis.
- Data entry and replication (e.g. forms).
- Import/export of data between systems.
- Cross-system or “swivel chair” processing.
- Mass mail generation, follow-ups, archiving and tracking.
- Repetitive keystrokes and mouse tasks.
- Database creations, edits, retrievals.
Why Use Automation?
Automation bots are not just a convenience for enterprise CIOs, but are instead an industry-defining technology that will allow you to do more with your business technology. The London School of Economics expects the business of automation bots to yield somewhere between a 600 and 800 percent return on investment, with an impact of about a $9 trillion and affect 230 million workers.
To help better understand your enterprise’s needs for automation, we suggest that you take a close look at what you would like automated and assign it to one of these three tiers, to help prioritize your automation procedures.
1st Tier of Automation: Standard Operating Procedures
These are the automation processes that should be given the highest priority within your organization, mostly because they are the easiest ones to automate. It makes sense to automate at a basic level first, as it will take less time and resources to do so. Some of the best options for a first-time IT automation process are remote monitoring and maintenance, data collection and analytics, workflow, and process management.
2nd Tier of Automation: Delegation or Response to IT Issues
Once you’ve taken care of some basic automation procedures, you can focus on responding to the results of them. This means implementing solutions that act upon the data collected from your most basic automated solutions. This is where it’s time to make the data you’ve obtained useful through the use of machine learning capabilities, pattern recognition, and a knowledge repository. In short, your IT automation solution needs to have the ability to adapt and react to new shifts in data collection.
3rd Tier of Automation: Addressing Root Causes of Underlying IT Issues
This third tier of automation includes more advanced technologies like artificial intelligence, language processing and recognition, the ability to self-learn, and how to make hypotheses regarding issues that currently exist within your IT infrastructure based on data that your other automated solutions has collected. You can then use this intelligent automation to address current problems with your enterprise’s IT that you may not have been able to find otherwise.
What are some of the most important processes that you’ve automated for your enterprise? Be sure to let us know in the comments.
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