Automation is going full-steam ahead in enterprises. Gartner predicts that 69% of daily management tasks will become automated by the end of 2024. 

Enterprises invest in automation to improve efficiency, cut costs, and improve margins. Automated processes speed up things, improve accuracy, and ensure friction-free task execution. These benefits improve enterprise competitiveness in today’s challenging business environment. 

But automation is not a magic solution that guarantees the above results. Most enterprises underestimate the costs and side effects of their automation projects. In fact, more automation projects fail than succeed. 

Here is what businesses should consider when automating IT business processes to ensure success.

Have clarity on objectives upfront 

Many companies approach automation ad hoc. Managers use their intuition to identify low-hanging fruit tasks for automation. To ensure success, they opt for easy projects and avoid complex projects.

Automating complex tasks or automating too much is indeed risky. Automation involves change and comes with all the usual change management issues. There is the risk of unsettling a stable system and resistance to change.

But while the ad hoc approach to automation delivers some benefits, it has a low ROI and minimal positive impact on the customer experience. It rarely delivers enterprise resiliency or any paradigm shift in customer experience. 

Successful automation requires clarity of objectives. The CIO must work with the business team to match business priorities with resource and talent availability and ensure cost-effectiveness.

Some of the common automation objectives in most enterprises are to: 

• Eradicate bottlenecks to avoid delays and speed up processes.
• Fill process gaps. In many enterprises, bridging the gap between two disconnected workflows needs manual work. 
• Streamline workflows and make operations more agile and resilient.

After framing the general objective, the next task is to identify specific projects for automation. A big reason for automation project failure is the inability to prioritise. Trying to automate everything at once makes the project complex, and the costs add up, making the project unviable. 

Incremental automation helps enterprises achieve the best of all worlds.  An all-or-nothing approach soon becomes complex, setting the stage for failure. An approach that treats automation as a journey becomes far less daunting.

In this context, successful automation projects depend on the ability to scale and reuse automation. An approach that requires reworking every iteration will soon make the costs unviable. 

Prioritise projects 

The first consideration when prioritising projects is always profitability. Automation reduces costs through efficiency improvements, process accuracy, and faster time to market.  For instance, automated resource provisioning allows adding cloud resources without delay. Timely scale-up avoids degraded performance and reduces the risk of annoying customers.

Another area for prioritisation is time-consuming tasks that add little value. These tasks bog down employees and retard enterprise efficiency. But these tasks remain essential. 

Examples include:

• User requests, such as password resets and provisioning.
• DevOps processes, such as extracting data from various tools and changing cloud configurations. 
• Security operations such as server patching.  

Automating these tasks frees up the IT team’s time for strategic initiatives or other critical tasks. For instance, they can pay more attention to network security, serve internal customers on time, and reduce shadow IT.

The most popular application for GenAI automation is chatbots. Companies deploy GenAI bots to handle basic user and customer requests and for self-service troubleshooting. 

Another big area is compliance. Compliance and regulatory report filing are time-consuming and resource-draining. But ignoring compliance leads to costly fines and loss of reputation. Many businesses even do voluntary compliance, such as sustainability standards, to please customers. Business process automation digitises operations, making it easy to auto-generate compliance.

One common workflow that many enterprises seek to automate is the employee onboarding process. Inducting new employees involves several tasks. The HR has to fill out many forms, collect documents, set up training sessions, open bank accounts, assign mentors, and more. Automation streamlines the otherwise chaotic process and speeds things up. Faster onboarding means lesser productivity loss during the learning curve. A seamless onboarding process also improves employee retention, reducing HR costs.

Another example is purchase orders. Automating manual processes makes the supply chain friction-free and reduces stock-out situations. There is also no hold-up due to inadequate information. Reliable supply chains increase sales and customer satisfaction. 

Not all automation projects are cost-effective though. Automation becomes viable only when the savings deliver a positive ROI.  The trick in prioritisation lies in going beyond the direct or obvious gains. It is easy to quantify the efficiency gains. But getting the true ROI requires identifying and quantifying the indirect gains of automation. For instance, a positive customer experience may not deliver immediate returns. But it radiates a feel-good factor that can result in more sales, favourable word of mouth, and more referrals. 

Ensure business-IT alignment

Often, there is no focus or business-IT alignment even after the business and IT teams come to a common ground regarding objectives and prioritise projects. The business teams expect the software to “just work” without providing the IT team with a clear picture of the requirements. The IT team may focus on the technical complexity and lack clarity on how the automation will add value to the end customer. 

Automation projects succeed when the business and IT teams work together throughout the project phase.

After identifying the business processes to automate, identify the process as it is and the ideal state. Make sure the automation project will ensure progress to the ideal state. Frame project milestones and deliverables. Fix responsibilities for the workforce.

Success depends on the IT team framing realistic action plans based on common enterprise goals. They also need to empower business users. If business teams find enterprise IT does not meet their expectations, they start looking for workarounds. They soon develop applications using low-code or no-code applications. Such options reduce their reliance on IT. But it creates shadow IT and Saas sprawls that poses serious security risks and creates silos that impede data analytics.

Deploy the right tools

One big reason automation fails is technical issues. Automation success depends on dedicated tools that enable seamless workflows with transparency. The best automation tools connect internal and external data seamlessly. It also guides the workforce through complex tasks. 

First-generation tools could automate only routine, rule-based processes. GenAI enables intelligent automation that covers entire workflows and also enables human-machine collaboration. 80% of enterprises will adopt such intelligent automation by 2025. 

Platforms such as OpenText help enterprises build user-centric applications faster and cheaper. These solutions optimise processes and empower business users to make informed decisions. 

OpenText’s process automation eliminates process gaps and improves flexibility. It enables access from any device, anywhere, at any time, making the enterprise more resilient. OpenText places the customer at the centre of every transaction. When customers receive proactive service through their preferred channels, it exceeds their expectations.  The platform also enables enterprises to leverage the power of artificial intelligence. The AI-powered tools deliver faster execution and superior insights.