IT Process Automation Guide
According to a report by Expert Market Research, the global market size for IT process automation is projected to grow beyond$200 billion by 2026. This does not come as a surprise and many experts in the IT space indeed agree that the future of business is automation. Those who embrace it will come out on top.
IT automation is one of the quickest ways to boost productivity and free up resources for more strategic projects.
While automation used to be a preserve of large companies with abundance of resources, small and medium businesses are now taking advantage of the abundance of cost-effective IT automation. Regardless of the size of your organization, you can easily incorporate IT process automation into your IT Strategy.
What is IT process automation (ITPA)?
IT process automation is the transformation of manual IT tasks into software-driven workflows that require negligible to no human labor.
An IT process is the set of interrelated procedures that work systematically to achieve a specific objective in a tech environment. These processes are essential for the effective management of IT systems that users depend on for services.
A typical T process defines the critical steps that are necessary for fulfilling a specific task. So automation in this context means using software to execute these steps, instead of manual methods.
A key reason that compels companies to automate IT processes is the need for efficiency and speed. When you automate processes, errors are minimized significantly while costs are kept at a minimum.
The concept of automating IT emerged around the 1960s. This period witnessed the early forms of IT automation such as batch processing and job scheduling.
The idea started to gain wide application in the 1990s with the entry of sophisticated automation software such as robotic process automation (RPA).
Also read:What is Hyperautomation?
How IT process automation works
The first step is to make a decision about the specific processes that will create the greatest impact if they were to be automated.
The next most important step is to select the IT automation software that would be most appropriate for the chosen processes.
A good automation software should have capability to identify patterns in processes. It then uses these patterns to apply rules to repetitive tasks. Once the rules are applied, the tasks can always run on repeat mode. So you acquire the software and configure it to automate the tasks you have prioritized for automation.
The process of setting up automation software consists of three parts: trigger, automation and result.
Benefits of IT process automation
Automation comes with several benefits for organizations of all sizes.
The following are the main benefits that your company stands to gain when you automate IT processes.
1. IT process automation increases efficiency
Automation transforms manual processes into instant actions. A manual task can often take many hours to complete. But when you automate, the same task can be completed instantly.
Example:
Imagine that the data entry staff in a company with 100,000 employees spend 100 hours per month to manually update the contact information for all employees in the organization.
With automation, each employee can update their contact information from the comfort of their devices through a self-service portal. The portal is connected to the HR system which updates the information instantly. The data entry staff will spend a tiny fraction of the time they used to spend. This time round, they will only be doing high level tasks such as ensuring that all employees have updated their details.
2. IT process automation improves accuracy
Human errors are responsible for most of the cyber attacks in organizations. IT process automation reduces these errors by taking over tasks that can be converted into seamless workflows. This boosts the levels of accuracy.
For example, imagine an organization that needs to update software in hundreds of machines. In the absence of automation, the process of manually updating software on each single machine can prove difficult to track. How will you be able to confirm with certainty that all machines have been fully updated? What if the updating team misses some machines? This can expose the organizations to risks such as data breach.
Automation eliminates this glaring potential for inaccuracies. In this example, the updating software is configured to check for updates and apply them automatically across all the machines.
Also read:What is Zero Touch Provisioning?
3. IT automation strengthens compliance
Countries and industry groups worldwide are coming up with various regulations that companies must comply with. Failure to comply with these regulations attracts fines that can run into hundreds of thousands of dollars.
If you are going to use manual processes for compliance, there are high chances that you can get some wrong. But automation takes away this pain.
For example, let's say your organization is required to comply with HIPAA. One of the requirements of HIPAA is that the company carries out regular scans of the IT network to identify and eliminatevulnerabilities.
Instead of using manual means to do the scanning, you can use vulnerability scanning tools. These tools run regular scans alongside remediation scripts that fix vulnerabilities automatically. The vulnerability scanners also generate verifiable reports that you can submit to the regulatory bodies to demonstrate compliance.
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4. IT automation brings agility
How easy can your company's IT processes adapt to changes? Automation makes this so easy that you may not notice it.
Let's assume yours is an e-commerce company that is experiencing a spike during the holiday season. When there is a spike, the IT processes should be elastic enough to adjust the moment the spike starts. But you can imagine how difficult it can be to provision new resources like servers and storage manually. It will take you a lot of time and potentially lose customers during the entire process.
When you automate the provisioning process, new resources are seamlessly introduced to the system when the spike sets in. The shoppers will enjoy the experience, and this translates to customer loyalty in the long term.
Also read:What is Storage as a Service?
Examples of processes that can be automated
| Task Type | Details |
|---|---|
Repetitive | Tasks that are performed regularly or on a set schedule, such assoftware updates,backups, and data entry. |
Rules-based | Tasks that follow a set of predefined rules and do not require human decision-making, such as data validation and error handling |
Time-consuming | Tasks that take a significant amount of time to complete, such as data migration and report generation |
High-volume | Involve processing large amounts of data, e.g data warehousing, data mining, and big data analytics |
Monitoring | Involvemonitoring IT infrastructure, e.g event log monitoring,server monitoring, intrusion detection, and compliance reporting |
IT process automation software
To achieve automation, you need software that is specifically designed for automating IT processes.
These are the major types of IT automation solutions.
1. Robotic Process Automation (RPA)
RPA is used in the automation of tasks that are repetitive and rule-based. This is achieved by mimicking common human actions. Good examples include the movement of a keyboard and a mouse. Popular RPA solutions in the market today include UiPath, Blue Prism, and Automation Anywhere.
ING Group, the Dutch banking and financial services multinational, offers a good case for using RPA. They use it to automate some operations in customer care and internal control.
2. Integrated Development Environments (IDEs)
Ever wondered how you can automate some of your programming tasks that are repetitive? The answer is in IDEs. They are used to automate tasks like testing and debugging code.
For example, the IntelliSense feature in Visual Studio can suggest and help a programmer to complete code. This can save you a lot of time and lead to a significant reduction in errors.
3. Workflow Automation
Do you love the feel of getting to visualize your tasks at work? This is exactly what workflow tools achieve. They automate by visualization, meaning each task is represented as a visual process.
Let's say your company runs an eCommerce website. You can use a workflow automation tool like Nintex or Appian to automate the process of approving orders.
4. Configuration management
As we know, configuration is all about getting the various IT systems to perform as expected. This is exactly what a configuration tool does.
Trying to configure software on many servers? A configuration software like Ansible can automate this.
5. Continuous integration and delivery (CI/CD)
Code changes are continuous. So too are integrations. There will always be something that needs some changes or some kind of integration.
A CI/CD solution will smooth the multitude of changes you need to make on code, as well as the frequent need to ensure integrations are working well.
6. IT Service Management (ITSM)
If your organization relies on several IT services, you might want to automate these services. The best solution for this is ITSM. This type of software provides a central location from where you can manage aspects like service requests and incidents.
For example, you can use ServiceNow to route incidents to the appropriate teams and track the resolution progress.
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Tips for effective IT process automation
Ready to automate? Please take advantage of these tips to achieve greater success.
| Start small | Automate the simple tasks first, before moving to the complex ones |
Choose software | Not all IT automation software may be right for the specific processes that you want to automate. So take time to weigh out the right one. Consider factors like scalability and ability to integrate with other systems that the organization uses. |
Define objectives | Clearly define the goals and objectives of your IT automation efforts. This will help you measure success and make adjustments as needed. If possible, try as much as possible to quantify the objectives. |
Test, test, test | Testing provides an opportunity to check if the automation exercise has been successful. We particularly advise that you test before you deploy to production. |
Prioritize | Can you possibly automate everything? Maybe not, and often the resources may not allow it. So you need to select the processes that will produce the greatest impact when automated. |
Leverage AI and ML | We are in the age of AI, so you want to go for automation solutions that incorporate AI. Don't be left behind! |
Incorporate self-service options | Self-service portals can be put into great use in departments like HR |
Monitoring | Never automate and forget. Instead, monitor the automated processes constantly so you can get insights for improvement. |
Disadvantages of IT process automation
IT automation is not without challenges. These are the top ones:
| Challenge | Implication |
|---|---|
Overdependence on technology | The more you automate, the more your teams are likely to reach a point where they depend on technology for everything. This bears the risk of teams not being able to do simple tasks when technology fails. |
Complexity | Some processes can be complex to automate and can challenge non-techy users |
Lackluster creativity | While automation simplifies tasks, it can create an environment where teams are less innovative since they will rarely encounter challenging tasks that call for creativity and innovation. |
Privacy | Some automaton tools can have vulnerabilities that may not have been fixed. This can expose the company to cyber threats. |
Job losses | As you automate, some roles may become obsolete. |
Conclusion
IT process automation will have a huge impact on businesses in future. The companies that have started to automate have reported positives such as increased levels of efficiency and reduction in IT costs.
Where do you start? Two things are particularly important when thinking about automation: First, answer the question of what is IT automation in the context of the IT processes in your company. Which processes do you feel are ripe for automation? Second is tools. Which type of IT process automation software is most appropriate for each process? If you can answer these questions wisely, then your IT process automation efforts will yield impressive results.
If you lack the experience with automation, then the best route is to enlist the help ofIT consulting services or partner up with amanaged IT service provider to take care of your automation needs.