Benefits of Automation: Helping Take Back Time
What are the Benefits of Automation?
Across multiple industries, why is there so much acceleration in automation? Automation remains a key factor in helping organizations take back time. Advances in automated systems can help deliver services and handle important tasks at the fast-paced speed users now expect, and to stay in tempo with this demand, organizations have increased their automation spending. By using automation, organizations can take advantage of performance optimization, increased productivity, efficiency, reliability, and reduced operational and labor costs. At its core, business process automation includes a strategic initiative that has measurable results. For example, automation tools can show request statistics and similar metrics to highlight a viable return on investment. In addition, the benefits of automation for technology teams include time, scalability, reporting, and documentation.
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Time
The rapid speed of technology has further cemented into the minds of users the expectation of instant gratification. When users want an application on their smartphones, it can be installed immediately. But how can organizations find ways to accelerate their workloads without compromising quality and security? Imagine a technology team getting a daily average of 10 access requests and spending 6 minutes on each individual fulfillment. After the requests are submitted, they are dropped into a queue with an assigned SLA. Although it only takes 6 minutes for fulfillment, the access requests can spend a day, or even days, in the queue before IT gets to them. In this scenario, an automated process can provide access within seconds or minutes, spotlighting automation’s increased efficiency and significant timesaving value. Typically, this reduces errors, leads to improved customer satisfaction, and enhances buy-ins for additional technology initiatives.
Scalability
Using the previous example, if on average there are 10 daily requests with a fulfillment time of 6 minutes, it equals one hour of work that an IT team is spending completing those tasks. As the organization grows, daily requests can increase to 20 or 30, and consequently, the time it takes for the team to provide fulfillment multiplies exponentially. When processes are automated, the automation engine continues to process requests in seconds, providing expedited fulfillment while handling the rise in productivity. As more processes are automated, automation maturity increases, which strengthens scalability with less human error and operating costs.
Reporting
One of the great benefits of automation is that it is transactional, capturing the who, what, when, why, and how for reporting, metrics, and compliance. In this way, the data captured for every request contains all the context required for each unique automation process. When request and fulfillment are automated, it also provides detailed information to manage licensing more accurately. This can dramatically increase compliance and make auditing much easier, as reports can be generated to demonstrate validation and requirements.
Documentation
To stay organized, there must be a process in place ensuring that documentation is current. Often, after documentation is created, it can be out-of-date shortly after. Then, the next challenge of managing the documentation lifecycle is providing a standardized method of review. When processes are becoming automated, all documentation requirements are gathered alongside the series of steps and the logical paths to execute the tasks in question. This makes the processes repeatable, consistent, and prevents errors, which can lead to additional requests for remediation. Whether the automation solution is a colorful graphical workflow or typed code, the processes now have documented references for the stakeholders, the technology team, and the compliance auditors to further understand what is being automated. Next, to ensure the automation is performing as required, changes to the processes are tested and added, which in turn provides updated documentation for reference. This targeted refinement allows organizations to establish safer and faster ways of performing repetitive tasks, benefiting from automation by helping IT take back time.
For more information about Automation, reach out to Flycast Partners. Our skilled ITIL-certified ITSM consultants have the experience, expertise, and technologies to support projects from pre-planning through sustainment.
