When a business hits a crisis, IT automation may be the path to normalcy. For instance, if an airline experiences a rush of cancellations, they may implement robotic process automation (RPA) to keep business processes in motion and process the requests.

The first goal in a situation like this is simply to keep a company up and running. As they experience the benefits of the technology, many enterprises will begin to consider IT automation to achieve business goals. What is first highlighted in a crisis can help enterprises identify a need for a tool that creates disruption to productivity and cost savings models. Once the crisis passes, few enterprises will go back to completing a process manually. It changes the way teams think about their assignments.

For many enterprises, IT turns to automation in a period of significant disruption, but the technology must be proven to be valuable to be considered as an ongoing solution.

During the initial crisis that introduces automation, there are three steps that businesses tend to go through:

1. Simple Business Continuity: The process is not simple, but the concept is: keep the business going. New automation may be introduced as a way to manage significant flooding of processing requests.
2. Coexistence: Following the crisis, businesses attempt to determine whether IT automation could be a permanent solution and processes may be run side-by-side in automated and manual examples.
3. Building Resiliency: The company uses the experience to determine how they could use automation to prevent a business continuity challenge in the future. Automation could be a way to bridge gaps that otherwise could not be addressed until the crisis hits.

According to Gartner, health care is particularly poised to introduce more IT automation into its processes. At least half of providers are planning to implement it by 2023, while currently only about five percent utilize automation.

Office workers are also expanding into automation, with 30% of employees in the United States expressing interest in training for RPA, according to UiPath.

Preventing Waste With IT Automation

Enterprises interested in automation can run the risk of wasting time and resources if they fail to get buy-in from employees or if the solution fails to adequately replace the manual process. Here are a few considerations to avoid an IT automation process that falls flat:

• Coordinate executive goals around automation within digital transformation strategies.
• Include the right metrics, such as return on investment, customer experience, and scalability.
• Conduct evaluations of tasks that are eligible for automation, so that all opportunities for savings within the enterprise can be identified.

Identifying tasks that can be redirected to IT automation isn’t just about productivity improvement or cost savings; in a crisis, it may be the technology that allows for business continuity. Contact us at Cloud Source for more information.