Businesses—and their employees—are increasingly realizing the transformative power of automation. A 2015 report from McKinsey shows that many occupations will be changed due to automation, and recent research from Computing, which will be shared with you in these slides, indicates that IT professionals are largely embracing the changes. They cite benefits such as cost savings, improved productivity, and easier management as primary reasons to automate.
However, several challenges—including complex IT environments and a lack of strategy—are holding companies back from automating effectively. How can you make sure that your organization is taking full advantage of modern automation solutions? Check out these slides to learn about:
• Industry research on automation trends and attitudes
• The automation challenges companies are facing—and how to solve them
• How to ensure that your team benefits from changing opportunities due to automation
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Today’s Presenters
Pat Cameron
Director of Automation Technology,
HelpSystems
Richard Schoen
Director of Document Management,
HelpSystems
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• The evolution of IT automation
• Polling questions and discussion
– Automation benefits
– Automation challenges
– Smart automation
• Getting started with IT automation
• Use cases
• Special offer to attendees!
Agenda
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• Competitive environments
require organizations to drive
efficiencies, increase
reliability and cut costs
• Technological advances lead
to further optimization
opportunities
• Smarter automation results
in a more empowered and
engaged workforce
The Evolution of IT Automation
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Polling Question #1
What are the primary
drivers for automating IT
and business processes in
your organization?
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69%
66%
52%
47%
35% 34%
26% 26%
22% 9% 9%
2%
Costreduction
Increasedproductivity
Easiermanagement/control
Increasedreliability
Increasedbusinessagility
Easieraudit/compliance
Improvedrelationshipwith
customersandpartners
Happieremployeesthrough
removalofrepetitivetasks
Lessdowntime
Morerationaldecision
making
Keepingupwiththe
competition
N/A
Survey Results: Question #1
What are the primary drivers for automating IT and business
processes in your organization?
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Polling Question #2
Which tasks in your
organization could be
usefully automated?
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Survey Results: Question #2
54%
51% 51%
42%
37% 37%
30% 29%
15%
11%
7% 6% 7%
Routine
maintenance/patching
Backups
Workflowmanagement
Identityandaccess
management
Employee
onboarding/offboarding
Filetransfer
Softwaredevelopment
andtesting
Financialtransactions
Warehousing/logistics
Consolidatingsales
ledgers
Marketing
Pointofsale
Other(pleasespecify)
Which tasks in your organization could be usefully automated?
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Polling Question #3
What are the challenges
around increased
IT/workplace automation?
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Survey Results: Question #3
55%
49%
42%
39% 38%
35%
32% 31%
28%
24%
9%
Multipleplatforms
/integration
Cost
Internalpolitics
/shiftingcentresof
power
Paceofchange
Resistancefromthose
whoseeitasathreat
totheirjob
Requireslong-term
strategicthinking
that'slacking
Existenceof
technologicalsilos
Existenceof
functionalsilos
Whowillleadthe
processandseeit
through?
Dangerofvendor
lock-in
Other(pleasespecify)
What are the challenges around increased IT / workplace
automation?
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Polling Question #4
For your IT team, which of
the following have been true
over the last 18 months?
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Survey Results: Question #4
58%
33%
22%
13% 12% 4% 21%
Anincreasingnumberof
deviceshasmeantahigher
workload
Automationofmanual
processeshasreducedthe
overallworkload
Thenumberofbatch
workloadsprocessedhave
grown
Automationofmanual
processeshasincreasedthe
overallworkload
Automation(notoutsourcing)
hasledtoareductioninthe
sizeoftheITteam
Automationhasledtoan
increaseinthesizeoftheIT
team
Noneofthese
For your IT team, which of the following have been true over
the last 18 months?
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Polling Question #5
What type of IT automation
do you have in place?
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Survey Results: Question #5
40%
48% 48%
41% 40%
61%
18%
11% 4%
0% 7%
Automatedsaveand
recoverysystems
Centralisednetwork
managementsystems
Jobschedulingsoftware
Taskautomation
Applicationspecific
scheduling
In-housedeveloped
scripts
Employeescheduling
Remoteworkforce
management
None-wedoeverything
ourselvesmanually
None-allourITis
outsourced
Other(pleasespecify)
What type of IT automation do you have in place?
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Polling Question #6
Do you fear for your job as a
result of increased
automation?
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3% 1%
17%
42%
37%
Yes, I feel my job will be gone soon as a
direct result
Yes, but I fear my role will diminish
rather than being lost
Maybe, but automation will create new
opportunities too
Probably not, my role changes with the
times
No, for me automation will bring
advantages
Survey Results: Question #6
Do you fear for your job as a result of increased automation?
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• Get employee buy-in
• Audit internal processes for automation opportunities
• Create comprehensive workload automation roadmap
• Communicate the benefits to management and staff
• Train employees on automation solution
Smart Automation
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• Do any of your users spend 30-60 minutes or more per day on a
manual process?
• Do workers spend time entering data from CSV or spreadsheets
today?
• Can process information be queued for scalable processing?
• Is data entered to more than one system?
• Can the process access a database?
• Can the process be done without a human being making a
decision or reviewing data?
How to Identify High-Value Repeatable Processes
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Robotic Process Automation
Use Case 1: Daily file load with e-mail notification
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Business process
automation without
writing code
Cross-platform
enterprise job
scheduler
Business process
automation without
writing code
Cross-platform
enterprise job
scheduler
A unified
approach to
enterprise
process
automation
Orchestrate complex business processes across the enterprise
Enterprise Process Automation Suite
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Customer Story: Business Challenges
• Need to meet client service level agreements
• Too much administrative overhead manually monitoring and moving
files
• Moving hundreds of thousands of files a day
• Adding new customers every day
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Customer Story: Business Results
“We’ve actually eliminated the entire third shift. It was such a
waste of talent. Now he’s working on things that are more
important to overall business and on a normal schedule. He’s
thrilled.”
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Automation brings benefits
• Cuts costs
• Delivers efficiencies
• Improves reliability
Companies are struggling
• Facing internal opposition
• Unprepared for challenges
Automation requires planning
• Change to the status quo
• Take your people with you
Conclusion
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Special Offer for Attendees:
End-of-Year Free 30 Minute Automation Review
https://www.helpsystems.com/30-minute-review
Telephone
Sales: 800-328-1000
Support: 952-933-0609
Technical Experts
richard.schoen@helpsystems.com
pat.cameron@helpsytems.com
Thanks for Joining Us!
Hinweis der Redaktion
2
Automation has the potential to transform the way in which we work. It allows organisations to
cut costs, deliver greater efficiencies and improve reliability. If introduced correctly and sensitively,
automation also has the ability to address fundamental business challenges and free up immense
resources.
But there is another side to automation – one that frankly scares most people. It is a picture of
a Brave New World where jobs are scarce and virtually all activities are carried out by robots and
computers. Today we’ll discuss both sides of automation in the IT world.
Earlier this year, we sponsored a survey on Automation without Alienation. Today we will review and discuss the results of that survey.
Pat:
The history of technological advance is really the history of automation. From the first Benz car to the mass produced Model T Ford to today’s automotive production lines staffed almost entirely by robots the journey from manual, i.e., performed by human hands to automatic has been an entirely one way street. There’s no going back, as drivers of horse-drawn carriages would testify
Automating manual processes is the way that organizations drive efficiencies, increase reliability and cut costs, and it’s a continual process. Manual tasks such as writing figures into a paper ledger become automated by data entry into a spreadsheet, which is then further automated using macros, then batch processing, then event-driven machine to machine transactions. As technology advances the smart becomes smarter and new opportunities emerge.
It’s not just daily tasks, but also those repetitive batch jobs that can be made far more palatable. In the IT environment, ‘on-boarding’ new staff, setting them up with an email account, secure access to networked drives, logins and passwords, payroll and pension, etc., is repetitive and ripe for automation. Likewise, when people leave for pastures, new accounts need to be shut down swiftly and securely.
So far so good. But while computers are supposed to do the work for us, in reality, many of us spend our lives working for computers. And while on a personal level, automation offers massive potential to remove drudgery, and ultimately creates more jobs than it displaces, it can be tough on those who are forced to make changes in their day to day work life. Any such changes must be introduced with sensitivity and thought must be given to helping staff to adapt to workplace automations. A compelling case needs to be made to employees about how automation will actually help them learn, grow and advance.
During this webinar Richard and I will discuss which IT and business processes can and really should be automated, and how to go about his in practice, while taking people with you. After all, the best organizations to work for combine a willingness to make the most of technological change with a desire to do well by their employees.
We looked first at the primary drivers for automating IT and business processes within their
organisations. Almost two thirds (69%) said that they were interested in cutting costs. Almost
as many (66%) told us that they wanted to improve productivity. Other reasons for embracing
automation included easier management (52%), increased reliability (47%) and improved business
agility (35%).
There are some tasks that it makes more sense to automate than others. Just over half of the
respondents (54%) thought that routine maintenance and patching could be automated, followed
closely by backups (51%) and workflow management (51%). Other areas that were identified as
suitable for automation included identity and access management (42%), employee on-boarding
and off-boarding (37%), file transfer (37%) and software development and testing (30%), see Fig. 1.
Repetitive batch jobs can be made more palatable and more efficient by automation. In the IT
environment, ‘on-boarding’ new staff, setting them up with an email account and providing logins
and passwords is repetitive and ripe for automation. Likewise, when people leave for pastures new
accounts need to be shut down swiftly and securely.
While automation has an established home in the office, it is also spreading into law courts,
surgeries, classrooms and even churches, taking over tasks previously limited to trained
professionals. IBM’s Watson computer, which won the US quiz show Jeopardy, is now being used
to diagnose cancer patients.
In fact, automation has become such a pervasive feature of our lives that we don’t even
think about it. We think nothing of paying for groceries using a scanner or transferring money
electronically without visiting a bank.
Next, we asked respondents about the challenges that they faced in automating their IT and
business processes (Fig. 2). Just over half (55%) mentioned integrating multiple platforms as
their biggest challenge. A sizeable percentage (49%) listed cost as the biggest challenge. Other
respondents identified internal politics (42%), the pace of change (39%), internal resistance from
employees worried about losing their jobs (38%); and a lack of long term strategic thinking (35%)
as major hurdles to overcome.
Process automation is often introduced in response to an increasing workload. More than half of
our respondents (58%) told us that they had struggled with the amount of work brought about
by an increasing number of devices. Just over one in ten (13%) told us that automation of manual
processes had increased their workloads.
Encouragingly, 33 per cent of interviewees told us that they had been able to reduce their overall
workloads over the period in question by automating manual processes (Fig. 3).
Businesses today use lots of different solutions to automate their IT and business practices.
We were interested to find out what systems our interviewees employed. A large proportion (60%)
used in-house developed scripts to handle automation. Sizeable numbers were also found to use
job scheduling software (48%) and centralised network management systems (48%).
In-house scripts are perfectly adequate for small individual tasks, but for typical office automation
tasks an overview over multiple systems is required. After all, enterprise IT infrastructure consists
of a mixture of hardware, operating systems, virtualised and bare metal machines.
For more complex tasks you need a simple overview of the whole so that you can build an eventdriven
schedule across all platform and also tie in cron jobs, notifications and monitoring.
Some analysts believe that greater automation will result in increased unemployment for IT staff.
We wanted to see if our interviewees agreed with this proposition (Fig. 5). Strikingly, by a large
margin, they disagreed – 42 per cent said that they thought that their role would change with the
times and 37 per cent actually thought that automation would bring advantages to their position.
Although 17 per cent said that they might lose their job as a result of greater automation, they
also thought that automation would open up new opportunities for them as well. Only 3 per cent
thought that they would lose their job as a direct result of increased automation (Fig. 5).
In November 2015 McKinsey published a report on workplace automation. The results of the report
suggest that a focus on occupations is misleading. McKinsey believes that very few occupations
will be automated in their entirety in the near or medium term. Rather, certain activities are more
likely to be automated, requiring entire business processes to be transformed, and jobs performed
by people to be re-defined, much like the bank teller’s job was changed with the advent of the
ATM.
Our exclusive research appears to back up these assertions. When we asked our respondents
whether they were worried about losing their jobs as a result of automation, the answer was an
emphatic ‘No’.
The survey also threw up another interesting finding – by a large margin, respondents were
enthusiastic about the potential of automation and quick to identify areas where automation
could make a difference.
Labour-intensive tasks like routine maintenance and patching, backups, identity and access
management and employee on-boarding and off-boarding were listed by many of our interviewees
as being prime targets for automation.
However, it was clear that many respondents were struggling to make automation work for
their businesses. For more than half the issue was integrating multiple platforms. A sizeable
percentage reported running up against opposition from management and fellow employees.
Getting employee buy-in
These findings were not altogether surprising – while automation can deliver undoubted benefits
to organisations overall, it can cause disruption in the short term to employees. Organisations that
are contemplating going down the automation route must take their own people into account.
So what practical steps should companies take?
In the first place, they should carry out an internal audit of their internal processes to determine
where automation might make a difference. As part of this exercise, they should identify which
activities are relationship-driven and therefore dependent upon human agency, and which
processes can be safely managed by an automated solution.
Secondly, they should put in place a comprehensive workload automation roadmap. The more
information an organisation has about its people, processes and business issues, the more likely
its automation programme will be a success.
In tandem with this, organisations should make a concerted effort to communicate the benefits
of automation to management and staff. After all, automation is in part about freeing up talented
employees to focus on higher order tasks. To prevent misunderstandings, key stakeholders should
take a lead in explaining to employees how automation will improve their jobs.
Lastly, businesses should put in place a plan to train employees on whatever automated solution
they end up choosing. Not only does this ensure greater employee buy-in, but it also ensures that
the solution will deliver the results that are expected from it.
There is one main question to ask that can quickly help identify areas for robotic process automation in any department within your business.
“Do any of your users spend 30-60 minutes or more today directly interacting with any applications or web sites to download or process information or are they doing lots of copy and paste data manipulation ?”
If the answer is yes then you’ve taken your first steps to start identifying key processes ready for automation.
Now the trick is to articulate the process on paper and start thinking about how to automate the process.
Use case from customer – typical of most customer we’ve worked with
Automation of that process
Frees up those staff who are just monitoring email inboxes or folders for files.
Compresses amount of time it takes to run the process – no gaps, delays, errors
These two products can stand on their own or work together to orchestrate entire business processes from desktop or web site to servers and enterprise applications.
As I mentioned, Skybot is a cross-platform enterprise job scheduler. It consolidates the management of your servers or vm’s into one interface that you can use to automate any batch type process.
Automate works along with Skybot to automate those processes that you can’t or don’t want to write scripts for. You can create Automate tasks that include pulling files from email, looping through spreadsheets for data, logging into a web site and entering or downloading data. Many of our customers use it for FTP’ing files.
Let’s look at some examples of how this suite of products can make your days easier.
Let’s look for a minute at a current customer of HS. Fundtech is a financial transaction company with over 500 clients – and growing every day.
They had many of the same requirements that you have: Secure FTP of financial transactions, service level agreements to meet, manual monitoring of their file movement
They looked at Skybot for some of the same reasons that you are looking at it today.
Additional quote: “We’re moving hundreds of thousands of files a day and will be adding to that…We couldn’t afford a solution that would slow down if it tried to handle more than 10,000 files.”
Review Polling Results
Thanks for attending our webinar today.
We hope you learned some interesting information about our ongoing AutoMate and BPA Server product roadmap and the potential for enhancing your Automate environments by considering using the BPA Server software along with the new BPA Server Ops console to provide mobile workflow automation for your enterprise.
We’d like to take a minute to tell you about a special offer for attendees. Right now we’re offering a end-of-year 30 minute automation review. What is a 30 minute review? The review is a streamlined version of our full automation audit. During the 30-minute call, one of our automation experts will walk through:
Your IT environment and automation setup
What applications you run
Automation project plans for the next 6 to 18 months
Any existing pain points
Future automation goals
Automation capabilities you may not already be using in Automate. In version 10 currently have over 600 automation actions available in BPA server.
The automation audit is designed to help business maximize ROI by using automation best practices and helping you discover additional automation opportunities you may not have thought of. This is ideal for prospective, new and seasoned users to take greater advantage of their workflow automation software.
Follow the registration link above to sign up today. We anticipate slots will fill up quickly.
If you have any additional questions, input on features you would like to see or anything else, feel free to reach out to our sales team, me or the Automate support team and we will be happy to address your questions and input or provide a more in-depth technical demo or implementation assistance.
You will also receive a link to this recording so you can share this webinar with those in your company who could not attend today’s session.
We look forward to working with your teams in the upcoming year to continue your automation success.
Again thanks for attending todays webinar.
Have a great day and enjoy the rest of your week.
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