The Future

Is Now
Why It’s Time To Invest In
Workload Automation
Workload Automation: Driver of Digital Transformation

The COVID-19 pandemic accelerated digital transformation, forcing organizations to rapidly

adopt new technologies and recreate processes for a digital-first world. This means relying more
than ever on digital tools to support day-to-day operations while developing resilient business
models that can stay ahead of technology and market trends.

The position of IT has been elevated within

70% of customer experience the organization because of the growing

projects will rely on IT by 20221 dependence on technology. Today’s business

leaders increasingly view IT as the gateway
95% of CIOs said their role was to long-term success. IT teams must digitize
expanding beyond traditional IT legacy processes, develop new services and
responsibilities2 take more ownership of day-to-day business
operations.
48% of board directors expect
the enterprise to change its But doing this means adding more tasks
business model to meet new market to teams that are already overworked
dynamics3 and understaffed. Too much time is spent
maintaining disjointed and bloated
69% of CIOs say they need a infrastructure and fighting fires, straining IT
radically different approach to IT resources that should be dedicated to new
and cloud operations management4 business challenges.

74% of CIOs say the growing use To combat this, IT teams are relying on
of cloud-native tech will lead to automation. A survey by Ernst & Young found
more manual tasks and time spent that 41% of enterprises were investing in
"keeping the lights on”4 automation in response to the COVID-19 crisis.

By 2025, 60% of I&O leaders will IT and business process automation drastically
drive business innovation using reduces manual tasks, giving IT teams more
disruptive technologies, up from less time for higher-value projects. Automated
than 5% in 2019 5
processes improve reliability, resulting in fewer
disruptions, while improving efficiency and
optimizing the use of existing resources.
Many organizations are accelerating their use of multi-cloud and emerging technologies, requiring
modern workload automation (WLA) platforms to connect disparate tools across on-prem and
cloud-based systems. Because of this, WLA plays a key role in creating cross-platform automation
environments that can handle processes at scale. However, WLA is not the only key to a successful
automation initiative.

In many cases, automation goals are not reached because planning and practices aren’t aligned
with expectations. Creating the right automation initiative with the right capabilities and best
practices will enable IT to drive long-term business success.

We’ll explore the core components of a successful automation strategy, including how to leverage
workload automation to meet any future business challenge.

Tie Your Automation Initiative To A Business Goal

Business depends more than ever on digital capabilities. Most organizations are operating on
tight budgets and rely on data to determine the value of initiatives. As IT becomes more critical to
business success, more pressure is placed on IT to show how automation initiatives are providing
direct business value.

Regardless of your automation project’s scope, make sure it is tied to a business goal. Whether
you are automating customer payments or optimizing your data warehouse, tie the automation
project to a larger business goal — for example, streamlining the customer experience or cutting
operational costs so that more resources can be shifted to development. The KPIs you use for your
automation initiative are more impactful when aligned with business KPIs.

Additionally, make sure you manage the

expectations of business leaders and other
key stakeholders. Business leaders often
assume that the goal of automation is to
cut full-time hours. That’s rarely the whole
picture, and this narrow KPI is often cited as a
reason why automation projects do not meet
goals. Automation improves efficiency and
reliability while reducing manual tasks so that
IT personnel can spend more time on higher-
value projects — instead of cutting full-time
hours, resources are shifted to other areas,
often from operations to development.
Approach Your Automation Initiative With A Product Mindset

Digital business success requires a shift in how IT handles projects. IT is becoming more involved in
customer experience initiatives, a trend that will accelerate as technology evolves and consumer
expectations move toward a digital-first mindset.

IT is also evolving how they look at automation. A successful automation initiative cannot be a
“one-and-done” project. A project has a defined completion point that says everyone can move
on to something else. By contrast, a product has a dedicated team that continuously manages,
develops and iterates the product. Gartner estimates that by 2025, more than half of the Global
2000 will have a dedicated automation group, up from less than 10% in 2020.

Automation initiatives need to be approached as Gartner estimates that by 2025,

products that require continuous development — more than half of the Global
with iterations and expansions that fulfill new or 2000 will have a dedicated
unexpected challenges. automation group.

For example, once you automate a payment process, the business might roll out a new customer
portal or additional services, requiring new processes to be automated. Or, after using automation
to optimize your on-premises data warehouse, there might be demand for automating an IaaS
environment.

Uncertainty is the new normal as technology and market pressures rapidly evolve. Hybrid and multi-
cloud platforms enable enterprises to leverage best-of-breed and emerging technologies, but only
if supported by flexible, product-oriented automation strategy.

Start Small, Shift Left And Optimize

In most cases, it makes most sense to first automate low-hanging

fruit — repeatable tasks that are unreliable, time-consuming and
First automate
easy to automate. The goal is to quickly build ROI by removing
low-hanging
as much manual work as possible early into your automation
fruit,
initiative, which allows your team to spend more time on higher-
repeatable
value tasks.
tasks that are
unreliable,
Remember that the processes you automate today are going to
time-consuming
set a foundation for the processes you automate tomorrow. These
and easy to
tasks can be strung into longer-running processes to support
automate.
new services, for example. This makes it important to minimize
technical debt in order to prevent later issues and delays.
As you continue identifying other potential automation opportunities in your organization,
evaluate the processes first. Optimize the process, then automate it to deliver better overall
results. WLA solutions can include reusable templates, dependency mapping and simulation
environments that enable users to easily optimize processes. Users can view estimated run times
as they reconfigure workflows and leverage smart capabilities that prevent workload bottlenecks
and delays.

Shifting automation left in your development cycle will also reduce technical debt. Rolling out a new
process and then going back to automate it creates additional work with extra layers of change to
manage. Automating earlier in the development cycle can speed up development as well.

Extensibility Is No Longer Optional

— It’s A Critical Requirement

Your automation environment will need to expand to new

endpoints over time in order to meet evolving business needs.
Connect to any
Perhaps a new cloud platform needs to connect with your data
cloud or on-prem
warehouse, or the payment system the business relies on is
endpoint so that
being replaced with a SaaS application.
your team can
rapidly incorporate
Building manual integrations into new endpoints is time-
new technologies
consuming and error-prone. Scripts are brittle and front-end
as your tech stack
integrations are too unreliable for enterprise processes.
continues to evolve.

Automation initiatives should rely on extensions and connectors. Most cloud-native applications,
platforms and systems also offer APIs. These extensions make it easy to connect to any cloud or
on-prem endpoint so that your team can rapidly incorporate new technologies as your tech stack
continues to evolve.

With an extensible automation framework, your team can easily consolidate multiple schedulers
within your organization. This allows you to automate processes across the organization, easily
managing them from a single point of control.
Reduce Barriers To Automation To Adapt
To A Changing Workforce

IT specialists are critical members of every IT team. However, the digital processes that support
day-to-day operations and key services rely on a variety of disparate technologies. This is why
many in IT are calling for generalists who have a broad knowledge of many systems as compared
to specialists who have a deep understanding of one technology.

Your automation initiative is going to touch an evolving array of endpoints, many of which will be new
to your IT team. It is therefore important to make sure your automation initiative reduces barriers to
entry so that generalists of any experience level can automate processes across disparate systems.

Low-code automation platforms are often object-oriented,

abstracting away complex code with actions or job steps
that can be assembled into end-to-end processes. This can
drastically reduce the need for in-depth knowledge of the
systems involved in a process.

A thorough comparison of automation vendors can help you

identify additional features that make it possible for developers
of any experience to build reliable processes. Intuitive user
interfaces simplify production, while online, on-demand training
through the vendor can help users gain new skills.

Your Automation Initiative Must Anticipate What’s Coming

It’s hard to predict what the business will require five years from now. Whether it’s AI for big data, IoT
and edge computing, a move to colocation or a complete overhaul of your business model, your IT
team needs to be prepared for almost anything.

A successful automation initiative can set you up to meet virtually any challenge in the future —
from new applications to entirely new markets. Furthermore, by managing expectations, aligning
your initiative with business goals and establishing best practices, you can ensure that your team
has reliable groundwork to build on with the full support of key stakeholders.

With a modern WLA platform designed for the cloud, your team can connect and interact with
any digital endpoint, without relying on custom scripting. Monitor and manage all your automated
processes from a single point of control, tie together compliance, infrastructure and any application
for end-to-end processes that deliver data and services directly to the end-user. Improve reliability
so your IT team can stop fighting fires and focus more on innovation.
 References
1. Gartner, Predicts 2021: Technology Will Become More
Critical To Customer Experience EXTERNAL-LINK-SQUARE-ALT

2. IDG, 2020 State Of The CIO Executive Summary EXTERNAL-LINK-SQUARE-ALT

3. Gartner, Gartner Says 69% Of Boards Of Directors

Accelerated Their Digital Business Initiatives Following
COVID-19 Disruption EXTERNAL-LINK-SQUARE-ALT

4. Dynatrace, 2020 Global CIO Report EXTERNAL-LINK-SQUARE-ALT

5. Gartner, The Future Of I&O Is Infrastructure-Led

Disruption EXTERNAL-LINK-SQUARE-ALT

See how Redwood can empower your digital

transformation with workload automation.
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