Emergence of Enterprise Automation

Initially, automation aimed to reduce costs and improve process efficiency. However, automation now focuses on generating business value and helping organizations become lean, resilient, and agile in response to evolving customer expectations, growing competition, and increasing administrative costs. As a result, automation applies to a wide range of processes, including both business and IT domains. This has led to the emergence of two primary forms of automation – business process automation and IT automation.

Currently, enterprises mainly rely on siloed IT or business process automation, which provides some benefits. However, it often hinders the full potential of automation. Therefore, a new approach called enterprise automation has emerged, which integrates both business processes and IT automation. This approach primarily focuses on realizing value and is typically driven from the top down, with C-suite (CXO)-level sponsorship and decision-making. Its scope spans the entire organization and includes business processes, applications, and infrastructure. This approach is expected to provide scalability, integrated analytics using interrelated business and IT KPIs, and centralized control over automation.