What is IT Process Automation? An Overview

The future scope of IT process automation (ITPA) is quite promising as more and more organizations are turning towards automation to streamline their IT processes and increase efficiency. With the increasing complexity of IT infrastructures and the growing demand for digital services, automation in IT is becoming increasingly important.

Here are some potential trends and developments that may shape the future of IT process automation:

1. Adoption of AI and ML

   AI and ML can be used to automate complex IT processes, reduce manual errors, and provide intelligent insights. As AI and ML technology continue to advance, it will be integrated more and more into ITPA solutions.

2. Focus on Cloud Automation

   With the increasing adoption of cloud computing, IT process automation will be required to manage complex and dynamic cloud environments. Cloud automation tools will be used to automate the provisioning and management of cloud resources.

3. Increased Integration with DevOps

   DevOps practices emphasize automation, and as such, ITPA will play a critical role in enabling DevOps teams to streamline their workflows and reduce the time required to deploy applications.

4. Rise of Robotic Process Automation (RPA)

   RPA involves the use of software robots to automate repetitive and time-consuming tasks. As RPA technology continues to advance, it will be used to automate more complex IT processes, freeing up IT teams to focus on more strategic initiatives. As per the report, the market for workflow automation is expected to increase a CAGR of 33.3% from 2023 to 2030.

5. Low-Code/No-Code Platform

   Unlike traditional application development platforms, low-code platforms allow developers to create applications with less code. Most of them provide drag-and-drop interfaces and other tools that make application development easier and faster. With higher adoption of IT Process Automation, Low Code/No Code platform can make the implementation smooth and fast.

6. Process Mining

   Trends in IT process automation involve more than technology. It requires utilizing technologies to automate multiple simple or complex processes without compromising the quality and efficiency of a process. Processing mining is one of the growing trends That entails a thorough examination of the process, its relationship, and the data required for process execution.

IT teams encounter several challenges and complexities while dealing with regular business processes. IT process challenges can vary depending on the organization’s size, industry, and specific IT infrastructure. However, some common challenges that trouble IT teams include:

1. Integration Difficulty Between Systems

   Multiple applications and systems, such as CRM and ERP, manage various IT operations in an organization. Lack of integration between these systems leads to data silos and fragmented workflows. IT process automation solutions can seamlessly integrate multiple new, cloud-based or on-premise systems and create a unified data exchange and access system.

2. Error During Task Execution

   Relying on manual processes for repetitive IT tasks such as data entry, file sharing, and user access management can expose your system to costly human errors and inaccuracies. IT process automation tools can execute tasks precisely as programmed and validate steps at each stage to ensure correct data inputs and output meet pre-defined criteria.

3. Communication Gaps

   In IT processes, manual procedures often entail numerous handovers and approvals, leading to information loss, task completion delays, and missed deadlines. IT automation solutions can streamline communication channels within IT teams and simplify task assignment and approval processes, ensuring timely completion.

4. Disorganized IT Data

   Around 66% of CIOs in a survey listed data security as their top challenge in IT. IT teams handle various data, including customer information, security data, performance metrics, configuration data, and application data. Manual data handling can present challenges with human errors and be burdensome and overwhelming. However, IT process automation solutions enable the establishment of automated workflows to extract, validate, and analyze large volumes of IT-related data.

5. Visibility and Control Issues

   A lack of visibility in IT processes can lead to inefficiencies and missed deadlines. IT automation tools provide end-to-end visibility and predefined workflows, ensuring tasks are routed correctly. This proactive approach helps manage IT operations effectively and optimize performance across diverse data types, such as configuration data, system logs, and user activity logs.

IT process automation (ITPA) is valuable for the IT team and the organization. It streamlines various processes, such as enhancing incident resolution rates, ensuring software updates automatically, simplifying user provisioning, and offering many other benefits. Here are ten instances demonstrating the capabilities of an IT process automation solution:

1. Service Desk Automation

   The IT service desk manually manages ticket creation, routes tickets to appropriate teams, and resolves employees’ issues. However, the high volume of service tickets makes instant resolution challenging. The IT process automation tool automatically classifies the service desk tickets and assigns them to the right service desk engineer. This way, IT process automation solutions improve the SLAs and offer instant resolution to users.

2. Active Directory

   IT process automation enables automated user provisioning, group management, and access control within the active directory. For instance, when a new employee joins the organization, an automated process can create their user account, assign appropriate group memberships, and grant access to necessary resources based on predefined roles.

3. User Notification

   Informing users about the license update and server maintenance and giving manual updates on system changes are uphill tasks. With IT process automation, automated notifications can be configured to alert users about system updates, maintenance schedules, or any relevant changes, ensuring timely communication and improving user experience.

4. System Health Check

   Health checks capture the current state or condition of a system’s well-being or functionality at a specific time. Monitoring and determining the status of devices and the agent’s application and sending an alert before any critical issue arises can be exhausting. IT process automation facilitates regular system health checks, and alerts can be triggered for any anomalies, enabling IT teams to take immediate action to maintain system reliability and availability.

5. Application Monitoring

   IT organizations find monitoring application performance, availability, and resource utilization challenging to ensure optimal performance. The robotic application monitoring system can monitor a critical business application’s response time and availability. If the application response time exceeds predefined thresholds or becomes unavailable, the automated IT system sends alerts to the IT team for immediate investigation and resolution.

6. Workload Automation

   IT automation can schedule and execute routine tasks such as data backups, batch processing, and file transfers. For instance, workload automation can trigger on-time backups of databases and critical files, ensuring data integrity and disaster recovery readiness without manual intervention.

7. Server Management

   Server management involves provisioning, patching, configuration, monitoring, and implementing backup and recovery measures. IT process automation solutions can automate the deployment of server configurations based on predefined templates, ensuring consistency and compliance with organizational standards. Automated patch management processes can also provide timely application of security updates to safeguard against vulnerabilities.

8. Network Device Management

   Network automation can simplify the configuration, monitoring, and troubleshooting of network devices such as routers, switches, and firewalls. For example, automated network provisioning tools can streamline the deployment of network configurations and policies across multiple devices. Automated monitoring and alerting mechanisms can detect real-time network outages or performance degradation, enabling prompt remediation actions.

9. Security Management

   In the past two years, 49% of respondents have suffered a data breach, a notable increase from 39% the previous year. Security automation utilizes machine learning algorithms to analyze patterns and behavior of malicious software. For example, security automation in service desk agents can resolve alerts for USB block/unblock, clean up application requests, and email alerts for account activation/deletion.

10. Employee Onboarding

    Recruitment to provide asset management access, service desk agents face numerous tasks that demand continuous manual attention. In this scenario, the IT process automation tool can assist in automating the employee onboarding process by handling tasks such as creating welcome emails, verifying digital documents, provisioning user accounts, managing documentation, and sending training reminders and notifications.

• What is IT Process Automation?

  IT process automation involves the use of automating the repetitive and time-consuming tasks that takes a large portion of time in processing service ticket request like password reset, payroll, employee onboarding, and a lot more.

• Why Use IT Process Automation?

  Having a high volume of service ticket requests and extracting, analyzing and processing data manually leads to delayed resolution. Leveraging automation in IT involves the use of chatbots and self-service portals where customers can raise a service ticket and get auto-ticket resolution at a faster pace.

• What are IT Process Automation Use Cases?

  Using automation technologies like RPA, IT leaders can automate user management, asset management, data sharing, service desk automation, and many other processes.

• What are the Benefits of IT Process Automation?

  With automation in the IT process, IT leaders can get away from repetitive and time-consuming processes like resolving password reset requests and service desk tickets. Having IT process automation in an organization a lot of time is saved, and overall process efficiency is also increased.