CIO Perspectives with Mark Settle: Automation Everywhere: A Buyer’s Guide to the Automation Marketplace
“CIO Perspectives” is a white paper series by Mark Settle that explores the top-of-mind technical issues confronting today’s CIOs and IT leaders. Mark is a seven-time CIO most recently at Okta, a three-time CIO 100 award winner, and a two-time book author. His most recent book is Truth from the Valley, A Practical Primer on IT Management for the Next Decade.
Automation tools may be the most over-hyped technology within today’s IT marketplace. A bewildering array of tools are available to automate business processes, streamline taskwork and optimize teamwork. This technology smorgasbord includes API integration systems, robotic process automation (RPA) tools, low code/no code (LCNC) development platforms, process mapping/mining/discovery/modeling services, workflow automation platforms, and teamwork productivity tools.
Many, if not most companies, have purchased one or more tools in each of these categories, failed to make commensurate investments in new skills and organizational structures, implemented their purchases in an uncoordinated, piecemeal fashion and — wait for it — failed to achieve the strategic business benefits they anticipated.
This white paper describes the current automation marketplace by:
- Reminding readers that many of their existing foundational systems are rapidly implementing workflow automation capabilities
- Outlining the coordinated investments in skills, organization and tools that are needed to achieve the strategic benefits that automation at scale offers
Automation is always desirable because it can accelerate business velocity, eliminate errors, minimize rework, reduce labor costs, enforce regulatory controls, and improve customer experience. Progressive companies that seek to achieve these benefits at a strategic scale need to make judicious investments in a select number of tools and find ways of deploying their selections at a greater speed, broader scope and deeper level of sophistication than their competitors.
See below or download (here) the “Automation Everywhere: A Buyer’s Guide to the Automation Marketplace” white paper.
