Automate Business as Usual and Focus on Innovation
Featuring exclusive interviews by Tech Journalist Pat Brans with:
Oliver Banks,
Retail Transformation Director & Consultant
Doug Shannon,
Automation and AI practitioner and Gartner Peer Community Ambassador
Too many IT resources are spent on keeping the lights on, and too few on achieving competitive advantage.
While most organisations would like to focus more on business transformation, innovation can’t come at the expense of operational stability, warns Doug Shannon, automation and AI practitioner, and member of the Forbes Technology Council.
“What matters is finding opportunities to optimise business as usual through automation. Doing so allows you to reallocate resources to transformation, without creating disruption.”
Taking care of routine tasks
Automation frees people from menial and repeatable tasks, and minimises the risk of human error. It allows individuals and businesses to focus on their strengths. Automation makes things happen that would typically be difficult to achieve—such as getting legacy systems to work together.
According to Oliver Banks, retail consultant and author of “Driving Retail Transformation”, every organisation has its own unique IT stack that blends critical legacy systems with more modern elements.
As technology evolves, companies accumulate technical debt, which is the long term consequence of decisions made in the past. “Younger companies digitally leapfrog over their older counterparts,” says Banks.
“Over time, though, the startups accumulate their own technical debt and have to perform the same balancing act as larger companies today.”
“As technology evolves, companies accumulate technical debt”
Unfortunately, technology leaders don’t apply automation tools as much as they could to interface legacy systems and take care of all the other routine aspects of IT. According to Banks, this is for three big reasons.
First, companies may have suitable processes and procedures, but not enough clear documentation – or even awareness of the details – to list the set of repeatable steps that need to be automated.
Second, some organisations are so busy fighting fires that they have no time left to set up automation. And finally, knowledge and widespread access to the tools are still limited in many companies.
When these obstacles are overcome, automation platforms can be used to minimise fragmentation of IT systems and information, covering over the cracks. “They are particularly useful for transferring data between systems where a more direct integration is difficult to impossible—for example, when connecting one or more legacy systems that don’t use modern APIs,” says Banks.
“By applying automation to free up resources, organisations can become more agile”
“Automation can also increase visibility to all levels of the organisation,” says Shannon. “From my experiences managers benefit from granular workflow insights, while executives need aggregate metrics tied to business outcomes.”
Automation platforms that offer tailored reporting can ensure people at each level get the information they need in a timely manner. Real time (or near real time) updates can be provided to alert leaders to processes that go beyond the realms of what’s considered normal.
By applying automation to free up resources, organisations can become more agile. Banks says Agility is particularly important in retail, where consumers drive the pace of change, whether around the adoption of new technology, the growth of new channels, or the demand for ethical or sustainable goods.
People vote with their money and retailers either respond or risk losing their business. ”The retail sector is a highly competitive, consumer-led market,” says Banks. “It remains a business’s prerogative to transform to keep up, and, hopefully, stay ahead of competitors.”
“It’s a business’s prerogative to transform to keep up, and stay ahead of competitors“
According to Shannon, automation is still in many ways the unsung hero of bridging data sources, systems of record and legacy technology. “A good tool is one that is adaptable and user-friendly,” he says.
“Features like real-time monitoring, cross-system integration, and the ability to scale stand out most, because they solve immediate needs while preparing for future ones.”
Making better use of automation tools
When automation is used on business processes, it should be carried out with input from all relevant parties. “IT and business stakeholders should be aligned and solutions should be piloted,” says Shannon.
“Make changes according to initial feedback and iterate until the processes run to the satisfaction of all involved.”
For anybody not yet using automation effectively, a good starting point is to identify quick win areas and build momentum from there.
“The sooner organisations automate their routine tasks to bring those tasks into end-to-end workloads, the sooner they can turn their full attention towards business transformation,” says Martin Hulbert, CTO of Ignite Technology.
“Poor-quality automation can force you to settle for a limited set of outcomes”
Banks warns against over automating, which can create an over reliance on rules. When processes are too rigid, the human element is lost and an organisation will find it more difficult to adapt processes to different contexts.
“The world is not black and white and poor-quality automation can force you to settle for a limited set of outcomes,” he says.
Automation can obscure processes, so its import to clearly document what the automation is doing and how it works. A hidden flaw can easily leads to unintended consequences, causing errors, poor decision-making or other failure modes.
Banks advises organisations to leave traceable outputs in the automated process to make them easier to debug. Process improvement should run alongside automation efforts. After all, if your processes are not working, automating them is only likely to add complications.
“Poor data quality is damaging to any automation effort”
Automation is also subject to the phenomenon of “garbage in garbage out.” Poor data quality is damaging to any automation effort, so effective data governance is a must have. IT and business leaders should have a clear understanding of how data is being used and automated.
Automation platforms should emphasise transparency and explainability. “Tools that not only automate but also make their processes clear to users will build trust and adoption across organisations,” says Shannon.
“But these tools need to be interactive and also handle the maintenance issues that have plagued the automation industry for years.”
“Increasingly, with technology, we’re now at a place where we’re limited by our own creativity and ideas rather than the systems,” says Banks. “We can do just about anything we imagine. Automation is one of those elements that enables that shift.”
Key Get beyond the hype and deliver value with AI
In all the hype, it’s easy to think that “AI is the answer!” But too often, people don’t pause to figure out what the question is.
With a centralised automation platform providing complete visibility and control of data pipelines throughout the organisation, leaders can be sure they’re asking the right questions. They can trust that they’re answering those questions in an ethical and responsible manner. And they can rely on getting accurate, actionable answers to decision-makers at the speed the business demands.
To learn more about how you can overcome common data hurdles and support effective AI capabilities, get in touch with our experts.
