What is IT Process Automation and 8 Steps to Execute It
Process automation reduces errors, improves data integrity, and maximizes efficiency. Organizations that automate complex, high-volume processes have more resources for innovation. Optimizing an IT department with automation begins with understanding the purpose and methods of ITPA.
Below, we define IT process automation (ITPA) and explore real-world use cases. We also discuss the benefits and limitations of automation.
What is IT Process Automation?
IT Process Automation utilizes customized workflows to automate high-volume, repetitive IT tasks. In a recent study, McKinsey & Company found IT departments spend up to 90% of their time on manual tasks. Organizations that automate some of these time-consuming processes improve productivity.
Types of Process Automation
Compare ITPA to other categories of process automation:
Business Process Automation (BPA): BPA includes complex processes at the organizational level.
Robotic Process Automation (RPA): RPA uses software to perform repetitive menial tasks. API or database connection is unnecessary.
Digital Process Automation (DPA): DPA includes software solutions that streamline complex processes. DPA optimizes workflows involving many departments, tools, and techniques.
IT Process Automation (ITPA): involves many processes. Where DPA and BPA involve enterprise-wide processes, ITPA is specific to one department.
Use Cases and Examples of ITPA
Some real-world examples of process automation include:
Compliance: Improve the accuracy and efficiency of compliance testing.
Bug Reporting and Testing: empower teams to focus on finding solutions. ITPA eliminates inconsistencies and bug reporting improving communication with engineers.
Network Automation: automate system upgrades, patches, and configuration changes. Automated processes are an effective preventative measure against common network performance issues.
Service Requests and Ticketing: track, assign, and organize service requests and tickets.
Messaging and Notifications: communication is a common pain point for IT departments. Automated messages and notifications prove the accuracy and efficiency of communications.
Server Automation: server maintenance processes are rife with opportunities for automation. Restarts, shutdowns, disc space cleanup, backups, restores, provisioning, and deprevisioning are among them.
Asset Tracking and Management: Equipment oversight reduces losses and improves return rates. Use our tools to manage assets from onboarding through offboarding and everything in between.
Benefits and Limitations of Automation
IT Process Automation reduces communication errors and improves transparency. Tracking and automated reports keep everyone on the same page.
Benefits:
ITPA workflows reduce human and technical errors, which saves time on unnecessary corrections. Increase compliance, reduce errors, and improve communication.
Limitations:
ITPA solutions need maintenance for continued performance. Healthy ITPA processes include regular audits and updates.
Automated solutions lack human intuition. Effective workflows drop ambiguity and break tasks into defined actionable steps. Any process that relies on human interpretation is not a candidate for automation.
8 Steps to Execute ITPA
There are eight steps to implementing ITPA within your organization. Below, we explore these steps broken into three stages: planning, implementation, and monitoring.
Planning
Identify Opportunities for Automation
Five criteria make a process easy to automate:
High-volume: Organizations gain the most significant boost in efficiency by automating high-volume processes.
Error-prone: Processes prone to technical and human error.
The process is a series of subtasks: broken into actions and reactions.
The process does not require manual intervention.
The process exists in a stable environment: exceptions, technical errors, and unexpected conditions break down automated processes.
2. Identifying Pain Points
Exceptions: automation works in absolutes. Nuance is challenging to manage in an environment that requires strict definitions.
Manual requirements: Manual intervention is an inevitable need. Automate subtasks of manual processes for maximum efficiency.
3. Define Scope and Priorities
Identify the primary goals of your ITPA initiative and the relevant performance indicators. Do you need to increase the number of completed service requests per month? Are you looking to lower the amount of asset loss per year?
Implementation
4. Build Your ITPA Tool Kit
With a clear vision of your needs, it’s time to build the tools to meet your goals. Multiple departments can participate in development. Customizable roles and permissions give you complete control over your team. With collaborators established, it’s time to choose the features you need.
There are ten basic features that every ITPA tool should include:
Logical connectors: Our solutions allow processes to branch into subtasks and related workflows.
Process life cycle management: authorized users can add workflows to production, make changes, and stop processes.
Process updates: check statuses, workflow paths, and bottlenecks in one place.
Reporting: Collect data on automation and performance.
Pre-made activities: turn frequent subtasks into reusable templates.
Drag and drop workflow builder: an intuitive workflow builder is the hallmark of an effective ITPA tool.
General integrations: XML, email, Command Line Interface, and web services are typical integrations.
Trigger types: scheduled, manual, and event.
Prebuilt workflow content
Variety of workflow types that are relevant to your goals
5. Deconstruct tasks: break down each process into steps, defined by logical statements. Remember that these workflows are a series of actions and reactions. To translate human workflows, frame steps as logic statements.
6. Build Workflows: organize defined activities into purpose-built processes. Creating an automated workflow from a human workflow is a challenge. Look for a task performed the same way every time, with no exceptions. Manual tasks with highly regimented components are candidates for partial automation.
Maintenance
7. Monitoring: Collect and analyze data relevant to KPIs. Generate automated reports to make analyzing performance simple. There are limitless possibilities to display automation data. Organize reporting into easy-to-digest visual representations that relate to each goal.
8. Plan regular audits: examine automated processes for opportunities for refinement and productivity bottlenecks. Processes evolve, and laws change, so plan on performing regular audits and updates.
Conclusion
With a clear roadmap to ITPA implementation, it's time to put the power of automation to work for you. An effective ITPA strategy requires clear objectives and actionable steps. Define your organization's automation needs and set measurable goals.
Create a diverse variety of workflows and activities. Install changes and track results. Empower your IT team to spend less time on repetitious task work. Get back to high-impact projects and development.
IT process automation improves the performance of IT teams. Use the information here to plan an effective ITPA strategy for your organization. Simple automation has a significant impact on the capacity of your IT talent.
