Automation Gains a Foothold, But How to Scale It Is the Challenge
Enterprises are starting to look at AI-backed automation as a strategic, enterprise-wide process, but IT leaders must learn how to scale.
Many organizations aspire to automation levels that rival the likes of Amazon, where processes flow seamlessly between people, systems, and devices.
A recent Gartner report found businesses are evolving their use of artificial intelligence (AI) as part of their automation strategies, with one third of organizations surveyed applying AI across several business units.
If they’re honest with themselves, these organizations want automation to achieve some sort of goal -- whether that’s improving the customer experience, increasing cost efficiencies, or making life easier for employees.
Automation can and should be applied to each of these goals, but it should be done in a fully orchestrated way across the entire organization.
Jakob Freund, co-founder and CEO of Camunda, an open-source workflow and decision automation platform, says today, many organizations automate locally -- or within a single team, system, or device.
“That’s a mistake, since most processes are far more complex than that,” he says. “These organizations don’t need more automation for automation’s sake. They need process orchestration.”
Process orchestration coordinates the various moving parts (or endpoints) of a business process, and sometimes even ties multiple processes together across an organization.