10 Steps to IT Process Automation Success

We’re on the way to an automated world, but the road isn’t always a smooth one.  

According to research, a staggering  84% of small businesses  still rely on manual processes for everyday tasks. At this rate, these businesses will soon find themselves left behind when their competitors are the first to adapt. 

Certainly, IT processes  transform the way a company does business.  

If your processes still haven’t been automated, you may want to start transitioning now. Below, we’ve put together ten steps you can follow to get started with IT process automation. 

Step 1: Plot 

Before you can begin to automate, you need to get an overview of your processes. 

This could end up being the largest task on this list. But it’s also one of the most valuable. Plotting out your processes turns nebulous activities into a complete end-to-end view of your workflow. 

Work closely with the people involved in each process to capture the entire picture. The more you do, the easier it’ll be to deploy them in an efficient way. 

If you’re serious about IT process automation, you’ll want to cover all of the processes your company uses daily. Any of these could turn out to be a good candidate for automation. Greater volumes of information will lead to more chances to create efficiency down the line. 

Step 2: Identify 

Now you have a complete map of your workflow, you’re in a position to identify the processes most suitable for IT process automation. 

Some processes aren’t a great fit. Generally, process automation suits tasks that don’t call for intelligent decisions and are repetitive by nature. If the task demands flexibility or a human touch, it might not be the most well-suited. 

That’s not to say processes demanding human input are unfit for automation. Only you can decide whether your teams stand to benefit from automating key parts of a process. In many cases, automated processes can support human decision points. 

If this is your first attempt at IT process automation, starting with a simple process could be the way forward. This will give you vital experience along with realistic feedback on the kind of results you can expect. 

Step 3: Discuss 

Never create major changes without discussing it with your departments. Constant communication is always a good way to come up with solutions that works well for everybody. 

Work closely with your team. What does their wishlist look like? What do they recommend avoiding? 

If there’s anyone who knows exactly how a process works, it’s the team who uses it. Without discussion, you’ll likely end up blindsided by unforeseen factors. 

Step 4: Investigate 

With a rough picture of the landscape, it’s time to investigate your options. Nothing holds a process automation back quicker than a lack of tools to make it happen. 

The information you’ve gained from mapping the process and talking to the team will be invaluable here. You’re looking for a way of automating these processes that will fit your projected budget and business needs. 

If you’re contracting the work out to a service provider, now is also a good time to get an overview of your options. Look for companies who have managed similar projects before and can deliver the results you need. Some early quotations will help you decide your budget. 

Step 5: Plan 

Now you have extensive feedback, it’s time for the planning stage. 

Here’s where the nuts and bolts come in. You need to work through the exact sequence of steps in your automation process. If you’re lucky, this could be a simple end-to-end chain. But other processes might demand branching “if” cases. 

One of the major considerations in the planning phase will simply be cost. Automation is only useful where it adds value to your business. Will you get a meaningful ROI from your efforts? 

This is where you can cut the wishlist down into practical realities. You may be sad to see some ideas go, but you should find a happy medium between cost and ambition. 

Step 6: Build 

This is where your technical team comes into play, or where you contract the work out to an expert. 

An internal team has the advantage of intimate business knowledge but they may lack the experience or technical prowess to complete the work, especially if this is your first project. 

Expect to answer a lot of questions in the building process. Designing and implementing automated processes are two very different things. Your build team will see the project in a very different way, and may encounter challenges that weren’t obvious at earlier stages. 

Patience is a virtue in the build phase. IT process automation is complex. Rushing the project will likely leave you with something that falls short of your expectations. Give the project room to breathe and construct a  realistic timeline. 

Step 7: Test 

It’s a bad idea for any aspect of IT to make the leap from build to implementation without testing in between. 

Test out your IT process automation with a small, dedicated team. Ideally, this team’s makeup should include some of the process experts along with those responsible for the tech side. 

Here is where you filter out the parts that don’t work. Even the best-laid plans often fall foul of something unexpected. By testing, you’re giving the best chance for that to happen in a controlled environment. 

Take feedback seriously. If you need to rewind to an earlier point in the process, it’s better to do that now than when the new automation is live. 

Step 8: Implement 

After enough testing, your automated process should be ready to go live. 

How you roll it out will depend on your own assessment of the process. You could break the overall process down into sub-process and introduce it in stages. Or you could make the transition all at once to get it done. 

Either way, it’s important to prepare your teams. Make sure you handle any required training in advance. Reassign roles as appropriate. 

If the implementation is large-scale or has a complex handover period, you may want to create a pool of superusers. These are the team members with in-depth knowledge of the system, who can help ease the transition. 

With enough time front-loaded into the design and planning, your implementation should go off with minimal problems. But prepare yourself for the unforeseen, because you can never know for sure. 

Step 9: Review 

In IT process automation, success is quite easy to measure. It comes down to a simple question: is it saving time? 

“Time” in this sense does split down, however. Time isn’t just the literal minutes spent on a task. It’s also the effective working hours. If an automated process doesn’t save minutes but does free a worker up to work on a more valuable task, then it has saved time. 

If there are no notable gains, it could be time to return to the drawing board. Sticking with a process that doesn’t work can be as harmful as not having one at all. 

Reviewing what worked  and what didn’t also gives you a strong foundation for automating other aspects of your business. There will be lessons you can learn for next time, in terms of mistakes to avoid and “cheats” you can implement. 

Step 10: Revise 

With the right feedback, you can iterate your IT process automation so that it gains efficiency over time. 

Don’t treat a process as done just because you’ve automated it. There’s always room for improvement. The potential returns for a company who can routinely squeeze more efficiency out of their processes are huge. 

In theory, the additional time you free up through automation is time that you can spend to gain a better overview of your day-to-day operations.  

Your teams can step away from minutiae of your processes to work on the things human operatives are best at: ideas, innovation, and customer interaction. 

Headache-free IT Process Automation 

With these steps, you should be able to undertake IT process automation without it keeping you awake at night.  

But as mentioned, this should be an ongoing process. Keep evaluating, tweaking, and changing until you’ve achieved maximum efficiency. 

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