Top Three Automation Priorities for CIOs in 2020

CI/CD, workflow, and RPA – are the top three automation types that are poised
to transform business processes and boost efficiencies this year.

‘Two years’ worth of digital transformation in just two months’’ – commented Microsoft  CEO, Satya Nadella, referring to COVID-19 bringing in digital transformation almost overnight as companies scramble to adjust to the new evolving reality of remote work.

CIOs can maximize their automation efforts through the below-mentioned top three automation priorities in 2020:

Code automation: Continuous Delivery/ Continuous Integration
Adopting code automation like CD/CI may reduce the team’s stress level to boost software deployments efficiency. In a nutshell, CD/CI uses automation tools to ensure timely delivery, helping teams to release better software faster. Better refers to codes that meet high-quality standards and are more secure as the application adheres strictly to the set business requirements.

Also Read: How Enterprises Can Leverage Intelligent Automation

Continuous integration goes hand-in-hand with the constant testing processes. More frequent software releases outpace the results of manual testing. Increasingly, QA teams are developing specialized automated tools to perform their tests consistently and quickly, eliminating human error from the equation.

The high-end CI/CD incorporates artificial intelligence and machine learning to spot bugs automatically, flag security holes, and highlight performance degradations even before they reach production.

Workflow automation
Workflow automation continually generates data that can be combined to identify the inefficiencies and help the team sharpen their focus to serve the user community better.
Workflow automation saves time, enhances efficiency, and uses data analysis to support teams to operate more effectively. IDC revealed that organizations lose about 30% of their revenue each year to such inefficient processes. And, it’s time to wrestle those efficiencies back and fix them forever.

Robotic process automation (RPA)
RPA farms out mundane, dull, tasks to computer software – freeing up human brainpower for more interesting work. Daily scraping of data off the Internet can be used to feed into another program. RPA helps in automatically backing up and archiving data systematically, alerting the development team through Slack or e-mail when a critical error has been tripped.

Also Read: Top 5 Strategies to Achieve Successful Digital Transformation in IT and OT Environments

The most popular form of RPA evolution during COVID-19 is through sentiment analysis of online customers, sending real-time alerts to the marketing team. Gartner labeled RPA as the fastest-growing enterprise software category back in 2018. And, it has proved to be an accurate prediction over the last couple of years as RPA is surely going to shape up the future of business operations.

With automation, there is never a one-size-fits-all approach; different companies can implement it in diverse ways. In the current COVID-19 crisis, businesses need to identify the inefficiencies and their root cause promptly – and put automation to work.