Top 3 automation trends in 2022

Some Background on Automation and its Progress

With the rapid development of artificial intelligence (AI), robotics, and business processes management, automaton is progressing like never before. Its delivering new growth and profit and is included in more and more fields from tasks scheduling to infrastructure management.

In todays environment, for an organization to remain competitive, it should be able to quickly adapt to new business models, swiftly develop new services and products, and utilize tools and technologies at full speed.

Business leaders rely on IT to provide the time and the efficiency they need to get ahead of always-changing business needs. This is why automation is a top tech trend now. According to a recent TechTarget survey, 85% of organizations intend to invest in automation in 2022, and 39% of organizations are using automation to optimize both business and tech workflows.

Automation is used to reduce time-consuming repetitive processes needed to manage data and transfer it between different digital tools. In order to increase efficiency, organizations are implementing integration and hyper automation initiatives. Artificial intelligence and machine learning help streamline, monitor, and manage automated workflows.

Businesses are striving to improve the customer experience by creating new digital processes and optimizing existing ones. Data integration, AI, cloud services, and the internet of things (IoT) will provide a foundation for the emerging technologies organizations will need to maintain competitive advantage.

Here are the 3 major trends in automation that we found will be most significant in 2022.

1. Just-In-Time Workflows

The so called just-in-time (JIT) workflows appear as an alternative to the standard application-based workflows. Typically, organizations get their work done with the help of business applications such as Jira, ServiceNow and Salesforce, transferring data from one to another on and on. However, this year a new workflow model is emerging. With it, employees will no longer need to jump into multiple applications to complete a task. Instead, they will receive a series of JIT (just-in-time) tasks, created by bots, directly on their desktops.

Constant switching between different applications and segmentation of work lead to silos, delays and errors. Adopting integration and the new approach of JIT workflows will help free the employees from manually transferring data and jumping from system to system.

For example, the customer service team receives a request in an app like ServiceNow. They find the problem is due to a software bug, but the DevOps team is using Jira. They open Jira and enter all the information there, so the developers can handle it.

Then the service team needs to enter the info in a CRM tool, like Salesforce, so that the sales team knows not to contact the client for renewal before the issue is fixed. Once the issue is fixed, the DevOps team needs to inform the customer service team, and they need to inform the client, and also update the case in Salesforce.

This is a workflow, that might happen automatically, without the need for any manual data entering, if you utilize integration and bots to create a JIT workflow instead. With the help of an integration platform, like ZigiOps, you can integrate ServiceNow, Jira and Salesforce and have all the data transferred automatically, without the need for employees to go from application to application. Only the necessary information is included, so there is no redundant data for the different teams to handle. You can set this up in minutes with a no-code integration platform.

JIT is a concept created for manufacturing, but it can have a great impact on digital work, as well. When employees do not need to open and navigate a bunch of applications and waste time in transferring items across different tools, they will be much more productive. Not to mention the time and struggle to learn new and updated applications. The concept for integration and doing all the work in just one place can make work much simpler and more efficient.

2. Democratization of Automation

In order to stay competitive, an organization needs to spread automation everywhere from service management, to DevOps, to marketing and sales. People want simple automation solutions without the need for specialized IT knowledge. Teams need to be able to automate repetitive and mundane tasks quickly and efficiently, so they can focus on progress.

As a result, different teams within an organization adopt different software tools using their individual budgets. Organizations accumulate a mixture of applications, difficult to maintain and keep track of.

Random automations, however, might drive costs higher and bring confusion, as the more workflows there are, the more they become tricky to follow and own.

But there is a way to make an advantage out of this and take automation to another level.

Lets take the example from the previous point. The service desk team is using ServiceNow, and the DevOps team is using Jira. A request comes in that is due to a software bug. The service desk team needs to open Jira and manually enter the information there. Once the dev team resolves the issue, they need to get the information back to ServiceNow. The service desk team manager decides to automate this and utilizes a no-code integration platform, to integrate Jira and ServiceNow. After that all information is transferred automatically, according to pre-set filters. The dev team receives only the necessary info and works only in Jira. The service desk team, on the other hand, does not need to open Jira at all, they just enter the information in SeviceNow and it is automatically transferred to Jira.

The same can happen in the sales team. The sales manager can decide to integrate ServiceNow and Salesforce and all the information for service requests will be automatically entered in the Salesforce instance for the team to know the status of each client. They do not need to open any other applications, there are no delays, and errors from manual transfer of information are eliminated. The sales manager can do that without the help of the IT team, with a no-code integration platform.

Each team can manage everything in one place and the integration platform can orchestrate the workflows. Critical data is transferred to the right places in real time automatically, without the need for writing even a single line of code.

Software tools and platforms, that perform different types of automation, will continue to multiply and overlap, creating confusion, especially in large organizations where different teams select their own tools. As a result, costs and complexity increase and visibility and analysis become harder. If the tools are integrated and everyone can setup an integration without the need for code or API knowledge, businesses can avoid a lot of problems.

There is no one size fits all solution. Different automation approaches like RPA, RBA, BPA, and ESM (Robotic Process Automation, Runbook Automation, Business Process Automation, Enterprise Service Management) will all be utilized by enterprises. Different tasks require different tools. Businesses will most likely organize their own unique mix of automation platforms and tools to get maximum value. At the same time they will need to retain visibility and clarity on automation workflows.

Organizations will benefit greatly from integrating their software tools as this will reduce costs and simplify their operations. By taking a strategic approach, enterprises can gain maximum value in short terms.

3. Data Quality and Cleansing for Better Decisions

Data quality is another challenge organizations will face in 2022. As data continues to grow exponentially, determining and ensuring data quality gets more difficult.

What is data quality? This is the measurement of how reliable, accurate, complete and adequate data is, depending on its purpose. Data cleansing, on the other hand, is the process of identifying and resolving corrupt, inaccurate, or incomplete data. This process of data cleansing is critical for the consistency, reliability, and value of an organizations workflows and automation.

Every organization needs to constantly work on and improve data quality to be able to make better decisions. Data cleansing enables meaningful insights and smart, data-driven business decisions. Businesses know that bad data is expensive, as their analysis and insights are only as good as the data theyre using.

Volumes of data constantly increase, and the data system must be highly efficient and scalable at the same time. Keeping things organized and orchestrated will be a challenge for enterprises, and they will need to use automation tools for data cleansing. There are a number of data cleansing platforms that they can choose from, but no matter which one they choose, automating data cleansing will be critical for their overall business development strategy.

Summary

The year 2022 will be the year of hyperautomation. Organizations will be using automation everywhere they can to transition mundane tasks and routine workflows from employees to technology. But it is not just automation that is reaching a tipping point. It is all the technologies and work around it, as the entire ecosystem is changing. Enabling integration and automation will result in a more efficient and evolved organization.

Gartners top predictions for 2022 are about hyperautomations growth, business process automation systems becoming even more critical, and new data storage and compute technologies rising. Organizations will strive to stay competitive by delivering outstanding digital experiences. At the same time data volumes will reach heights never seen before, which will bring forward new technologies for storing and processing data, like DNA storage, glass storage and neuromorphic computing.

Smart organizations will approach automation strategically, focusing on the most meaningful and value-bringing tasks that can be automated first. They will need flexibility to experiment with automation, and integration must be a key part of their decision-making process.

Being able to create resilient workflows without writing code will be critical, especially in the early stages of adopting new tools. Good organization of data, assets and tools will be the main factor for success. A no-code integration platform, like ZigiOps, can give a lot of freedom to experiment with automation, and make things a lot more organized at the same time.