Blog Post IT Process Automation Made Simple

Editor’s Note: Given the continued evolution of IT process automation, we thought it timely to refresh our 2017 point of view on workload and workflow automation.

Here’s a simple fact: business today happens a lot faster than human beings can process it, and that’s not going to change any time soon.

So, what’s the solution? How can companies keep up with growing demands, scaling, and the increasing speed of business? Believe it or not, the solution is well within reach for most businesses — if not all — to some degree. Let’s unpack the answers.

The Challenges of Labor-Intensive IT Processes

Does a small- to mid-size enterprise gain real value by throwing 10 developers in a room together and crossing their fingers?

Rarely.

Something that not all project managers understand is that, on a single project, IT process efficiency decreases with every additional hire. 

Think about it this way: a solo developer might be able to work at one “unit” of speed. But in doubling the number of developers, you always incur some cost to efficiency as a result of the added bureaucracy — managing queues, backlogs, and the like. So, two devs might get you 1.8 units (a 10% loss), three devs might only yield you 2.4 (a 20% loss), and so on.

Many companies — and indeed, many developers themselves — would agree that getting bogged down in managing commits, queues, and backlogs is the last thing a company wants. Teams want to spend their time adding value and making cool things — not just keeping the lights on.

Meeting the challenge of application development in a digital economy depends on continuous deployment. Technology, both today and in the future, is about being flexible and reactive to market pressure and agile enough to develop solutions rapidly.

But sadly, this is not the way most IT teams work.

The Current State of IT Processes

IT teams today are overworked and under-optimized, and as a result, they’re incredibly inefficient. They lose ground faster and faster as the business speeds up.

There are a few reasons for this, the most prominent of which are labor-intensive tasks. IT teams are often buried under mountains of menial, repetitive tasks that subtract time from their schedule and leave no room for innovation, optimization, or efficiency. 

What Can Businesses Do About This?

The solution to this issue isn’t a mystery in the modern age — it’s simply waiting to be noticed and appreciated. Have you guessed? It’s business process automation, or in the tech context, IT process automation. 

Here at Stonebranch, we help businesses manage their workloads by automating background processes and combating the complexity of today’s hybrid IT environments. Our clients iterate faster and manage their operations better.

Stonebranch provides IT orchestration and automation solutions that enhance the automation capabilities of business IT environments, allowing them to move beyond simple IT task automation to more sophisticated, real-time business service automation.

But how many businesses actually find this sort of platform useful? According to the 2022 State of IT Automation report, 88% of respondents plan to grow their use of automation in the next year.

As experienced IT process automation experts at your disposal, we’re ready and eager to become a valuable long-term partner in boosting your efficiency.

IT Process Automation is the Key

To put it simply: no one wants to do the same thing over and over again at work. Automation holds the key to a productive and satisfied team.

Stonebranch offers Universal Automation Center (UAC) software as an on-prem or SaaS solution, but it’s the same browser-based solution regardless of where it’s hosted.

UAC enables IT Ops teams to:

• Act quickly in the face of mission-critical disturbances 
• Avoid labor-intensive manual changes to their system 
• Centralize control of tasks and business processes
• Restore system breakdowns immediately

The Stonebranch blog explores the field of IT automation extensively, going into detail defining the challenges, explaining potential solutions, and providing examples of real-world IT automation success stories spanning on-prem, containerized, and cloud environments. We invite you to have a look!