As your business scales, so does the number of digital applications and tools you use to keep things running. Even if all you do is add more users to your existing tools, supporting the growing digital infrastructure becomes more complex, often requiring more support from IT and leaving that team less time to attend to mission-critical tasks.
Automating manual processes and repetitive tasks allows IT employees to spend more time supporting your digital infrastructure and focus on the tasks that matter most, so you can streamline operations and grow your business quickly and efficiently.
What Is IT Automation?
IT automation eliminates the need for staff to manually complete complex and time-consuming tasks. Using IT automation tools and software, the team creates scalable and repeatable processes and procedures to automate repetitive tasks that require less hands-on intervention from staff, freeing them to focus on other priorities.
These automated processes can happen on a set schedule or are triggered when a specific event or series of events occur.
For example, say you manually review and assign support requests. The process may be that a user fills out a request which is sent to IT. Someone from the team reviews the request, decides who should work on it, and assigns it to another team member. A person is involved from start to finish, and while they are performing this task, they’re not working on other things, not to mention that if it’s after hours or a holiday, the review and assignment may be delayed.
However, automating even part of this process — say, reviewing and assigning the request — can streamline the entire process. When the request comes in, an IT automation steps in to review and assign the ticket. Not only does this make the process faster, employees are free to focus on mission-critical tasks.
Benefits of IT Automation
Automating IT processes and procedures can improve your company’s operational efficiency and increase productivity across the board in some unexpected ways.
Increase Endpoint Security
Unpatched endpoints can be a security risk to your organization, particularly when you rely on end users to manually update their devices. An IT automation tool makes it easier to monitor and enforce endpoint security configurations, eliminating the risk a bad actor exploits an unpatched device.
Automated workflows scan for unpatched devices, then automatically deploy security patches and operating system updates whenever a device connects to your network, eliminating the need to manually check for and enforce security configurations.
Respond Quickly
IT automation helps the team move quickly and respond to a variety of situations. For example, creating an automated alert that’s triggered when anyone accesses a particular part of the network allows the team to monitor, identify, and mitigate potential security threats before they are exploited.
Eliminate Waste
Automated IT processes can help identify redundant, outdated, or unused processes and tools that are bogging things down or are no longer needed. Eliminating this waste helps cut costs, streamline overall operations, and work more efficiently.
Save Money
While getting rid of outdated tools and unused subscriptions saves the company money, IT automation also helps the IT team increase their contribution to the bottom line. When they no longer have to attend to routine tasks, they can focus on more meaningful contributions that support revenue and long-term growth.
Decrease Costs
IT automation can also decrease costs associated with human error.
Even the most robust QA processes miss things, and deploying a buggy update or patch can cost the company time and money. While automated processes aren’t perfect, once an automated workflow has been tested and vetted, it’s far less likely to introduce bugs associated with human error through a manual process.
Boost Morale and Productivity
Finally, IT automation can result in satisfied and more productive employees. When staff don’t have to attend to mundane or routine tasks and can instead do more meaningful and challenging work, they’re more likely to be engaged with their job and satisfied with the role. And happy workers are often more productive.
IT Automation Challenges
IT automation can streamline operations and boost productivity, but setting them up can be an extensive undertaking. Here’s what to consider before automating your IT processes.
Narrow and Inflexible
While you can automate multiple processes and workflows, generally, each automation is created separately. This isn’t necessarily a negative since you can set the automation once and be done with it. However, because the automation is for a single process or workflow, what it can do and where it’s used is limited. What’s more, when a security policy is updated or changed, the entire automation may need to be rewritten.
Large Investment
IT automation tools and the initial configuration require an upfront investment of time and money. Though many automation tools have preset libraries that allow you to drag and drop the specific workflows and triggers you need, it takes time to determine and implement the precise IT automation that works best for your company, not to mention testing and monitoring them.
Investing in IT automation software or tools also requires the team to think about not only which processes to automate but also calculate the expense and potential ROI whether you automate or not. Something the team does regularly and could be automated may be worth the investment. But automating a process you only use once a month may not be, unless you have a very small team and want to ensure they spend less time on manual tasks.
Continual Monitoring and Testing
Though automation allows staff to attend to other tasks, the team still needs to test and monitor the automations and workflows to ensure they function. Are the automations firing when they’re supposed to and performing the entire workflow correctly? If not, the team has to course correct and update the automations, then test and monitor again.
IT automation also requires a robust QA process before deploying. While it’s less common for automated processes to introduce errors, if the initial configuration isn’t set up correctly, it’s possible to introduce errors every time it runs.
Increases Complexity
Just as a business becomes more complex and requires additional support as it grows, so does IT automation.
As you hire new people, more endpoints must be monitored and patched. Changes to the law around data retention can impact your existing automations, requiring changes to the workflow. To ensure the automations remain valid, IT needs to regularly monitor, evaluate, and update them. And while many IT processes can be automated, there will still be some tasks that need to be completed manually.
Developing an IT Automation Strategy
If you’ve decided that automating some or all of your IT processes is the right choice, it’s critical to create an IT automation strategy that ensures you automate the right processes, have a mechanism to check that everything works as intended, and a way to fix incorrect automations.
Set IT Automation Goals
Start by identifying why you want to automate your IT processes. Is it to reduce the time staff spend doing the manual work? Improve the speed and quality of the services the IT team delivers?
Clear goals will ensure you automate the right processes for your team and company and select the right automation tools for the job.
Evaluate and Identify Processes
Once you’ve set the goals, you can identify which processes you can and should automate. Good candidates are processes that happen often (like patch management) or are time-consuming. But also consider tasks that are more likely to introduce human errors or require a lot of resources.
Select the Right Automation Tool
The tasks you want to automate will determine which IT automation tools you’ll need. For example, if you want to automate your patch management, you’ll need something with configuration management tools that allow you to create workflows that align with your security policies and automatically push patches to the users who need them.
Train and Support Staff
Training staff on how to use the new IT automation tools is a large part of the automation process. However, it’s equally crucial to address any resistance you may encounter to adopting the new procedures and support staff during the transition. Staff may feel that their jobs are in danger, so it’s important to explain how IT automation will support them professionally and grow in their role.
Test and Validate Workflows
Once you’ve adopted the new tools and implemented the automations, the team will still need to monitor, test, and validate the entire process. While IT automation allows for a more hands-off approach to things, it’s critical to keep an eye on everything to ensure errors aren’t introduced.
How Does Adaptiva Help Companies Automate IT Processes?
The Adaptiva OneSite Platform lets IT teams fully automate how they deliver patches, software, and vulnerability remediations. They can set the strategies and processes that align with organizational and security requirements, then let Adpativa’s platform handle the rest, eliminating the manual work associated with patch management and freeing them to focus on high-impact projects.
What’s more, these IT automations are proactive, helping your team eliminate threats and patch vulnerabilities in real-time and at scale, reducing the time it takes to patch endpoints and secure your network.
Schedule a demo today and learn how Adaptiva’s platform and IT automation can save time, boost your operational efficiency, and supercharge your growth.
