Workload Automation: A Small, Critical Step Toward Digital Transformation

An Overview

We live in an increasingly “always on” world where, just like consumers, every business client expects near-instant delivery -- whether it’s processing credit card information, downloading a movie or purchasing a product online. Even the smallest disruption or delay leaves room for a competitor to swoop in by delivering products or services just a little bit faster. While there are a handful of reasons organizations must digitally transform, creating a better user experience and improving response times are at the heart of them all. The phrase “digital transformation” often conjures up images of lofty -- and often out of reach -- technologies like artificial intelligence, machine learning, cloud computing and big data and analytics.

However, as exciting as those technologies may be, there is a far more practical, effective solution for small and medium businesses and large enterprises seeking to optimize: workload automation (WLA).

Put simply, workload automation is the use of software to schedule, initiate, run and manage steps in business processes. Manual steps in processes are time-intensive, and they introduce potential for errors that cause poor user experience. Workload Automation is a powerful catalyst for digital transformation.

This is especially true for banks and credit unions, which must methodically repeat the same thousand (or even million) processes each day, both during business hours and after closing. This steadily growing list of daily processes is the result of rapidly changing and growing needs of customers, who increasingly expect instantaneous service.

While every organization has its own unique needs, there are two universal factors that must be considered in order to ensure that automation efforts yield maximum benefits.

A successful Workload Automation solution will enable your organization to:

    1. Be agile in responding to the changing needs of users.
    2. Automate at a pace that keeps up with the rapidly growing needs.

With these concepts in mind, how do you spot a Workload Automation platform that will enable you to achieve both agility and pace as sustaining properties of your transformation.

Enabling Agility And Pace

To automate at pace, a Workload Automation platform must offer a rich user interface (UI).

To enable agility, a Workload Automation platform must employ a robust API and have extensible components. An API is an application programming interface -- meant for programmers to be able to extend an application. It is used by programmers, but everyone benefits from the work because it enables applications to talk to each other.

It is surprisingly easy to make the mistake of acquiring a platform that has only one of these attributes -- either API for extensibility or rich design UI, but not both. Users feel safer with a rich UI but may not realize the limitations of a system that is not extensible -- until later. Programmers feel empowered by an API for extending capabilities of the system. But the lack of a rich user interface may limit the pace at which automation can be deployed.

This mistake can be easily avoided by seeking a Workload Automation provider with a full-service offering. Whether you have a solid IT team or not, you can benefit from such a system because it adds net capacity through the rich interface. And where connecting applications is required, an IT team (yours or others) can be leveraged to connect the applications using the robust API. An ideal Workload Automation partner will fill the gaps so that your IT team can focus wherever they are most needed in your business.

Strength In Numbers

To keep pace, a Workload Automation platform must share what is built, leveraging this API and its extensible framework. Collaboration is a key driver of innovation across every single industry, and for me, this is especially true when it comes to software engineering. When a Workload Automation platform (or any software, for that matter) with a robust API and extensible components leverages the work of many contributors, it acts as a multiplier to support the pace required to meet the growing and increasingly diverse needs of users.

Accomplishing Your Automation Goal

Ultimately, just remember that if your goal is to transform, anything that hampers your ability to be agile or keep pace should be avoided.

Start using Atgen A2 Automation with a free 10 Nodes trial from A2 Trial! Use the free trial!

Refer Atgen A2 Workload Automation Documentation for more details.