Imagine a growing company where teams like marketing, sales, and finance are just starting to innovate for themselves.
These teams or even individuals could describe all the steps involved in their work, and the time, energy, and resources it takes to operate the business. And while they might have ideas of areas to automate so they can accelerate these processes, they don’t really understand the technical aspects of getting data to flow through all the relevant systems.
Some of these teams might approach IT with their ideas, but get frustrated when engineers propose highly technical solutions that business users can’t possibly follow, let alone vet and validate. In the end, they often resort to a point solution like Zapier because it uses human language that they can understand—and because they don’t need to wait for IT to implement it.
Before the company realizes what’s happening, it’s using a sprawl of automation solutions with no oversight or governance from IT. And with sensitive data on the line, that’s a massive risk.
As you work to either rein in your automation stack or prevent it from ballooning, here are a few dos and don’ts to keep in mind.
What the future of iPaaS looks like
Discover how an enterprise automation platform addresses IT’s and lines of business’ integration and automation needs.
DO: Adopt an enterprise automation platform early on.
DON’T: Wait until automation app sprawl is clearly an issue.
It’s not easy to keep everything secure while still moving fast enough to meet the needs of the business. You could make a convincing argument for putting either security or agility first, which is why so many businesses are philosophically split into “controllers,” who advocate for strict IT governance, and “breakers,” who want to embrace and experiment with all the latest technology.
While too many companies spend valuable time debating which approach is better, neither one prevents your automation stack from sprawling over time. When controllers call the shots, breakers simply turn to shadow IT to fulfill urgent line of business (LOB) needs and, if breakers run the show, they tend to neglect SaaS management. Either way, by the time the need to rein in the stack pops up on the company roadmap, you can be sure everyone has been feeling the pain for a while.
It’s best to sidestep the issue by forgoing a conventional IT-led iPaaS in favor of a more user-friendly enterprise automation platform. This next phase of iPaaS lets the controllers maintain security and governance, while handing business users the tools they need to experiment with their own integrations and automations. It’s the fastest way to bring controllers and breakers together in your fight against automation app sprawl.
DO: Consider the needs of both LOB and IT.
DON’T: Look at automation app sprawl as an IT problem.
When you think about which departments are automating the most, the answer might seem obvious: IT and engineering. And, in our recent Work Automation Index, that’s exactly what we found. IT and engineering account for nearly 40% of all automated processes.
But every department is adding more automated processes, and IT and engineering are actually accelerating automation at a slower rate than the rest of the business. Customer support, historically the least automated function, has nearly tripled its automations year over year.
Across the business, other departments are catching up to IT on automation–a trend that has only accelerated in an increasingly virtual business landscape. The number of companies with 5+ departments using automation is doubling year over year, with no sign of slowing down.
When departments use different tools with varying priorities and objectives, you inevitably end up with silos and fractured data—and that isn’t just an IT problem. If your teams can’t work together outside their specific point solutions, you’ll miss opportunities to share data, identify more efficient processes, and create better products.
As you move towards enterprise application integration, shy away from highly technical solutions that require custom code and engineering boots on the ground. These solutions deepen the divide between LOB teams and IT, turning LOB teams into “customers” who lob lists of requirements over the wall for IT to implement without sufficient time, resources, or context.
Automation app sprawl affects both LOB and IT, so find a solution that works for both.
Related: Impactful automation ideas for different teams
DO: Let LOB keep building their own automations.
DON’T: Take away tools without providing replacements.
As you centralize automation and, perhaps, remove point solutions like Zapier from your stack, you may end up taking away the tools business teams rely on to build their own automations. This might not seem like a big deal (it might even sound like a good idea), but reducing the number of people who can automate creates more friction around automation in the long run.
Many business teams are drawn to tools like Zapier because they can automate quickly, without having to thoroughly explain their processes, rules, and constraints to an engineer. After all, no one knows why and how a process needs to be automated more than the person who does it.
An automation model powered by citizen developers can benefit IT too. It saves engineers the hassle of deep diving into an unfamiliar business process every time they need to build a new automation. A bottom up approach also makes employees more receptive to automation and, perhaps best of all, it can bear fruit in the form of some truly creative and innovative solutions.
Take the fintech lender Fundbox, for example. When the Small Business Association announced it would offer paycheck protection loans to keep businesses afloat during the early days of the coronavirus pandemic, Fundbox discovered that the fastest way to automate the loan application process was to have its RevOps team create and automate the application itself.
RevOps had the business expertise to navigate the loan requirements more intuitively than the engineering team, so the two teams decided to essentially switch roles. RevOps focused on building the backend in Workato and engineering created the front-end user experience. This unorthodox division of labor let Fundbox turn the project around at lightning speed.
Of course, protecting their customers’ financial data was also a concern, especially since many companies struggle to maintain security and compliance when teams that are unfamiliar with software lifecycle management protocols start building automations. Workato, however, made it easy for Fundbox to develop, test, and produce its vision using secure development environments.
Basile Senesi, the former Head of Sales Ops and Strategy at Fundbox, provided us with additional color during a session at last year’s Automate conference.
If you remove citizen automation tools in an attempt to bring sprawl under control, provide a replacement, like Workato’s enterprise automation platform, that empowers business users to keep automating.
