As organizations continue to expand on their ecosystem of technology, the number of potential workflows they can automate only grows.
This begs the question: How can an organization maximize their automation opportunities over time?
By adopting a platform that’s built to support automation at scale.
This type of platform requires the following:
- A low-code/no-code building experience
- A comprehensive, centralized governance model
- Pre-built, ready-to-use automations
We’ll dive into each requirement and explain what else your organization needs to fully embrace automation at scale.
You can learn about additional platform features that are essential to automating at scale, such as enterprise-grade runtime, by reading this article from our Head of Products and co-founder, Gautham Viswanathan.
1. A low-code/no-code platform invites a diverse set of builders and more innovative solutions
The practice of depending on IT to build and maintain the organization’s entire library of integrations and automations is untenable.
In our State of Business Technology, we found that the dynamic leads to a significant number of integration and automation backlogs, as well as a fracture in the relationship between lines of business and IT. More specifically, 82% of the business technology professionals surveyed said that they’re experiencing integration and automation backlogs; and just 18% said they feel very appreciated by lines of business.
A low-code/no-code platform eliminates this problem entirely, as lines of business can build the integrations and automations independently (or collaboratively).
At Workato, we’ve seen first hand how our low-code/no-code platform not only enables non-technical users to build integrations and automations quickly, but also apply them to all kinds of situations.
For example, during the session, “The Path to Automation at Scale—Overcoming Automation’s 1% Problem” at Automate, we learned how FundBox, a platform that offers credit and payment solutions to small businesses, delivered a loan application program for the Paycheck Protection Program by using automation.
Basile Senesi, VP of Sales and Operations, explained that he was able to leverage Workato on the backend to complete all the steps in the loan processing flow. This allowed his developers to only focus on the front-end, which ultimately led their team to implement the loan application program in a matter of days. Senesi explained further:
You can learn more about Fundbox’s automation and uncover additional insights from other technology leaders by watching the full session.
2. A comprehensive governance structure keeps your data secure
Though it’s critical that you allow lines of business to build integrations and automations, it’s equally important that your data and your processes are kept safe.
To do this, the platform needs to provide you and your team with an audit log, role-based access controls, dependency analysis, among other features.
Sridevi Pasumarthi, VP of Corporate Engineering at Checkr, a platform that provides employee background checks, explains how robust governance features in a low-code/no-code platform like Workato allows her team to keep their apps secure:
3. A collection of pre-built automations helps facilitate quick adoption
Presenting a library of automations that other organizations have built can benefit any business user, regardless of where they fall in their automation journey.
If the business user, for example, already knows what process they want to automate and how they want to automate it, then they can quickly find the most relevant automation, copy it, and then customize it as needed.
Conversely, if the business user doesn’t know where to start, they can browse through the automations, filtering by specific categories that cater to their interests and apps that are relevant to their workflows.
You can visit our library of automations and connectors by visiting this page.
Beyond the platform: provide a collaborative and supportive environment for all builders
In addition to providing a platform that meets the requirements outlined above, automation at scale involves lines of business and IT working together effectively—especially when the former needs help with ideating and implementing more nuanced automations.
One way to facilitate effective collaboration is by having “office hours” where anyone can ask specific members of IT and engineering about their potential use cases for automation. Justin Ng, a Software Engineer at Slack, explained what this process looks like at his organization during his session at Automate (“Automation at Scale at Slack”):
To learn more about how Slack encourages employees across functions to ideate automations, you can tune into their session at Automate.
The IT team at Atlassian also goes the extra mile in ensuring that lines of business could build the integrations and automations they need to support their work.
For example, the IT team formed an Intelligent Automation (IA) sub-team that’s tasked with supporting and inspiring employees across the organization to build smarter business processes via Workato, among other low-code/no-code tools.
The IA team does this by making themselves available to all employees in a specific Slack channel, hosting brown-bag lunches to discuss specific use cases, and even providing boot camp-style trainings.
Related: The platform requirements for engaging in no-code automation
Ready to get started?
Workato, the leader in integration-led automation, provides a platform that meets the requirements outlined in this article—and much more.
To learn more about how Workato can help your employees integrate their apps and automate their workflows in ways that are collaborative, secure, and effective, you can schedule a demo with one of our automation experts.
