In many organizations today, business functions are taking the lead on investments in automation technologies, particularly those tied to a specific use case. Think of leveraging application automation in finance, sales, or marketing. This has helped functions do more and with more accuracy, boosting productivity and improving business results.  “Hyperautomation” is the term Gartner has coined to describe this process of automating everything that it is possible to automate.  Who would say no to that?

Yet automation within siloed apps raises the risk of perpetuating still more applications, and, over time, greater system complexity and team member task switching. That is the wrong direction. Today, more than ever, CIOs are trying to reduce software redundancy and drive efficiency in the service of managing IT costs. To do that, you need to orchestrate automation across siloed applications, workstreams, and data sources.

It’s not that you need to stop business-unit-led automation. CIOs do, however, need to communicate a vision and strategy of how the organization will tie its distributed automation initiatives together in orchestrated automation that provides the backbone for holistic digital transformation. Without that vision and the CIO’s leadership, organizations risk hitting a tight limit in the real value they get from digital transformation.

 

Why is the current state of automation siloed?

According to data by McKinsey, spending on automation has increased, yet only 20% of organizations pursuing automation have scaled these technologies across multiple business areas. That suggests there is still time to orchestrate automation efforts. Not much time, though. Conversations and experimentation are well underway, much of it happening in scattered pockets of the organization. Why is that? Here are a few of the biggest reasons:

• Momentum for business-led IT. The past bane of “shadow IT” has morphed into business-led IT, as CIOs leverage business technologies to relieve some of the load on overworked IT teams. The benefits come, however, with challenges, especially when there is no strategy for bringing these business-led efforts together through strong governance, policies, and a plan to enable citizen automators.
• It is nearly impossible to quantify and track the ROI, or the total cost of ownership, of individual automation investments, let alone of orchestrated automation.
• Low tolerance for automation technology risk. Part of the appeal of siloed automation is that the approach helps contain risk to a specific business unit or process. Implementation risk may also be lower if automation capabilities are part of off-the-shelf software the company already uses. That is appealing to business leaders and the CFO, who often approves the budget.
• Embracing hyperautomation as a project with an endpoint rather than as part of a digital transformation strategy that includes orchestrated automation

Each of those factors may not be a problem today, but they can limit the future potential of automation in your organization, leading to subpar business results.  To leverage orchestrated automation and move into the fast track of digital transformation, CIOs need to sell a vision of holistic digital transformation enabled by end-to-end automation across departments, systems, and customers. Only then will the organizations see the full benefits and promise of automation and enable powerful AI.

 

Support business-led automation, but orchestrate them

CIOs can and should still support the business-led automation investments. They allow your organization to make progress in automating manual tasks.

Your best approach, in other words, is not to obstruct automation efforts but to have a plan for orchestrating each of those pocket implementations so that they combine into a synchronized system that performs together toward the shared goal of achieving higher productivity and identifying new sources of business value.

That requires an organization’s strategic vision of end-to-end automation, executed with technologies that connect and align disparate systems. To start creating that vision, take the following steps:

 

Step 1: Reframe the automation strategy to be holistic

You’ll be forgiven if your orchestrated automation strategy lacks specifics on how every siloed application, manual process, or AI solution can deliver a truly digital business. A lot has changed in the past two years, and this could make a strategy written in the early days of the hyperautomation craze feel obsolete. Take the opportunity now to revisit it with the goal of defining the current state of automation in your organization’s holistic digital transformation and how it will contribute to the business strategy.

You are not on your own in this. Involve your business partners to ensure the automation strategy reflects their priorities, goals, and projects while putting front and center the larger vision of integrated end-to-end orchestrated automation. Within that strategy and its aligned vision, you get everyone bought into the idea that each individual deployment represents one piece of what will eventually be an orchestrated collection of capabilities.

 

Step 2: Reinforce expectations of automation orchestration

Even as your business partners pursue their individual automation projects, use the language of orchestrated automation. It will probably be years before that is a reality — but it also takes years to change mindsets. What you are doing now is setting expectations and framing those siloed automation initiatives into a longer-term strategy. Furthermore, you can only achieve orchestrated automation if there is a clear vision and strategy that includes the ability to enable citizen automators. Your strategy must include the ability to enable nearly everyone in the company to easily add automations into your orchestrated automation strategy.

 

Step 3: Create a plan for increasing automation

Though automation deployments today may be limited to one, two, or three departments across the business, that is just the beginning. Identify the critical systems and applications that run the business and map their state of automation. Work with business partners to create a priority list of highly critical / low-automation systems that could deliver significant business outcomes benefits from automation.

This step could include partnering with back-office departments to engage in value stream and process mapping to visualize how the business runs today and redesign the processes and connections for orchestrated automated operations.

 

Step 4: Become the conductor and orchestrate all the automations for your business

CIOs must become the conductor — there is no one else in the business that can develop a true orchestrated automation strategy, and ultimately enable the promise of AI.  It requires the combined understanding of technology, work, and business strategy that only the CIO and IT team possess. Those CIO’s who step in to be the automation conductor will ensure the business moves into a highly flexible, efficient digital world.