The New (And Old) Automation Trends Surfacing at Automate 2022

We are so grateful to all of you who joined us for day one of Automate 2022. The registrations are north of 28,000 as of the latest count, more than double last year's record-breaking number. It is so exciting to watch the enterprise automation movement grow year after year.

Last year, our conference focused on how companies can respond to unpredictability. This year, we are elevating unstoppable companies who have turned challenges into rocket fuel.

These companies have packed the schedule at Automate 2022 with the most inspiring leaders and experts on enterprise automation. If you missed the event today, don’t despair - you can still register for day two and three!

I wanted to take a quick look at 5 of the most exciting trends we heard about in today's sessions:

Moving away from point-to-point integration

Kim Huffman, CIO of TripActions, joined the opening keynote this year. She spoke about how they view a services-oriented, API-driven architecture as a foundation for their success, because it offers distinct advantages over the point-to-point integration approaches of the past. The flexibility, scalability, and other key values gained from this approach make it a clear winner.

It's a trend that has been increasing in recent years. Companies are recognizing the value of an end-to-end process perspective, the power of reusability, and faster reactions to growth opportunities.

Recognizing that silos hamper organizational maturity

Silos are not a new topic of discussion in enterprise IT, but they are no less relevant today. Kyle Jackson, Sr. Director of Business Systems from Seismic, shared great insights on how his team has addressed silos over the past year. He acknowledged that silos crop up over the natural course of startup growth due to the pace of hiring and app procurement. While it solves early challenges, inevitably, teams down the road have to deal with the mess.?

As Kyle’s team began to chart their course, they recognized that Rome wasn’t built in a day, and started their transformation with the CRM-ERP integration. However, they had their eyes on moving away from the centralized model of management. In Kyle’s words, they have managed to align IT to the revenue center of the organization, a powerful statement!

I saw parallels to the opening keynote conversation with Prakash Kota, CIO of Autodesk, who speaks similarly to what is appropriate at different stages in a company’s growth. Prakash has watched it all unfold as his career has grown with Autodesk as they have scaled from $0B-$1B, and from $1B to nearly $5B today. In the early days, there is less to be done and more can be placed on individual shoulders. But as the company scales, silos, and centralized expertise are no longer workable.??

Self-healing automation

One trend I’m really excited about is self-healing automation. It’s a sign of a more mature automation program, and something Yotam Sturlezi, Financial Systems Team Lead from WalkMe talked about in his session on their quote-to-cash automation program. At Workato, we call this RecipeOps. It describes automations that monitor and maintain other automated processes. They use this approach to monitor for failed jobs. They have been able to improve their successful job rate from 80% (before Workato) to north of 97% today.

Moving from apps to processes

The opening keynote had a valuable explanation of the differences between task-based thinking and a process or systems mindset. The delta is wide – on one end of the spectrum, people feel like pawns as they are left thinking about their unchanging motions as part of the bigger assembly line. But on the process thinking side, we have the chance to explore ways to elevate our people and organizations by looking at entire end to end processes.

Harish Ramani, CIO of Helen of Troy, points out that IT has this unique vantage point on the? enterprise, what he calls the helicopter view, or the bigger picture view on the enterprise. At that vantage point, process-centered thinking is a responsibility.

Dave Schuman, VP of Data Operations and Enterprise Architecture at Precisely, shares this view. He talked today about how the company has begun thinking about the overall business process and less about what is “happening in the CRM” or “happening in the ERP.” He made the great point that it really starts at the top – that executive sponsorship is key, and adopting automation holistically needs to be a CEO level strategic priority to help drive success in organizations long term.

Ask why

As we were preparing the Automate agenda this year, we were inspired by a quote from Steve Jobs during his time leading NeXT – he pointed out: “In most companies, you ask "why do we do it this way?" and the answer is "that's the way it's always been done." He goes on to say that employees should always have an opportunity to question what has been done and suggest a better way. It’s the right way to run a business today – and it is certainly the right way to treat business processes. Hallie Moser from AvidXchange shared that perspective when she encouraged attendees to not be afraid to ask “why” and uncover root issues behind challenges.

It is never too late to start asking why. And if you are asking yourself why you missed out on the first day of the best automation conference of the year, never fear! There are two more days of stellar content, so register now!

See you all tomorrow!