Automation solutions and projects are growing at a very rapid pace in the last couple of years, and they are clearly becoming a priority for business given the current circumstances of our world.

Many organizations willing to explore and implement automation, turn to well known consulting firms to assess products, strategies and concepts exist on the market, that can best suit their needs.

If we take some facts from those consulting firms, and these facts are based on numbers and well-observed trends, we see a growing importance and continuity in a few core concepts.

According to Gartner, Robotic Process Automation (RPA) is experiencing a double-digit growth rate despite the economic pressures of the current pandemic affecting the world.

Inside the TechnologyRadar of ThoughtWorks, we find that Camunda and its flexibility to adapt to projects of different calibres and constellations makes the tool a very solid alternative for Business Process Automation (BPA) projects.

Now, identifying some drivers that make automation projects possible, we have:

• Increase in productivity
• Continuous improvement of core business processes
• Reduction of cost during difficult times
• Visibility and transparency of processes that depend on separate and different components

We can come to the conclusion that until here, everything points to drivers and results. We wonder, what happens in between?

The answer is by no means, a definitive answer, neither short nor satisfactory for everyone. The answer itself is a process, where a number of organisations experience first-hand rewiring of paradigms and adoption of new ways of thinking and working.

We have observed a few things happening in a very wide range. For example, on the operational side, human nature comes up in the form of this common feeling that; we as a human, are being replaced by technology.

Another example, on a more managerial side, when the automation project does not fully cover the picture that was imagined, and organisation at all levels get a not so good feeling about automation. This feeling creates uneasiness and dissipates the benefits of using technology to advance to a more efficient way of working.

As we can see, what happens in between are as well real opportunities that automation brings. Not only the possibility to automate a core process but the chance to:

• Establishing new forms of collaboration in interdisciplinary teams
• Acquiring new perspectives and new dimensions of the process being automated and of the people around it
• Following a continuous improvement approach to keep processes always as a true reflection of the reality
• Growing in many aspects that impact the processes i.e. the process environment

Putting everything together, we can say that, an automation project and its implementation have different stages. Every stage brings opportunities for learning, and for adding to the organization valuable knowledge that truly impacts the overall experience.

This knowledge is a reflection of the organisation, it is the living proof that, yes, an organisation might be on its way to becoming automated, but the main actors are and will be the people that make that happen, and the human component of collaborating with our teams, understanding each other, reaching agreements and sharing common goals, in a word, the most important aspect for an automation project to happen is the human aspect.

Written by Gerardo Manzano
Developer JIT

Photo by Alexander Sinn on Unsplash