The automation landscape has gone through a transformation in recent years. Intelligent automation is already redefining the human workforce by streamlining repetitive and unnecessary tasks to a digital workforce, empowering human workers to focus on more sophisticated work. But these hybrid workforces pose their own set of challenges to CIOs and IT teams.

On March 24th, 2022, Automation Anywhere hosted an event entitled, Understanding Intelligent Automation to Transform Your Digital Workforce, where thought leaders in automation came together to discuss the ways in which automation is changing the way their industries work, and how to manage this new workforce within the compliance and security standards required of them.

Here are a five key takeaways from the conversation:

1. Embrace new automation technologies

Ann Delmedico from Cognizant talked about the changes in automation technology in just the last few years that have allowed IT teams to empower workers to lead the design of automations in a way that will work for them.

“We’re in a place now where we can actually put the power of that digital productivity into the hands of the people who know the work best,” she said.

2. Get buy-in from the top

Citizen developers have changed the structure in which automations are developed, moving from a top-down model to something more grassroots. “Ultimately what it comes down to,” said Steven Nyikos of Splunk, “is understanding the balance between the skillsets that are necessary to build an automation, the time that’s gained from that automation, and getting top-down buy in and resourcing to implement them.”

Steven spoke about how important it was to make management feel confident that the resources they’re investing in automations aren’t a risk.

3. Stay aware of security and regulatory issues

“There is no IT department in the world funded to solve all the demand and problems of a company,” said Sharon Mandell of Juniper Networks. IT departments tend to focus on the biggest, most complex problems of a company.

For this reason, Sharon believes citizen developers can be a key tool in automating companies, but only if they work with the security and regulatory standards set forth. “If they’re really in tangential systems, it’s probably not a big deal,” she said, “but if they’re interacting with the web or transactional systems, you could create a security problem. So there has to be some kind of handshake between the two sides.”

4. Automation is not about eliminating jobs

Steven Nyikos spoke about the fear employees have of automation when they believe it will eliminate their jobs. “We’re not,” he said, “we’re replacing disengaged temporary work. You’re talking about a person who has one function spending a lot of time on not rewarding, not specialized, not value-driven work.”

The panelists spoke about the goal of automation ultimately being to empower employees to spend more time on the work that they specialize in and enjoy, rather than tedious but necessary tasks.

5. Automation is still growing

Many panelists spoke about how recent these new advances in automation technology have come into use, and the types of problems being solved by automations are getting more complex and more wide-spread.

When asked about the future of automation, Sharon Mandell answered simply, “lots more of it, and lots more people doing it.”

Interested in learning more about the future of automation? Access the full event content by filling out the form at the top of this page.