Workato, the leading enterprise automation platform, has unveiled its second annual Work Automation Index, the company’s data report focused on the key trends that shaped automation over the past year. For this year’s report, the anonymised data was collected from 900 midsize to enterprise Workato customers who utilise automation across their organisations. Twenty-one percent of these businesses have a presence in the Asia Pacific and Japan (APJ) region. The data revealed a massive shift in which departments are using automation tools and creating those automations. At a time when the world is rapidly changing and organisations are finding that how we work is continually evolving, automation has become the great equaliser, creating an opportunity to be more efficient and delivering better business outcomes.
Workato discovered that the role of IT has shifted from delivering projects to being an enabler of the business. Sixty-six percent of organisations now have five or more departments using automation and the number of organizations with seven departments automating has nearly tripled since 2019.
“It’s amazing to see that IT teams are now becoming the less dominant automation creators within organiSations. This demonstrates that when you have the right guardrails, the right governorship and the right tools in place, business users can create automations safely,” said Carter Busse, CIO at Workato. “From finance becoming the most automated department to HR seeing the value in automation to help improve the employee experience, we’ll continue to see this type of growth and adoption as automation becomes more accessible across departments.”
This year’s report identified the following key findings:
- APJ and EMEA regions are tapping into the power of automation. For the APJ region, financial automations are a big focus with record-to-report growing 569% in the past year and procure-to-pay growing 514%. In EMEA, automations for processes like insights and analytics has grown 40% in the past year, as well as in financial processes like record-to-report, and in IT operations.
- Customer support operation is a big automation growth area in APJ. As retail continues to migrate online, the region is turning to automation to meet the ongoing need for customers to easily return items. Returns and refunds automations increased by a massive 1,005% for Workato’s user base in APJ.
- Departments outside of IT are automating more than ever before. The number of organisations with seven departments automating has nearly tripled since 2019. Twenty-three percent of automations were built by non-technical users in business operations roles, the highest of any persona in both business and IT.
- Finance rises to the top as the most automated department. Surpassing IT for the first time, Finance departments made up 26% of all automations. Order-to-cash continues to be one of the top automated processes, with record-to-report automation also seeing significant growth with a 290% increase. In the APJ region, record-to-report and procure-to-pay are the top two most automated processes.
- Human resources automation continues to be a focus with recruiting automations growing 316% As the competition for top talent continues and “work from anywhere” becomes the norm, HR teams are using automation to stand out and improve the employee experience right from the start.
- Data creates a way for IT to add strategic value to the business. Businesses are striving to become more data-driven and to use their data to make real-time decisions. The DataOps function is one of the top departments with 3x growth in automations in the past year.
“Business leaders increasingly recognise that pervasive use of automation technology leads to improved efficiency, greater business agility, faster innovation and shorter time to value,” said Massimo Pezzini, Head of Research, Future of the Enterprise at Workato. “Consequently we’re seeing a foundational shift in how IT and business decision-makers are embracing automation tools. A business-led, IT-enabled democratised model will become the dominant approach to automation over the next five years.”
Designed to uncover the workflows used and the role automation plays across departments and functions, the 2022 Work Automation Index analysed 900 midsize (USD $50 million to USD $2 billion in annual revenue) to enterprise (over USD $2 billion in annual revenue) Workato customers that use automation in their businesses. The team looked at all of the automated workflows created at these companies from February 2021 to January 2022, as well as compared to the period from February 2020 to January 2021 for year-over-year trends.
Click here to access the full report. To learn more about Workato’s enterprise automation solutions, visit www.workato.com.
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