A Focus on Automation

Written by Allison Francis
January 1, 1970

Automation will become increasingly important as time and resources become even more precious commodities. The more you can automate, the more teams can focus on meaningful initiatives that support customers and drive business/revenue.

“When looking at business intelligence, automation must be a consideration. This means increasing expectations of what MSPs’ tech investment should do to help meet business objectives (greater business outcomes as a result of investing in technology — no longer just looking at it as ‘utility’). We’ve been driving conversations about these topics with our clients, and they are starting to see these capabilities as more important as time goes on. Whether it be business intelligence, robotic process automation or other technology enablers for their business, this will be more expected and welcomed by business leaders.” —David Markley, president, Stronghold Data

“Automation is another area where we will see explosive growth within the SMB market. Large enterprises started investing heavily into robotic process automation (RPA) several years ago and are already realizing the benefits of their investments. Thanks to millions of dollars from private equity and venture capitalists, RPA software is now working downstream to the SMB market and will be a viable solution for smaller, operationally mature MSPs. This automation wave will certainly help with the labor shortage we are experiencing within the technology space by allowing MSPs to perform more work without hiring more people. However, the true benefits of automation are:

Increased quality control since automation requires everything to be done the same way every time, unlike a human that might miss a step.
Faster time to resolution since automation can run 200 tasks with the click of a mouse button.
Fewer escalations because engineers will be able to perform tasks above their technical ability. Once a senior engineer automates a complex process, lower-level engineers will be able to perform that same task with the same level of quality.

Security controls will obviously be an area of concern with this increase in automation; however, that same automation could be used to increase security. RPA can be leveraged to monitor for accounts with MFA temporarily disabled or execute employee terminations ensuring that a human does not miss a step that leaves an account open and the organization at risk.” —Myles Keough, CEO, Spade Technology

Tags:

Allison Francis

Allison Francis is a writer, public relations and marketing communications professional with experience working with clients in industries such as business technology, telecommunications, health care, education, the trade show and meetings industry, travel/tourism, hospitality, consumer packaged goods and food/beverage. She specializes in working with B2B technology companies involved in hyperconverged infrastructure, managed IT services, business process outsourcing, cloud management and customer experience technologies. Allison holds a bachelor's degree in public relations and marketing from Drake University. An Iowa native, she resides in Denver, Colorado.