Convergence of Process Automation, Data Analytics, and Cloud

Sreekanth Lapala

CEO,
TenXLabs

*Decision Making - Once the processes are automated, system allows seamless collection of important data, which then can be analyzed to make decisions.

To benefit from automation and data collection, companies must bring together these two business enablers. Most organizations use Automation and Data Analytics technologies to serve separate purposes that seldom overlap. For the most part, Data Analytics doesn't focus on process, and Automation doesn't provide metrics or an aggregate view of the process. This situation reflects the predominant view that these are different technologies that each stands alone, delivering value to the organization each in its own way. Data Analytics sharpens Automation and the convergence improves decision making.

Along with studying the metrics collected by the automated process, the need to study the employee's behavioral pattern is also increasing. Going forward this could lead to interesting information to enhance employee experience resulting in higher employee retention levels.

How to achieve this? Given that SMEs may not have an exhaustive IT strategy or IT budgets. Leveraging cloud based solutions is the answer.

After linking the Automation and Data Analytics, if the CIO can also decide to take advantage of the next wave of IT transformation in the form of Cloud Computing, then this could be a perfect storm. While virtualization has helped abstract the computing resources from the hardware thereby increasing the through put of datacenters, SOA helped organizations access independent building blocks over the internet for performing specific functions. This is independent of platforms and programming languages. If a company doesn't like their existing business analytics tool, they should be able to link up to another tool on the cloud for better results rather than spend a lot of time and money for integration and implementation. Such is the power of Cloud computing.

Cloud computing has also enabled an entirely new delivery model for software. Earlier companies had to invest a lot in hardware, software and implementation. This made the decision making very hierarchical when having to adopt new technologies. Cloud computing has changed all of this.

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