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The pandemic has become an inflection point for businesses to go digital, especially in terms of automation.
A study by International Data Corp predicts that 65% of organisations in Asia-Pacific will have automated their operations by this year. Another study by Harvard Business Review Analytic Services found that firms in the region are planning to invest 6% more in business process automation than firms in other regions.
“The pandemic leaves organisations with no choice but to automate so they can continue to serve the market,” says Eric Quah, country manager of Red Hat Malaysia Sdn Bhd.
An open-source software service provider, Red Hat provides automation solutions for organisations, using technology to reduce human intervention in the performance of tasks.
“Any industry that has repetitive tasks can use automation, but it is more prevalent in the manufacturing, robotics and automotive industries, as well as in the world of technology — in IT systems and business decision-making software,” he points out.
According to Red Hat, there has been a surge in organisational demand for automation, especially after the Movement Control Order was announced in March last year. Quah says Red Hat alone embarked on more than 10 automation projects in 2020.
“Our automation portfolio has shown the fastest growth, recording a triple-digit increase. This comes as no surprise as automation has become a need,” he adds.
One of the prominent automation platforms provided by Red Hat is the Ansible Automation Platform. According to the company, the platform is “a simple, game-changing and agentless IT automation technology for the management of IT environments at scale” that improves and optimises processes.
Under Ansible’s simple automation framework, network administrators who had previously worked in silos can finally speak the same automation language as the rest of the IT organisation. There are nearly 3,000 unique contributors with more than 32,000 commits on the upstream Ansible open source project.
What does this mean? To contribute source code to most large software projects, one must make modifications and then “commit” those changes to a central version control system. These are known as “commits”.
Owing to its ease of use, Ansible received an award for being a leader in infrastructure automation platforms in the third quarter of last year from Forrester, a global market research company that specialises in technology.
Quah says a few prominent organisations, ranging from governmental institutions to start-ups, have adopted Red Hat’s automation products, including the Social Security Organisation (Socso) and Ascend Money.
Among other things, automation increases productivity and eliminates the need to focus on repetitive tasks. “With specific processes frequently happening the same way, we can know exactly when processes, tests, updates and workflows are going to happen, how long they will take and whether these outcomes can be trusted,” says Quah.
According to Red Hat, the automation platform enables easier identification of knowledge gaps and the ability to address these gaps by codifying existing knowledge. The platform also brings consistency as well as empowers process evolution and business-driven workflows by establishing an automation framework, tooling and techniques, it adds.
The company’s automation platform serves as a sandbox where organisations can try out new approaches through trial and error.
Quah says many people have misconceptions about what automation is all about and that poses challenges in implementation. Many experts tend to oversimplify the concept when they are explaining it, which leads to such misunderstandings, he points out.
Meanwhile, it is challenging to implement automation in some organisations as they are made up of various business units, which have different key performance indicators (KPIs) and are not on the same page, says Quah. “Culture is one of the big challenges in terms of automation in an organisation. To successfully go through the transformation, it’s not about how fast we can deliver technology or products and services to customers. It’s about how quickly they can change their mindset about work and adapt.”
Right now, most large organisations have already begun automating their processes, but the government wants small and medium enterprises to get with the programme too. In fact, its initiatives under the Penjana programme include awarding smart automation grants to SMEs and mid-tier companies to cover up to 50% of the cost of automation, up to a maximum amount of RM200,000.
Red Hat wants to work with the government to ensure that SMEs and mid-tier companies are able to undertake digital transformation and automate some of their processes. This can be done, in part, by providing these companies with consultations on how they can automate selected processes to achieve greater effectiveness and efficiency, says Quah.
Source: https://www.theedgemarkets.com/article/digital-transformation-facilitating-automation-process-companies