Automation advantages hindered by security fears

Latest statistics from Osirium’s new 2022 IT Automation survey suggests that 93% of respondents believe that delegating tasks to IT help desks comes with a perceived degree of risk. The main causes for concern are security risks (51%), compliance risks (45%) and performance risks (43%). Whilst nine in ten (92%) respondents said they delegate some specific IT tasks like account/user management to front-line desk staff, less than half (43%) delegate most of this work.

The most cited reason for not delegating more work is risk (30%), whilst other concerns included concerns that the help desk would not know how to do the tasks (26%) and not trusting others to do the work (21%). This all points to manual operations being expensive, hard to transfer and hard to audit which prohibits more delegation.

Encouragingly, IT teams are starting to deploy automation for common IT tasks. Robot Process Automation (RPA) is used by less than half (41%) of organisations for IT automation at present. Interestingly, 35% said not using RPA was due to it only having limited applicability, whilst 17% commented that RPA was not suitable for IT operations. Of those businesses yet to explore RPA, 46% said that whilst they are investigating where in their business processes it could be introduced, there were associated costs with robots/licenses that could still be the main barrier to entry for 62%. 31% also shared that cost to build the RPA automation scripts were of some concern.

It is acknowledged, however, that there are lots of positives to be gained from automation, with half of those surveyed (49%) saying it would improve their compliance and auditing processes. Others felt that the time saved could be re-invested in training and development (41%), driving growth or innovation within the business (37%) or, indeed, taking time off to focus on personal wellbeing.

“There is currently a gap between hopes for automation and the ability of technology like RPA to deliver,” said David Guyatt, Co-Founder and CEO at Osirium.  “IT teams should look at the forms of automation best suited to the security and operational needs of the business as, operationally, there are advantages to be gained.  Furthermore, it can also free up valuable resources to support more strategic IT initiatives, particularly in competitive market conditions when tech talent is in high demand.”