Just about all (99pc) organisations still spend considerable personnel time completing repetitive manual tasks, with 63pc spending more than a quarter of their time doing so, new research suggests.
The research commissioned by Vanson Bourne surveyed corporate decision-makers from 300 companies in the US and UK, and found that all organisations claim to automate processes to some degree, but this is largely limited to certain tasks and functions, such as billing (16pc) and HR/payroll (15pc).
Respondents, on average, claimed only 44pc of their IT and business processes are automated, despite about half of respondents believing many of their processes – IT, business intelligence and reporting – would benefit from greater levels of automation.
Eighty per cent of enterprises said automation delivered time savings; 70pc cited improved business productivity as the key benefit of automation; and 62pc said automation regularly provides cost savings.
So why not implement automation more often? The reasons survey respondents cited are not having the right knowledge to do so (51pc); managing complex processes (64pc), and being unable to integrate legacy applications with new applications (65pc).