IT process automation maximizes productivity and minimizes inefficiency by eliminating or reducing reliance on manual tasks in key IT workflows. Here’s how it works.

IT process automation (ITPA) uses technology to streamline IT services, support, and administration through automated workflows. By automating complex, high-volume IT processes, organizations can reduce errors, improve data integrity, and maximize efficiency. 

Optimizing an IT department with automation begins with understanding the purpose and methods of IT process automation (ITPA).

In this article, we’ll explore what it takes to implement IT process automation in your organization. Here’s what we’ll cover:

• What ITPA is
• Benefits of ITPA
• Limitations of ITPA
• ITPA vs. other types of process automation
• IT process automation examples
• How to implement ITPA in your organization

Let’s start by defining what we mean by ITPA.

What is IT process automation?

IT process automation is the practice of using customized workflows to automate high-volume, repetitive IT tasks, ultimately reducing or eliminating manual steps. It’s like lining up digital dominos, where a predetermined schedule, a particular event (like an email or form submission), or a predefined condition (like changes in datasets) triggers a series of actions that take place within one or more IT applications.

These automated workflows typically depend on a unique mix of API integrations between business applications, and organizations will often develop their own IT process automation software in-house to facilitate these workflows and ensure they operate according to the organization’s specific needs. This is why IT departments turn to no-code development platforms like Bubble, so they can quickly produce secure, quality business applications that enable ITPA.

With Bubble, you can produce internal tools to accommodate your specific ITPA needs. Your custom Bubble app can integrate with thousands of other tools to build and oversee workflows from a single place, and our robust ecosystem of plugins, extensions, and third-party services make it easy to add whatever functionality your organization needs to automate IT processes. As a full-stack no-code development platform, Bubble greatly increases your speed of development, so you can automate processes more rapidly.

Benefits of IT process automation

By eliminating or reducing your reliance on manual workflows, IT process automation can provide several key benefits to your organization.

Improved communication

IT process automation tools improve communication by increasing transparency, eliminating common communication gaps, and delivering important information faster. When events trigger automated alerts and messaging, there’s no delay while you wait for someone to notice the event and notify the right people. There’s also no opportunity for someone to forget to relay the information or to leave someone out of key messaging. Everyone who needs to know about an event learns about it at the same time, and stays on the same page. 

Reduced errors

The more manual steps in your IT processes, the more room there is for human error. ITPA workflows reduce opportunities for employees to forget steps, neglect them, or complete them incorrectly. 

Increased efficiency

Manual processes are inherently slower than automated alternatives. IT process automation software can react to events nearly instantly and complete tasks in seconds, even when multiple steps need to be completed at once. Humans, on the other hand, can’t monitor data, messages, and network events 24/7. They can’t react until they encounter the information that requires action, and if they’re occupied with other important tasks, the IT workflow will be delayed. IT process automation keeps workflows moving as efficiently as possible by reducing reliance on human attention, availability, and action.

Drawbacks of IT process automation

IT process automation is immensely valuable — but it still has its limitations. Before you build or adopt an IT process automation tool, it’s important to consider the work it’ll take to keep it running smoothly, and situations it’s not well suited for.

Ongoing maintenance and audits

IT process automation software needs regular maintenance to keep your workflows performing as expected, and healthy ITPA processes include regular audits and updates. So while ITPA can save a lot of IT hours, some of that saved time needs to be periodically reinvested back into the processes themselves to verify that they’re still working and explore ways to improve them further.

Lack of human interpretation

Automated solutions lack human intuition. Effective workflows drop ambiguity and break tasks into defined, actionable steps, so any process that relies on human interpretation isn’t a good candidate for automation. If steps in an IT workflow can’t be distilled into “if this, then that,” automating those steps could create more problems than it solves.

How ITPA compares to other types of process automation

Automation remains one of the greatest growth opportunities facing modern organizations. As companies, nonprofits, and government entities seek to shift away from time-consuming manual workflows, they may turn to several different kinds of process automation.

While the scope of IT process automation is limited to IT departments, several other types of process automation can encompass IT processes as well. Business process automation (BPA), robotic process automation (RPA), and digital process automation (DPA) all have significant overlap. This can be confusing, but they each refer to a broad category of process automation.

ITPA vs. BPA

Business process automation (BPA) is the automation of organizational processes. Just about any workflow your business automates could be described as BPA. This includes workflows in HR, administration, accounting, sales, marketing, customer service, IT, and more. When an organization automates things like recruiting, invoices, lead management, and marketing communications, that all falls under business process automation. 

ITPA vs. RPA

Robotic process automation (RPA) uses software to perform repetitive tasks. It often relies on hardware, but it can involve API or database connections too. Some common examples of RPA are in customer service, where chatbots and automated phone answering services can assist a large percentage of customers and escalate interactions to live agents as needed. It’s also common in situations that involve monitoring digital or physical data, like inventory management, where reaching a certain amount of stock can trigger an order for additional inventory.

ITPA vs. Digital Process Automation (DPA)

DPA typically uses low-code or no-code development solutions to streamline complex workflows involving many departments, tools, and techniques. While it’s similar enough to robotic process automation to be used synonymously, some definitions of DPA specifically use it to describe end-to-end automation, with a focus on improving UX.

So, in summary:

• BPA is the automation of business processes. 
• RPA is the use of software to automate processes. 
• DPA is the use of low-code or no-code development to automate processes. 

Any of these can include ITPA, which specifically refers to automating IT processes. 

How organizations are automating processes on Bubble 

• The City of Atlanta’s Procurement Department uses their custom Bubble app to facilitate common procurement workflows. 
• La Metro used Bubble to automate the process of synchronizing site reports from their 300-person team. 
• Seagate used Bubble to automate order fulfillment, device procurement, and other workflows across a suite of 11 connected apps.

IT process automation examples

IT process automation has numerous use cases and can take many different forms. Any time you automate some or all of the steps in an IT workflow, that’s IT process automation at work. 

Here are some real-world examples of IT process automation.

Compliance automation

IT departments spend significant time and resources testing and reporting on the compliance of various tools and updates, as well as the administrative tasks associated with these processes. Bubble’s powerful logic capabilities can be used to automate compliance workflows by creating and sending compliance reporting forms after a triggering event.

Bug reporting and testing

When customers and employees report bugs, it typically needs to be documented in a particular format and then routed to the correct team. As IT personnel complete various stages in testing, fixing, and reporting on bugs, this progress needs to be documented and other parties may need to be alerted. ITPA empowers teams to focus on finding solutions, rather than navigating the administrative steps behind bug reporting and testing. This also helps eliminate inconsistencies in how engineers document and communicate throughout the process.

Network automation

System upgrades, patches, and configuration changes are tedious but necessary IT processes that can often be scheduled for times when they’ll be least disruptive. Automating these system changes can help prevent common network performance issues and reduce the risk of IT personnel forgetting to implement the change or doing so at a non-ideal time.

Automated service requests and ticketing

Service requests and support tickets are one of the most common ways people interact with IT departments, and they often involve several handoffs and follow-up messages to ensure that the right personnel have the information they need to resolve the request. Each of these transitions has the potential to cause issues to “fall through the cracks” and go unaddressed. 

ITPA lets you track, assign, and organize service requests and tickets without requiring manual effort or human intervention. This improves communication and support by eliminating missed touch points and lost tasks.

Of course, there are tools dedicated to this process, but depending on the complexity of your workflows, the number of connections you’ll need to make, and the breadth of tasks you’d like to automate, you’ll often be better off building a custom ITPA application with Bubble. While a dedicated solution may have decent out-of-the-box functionality, a custom Bubble app gives you complete control over your ITPA capabilities.

Automated messaging and notifications

Communication is a common pain point for IT departments. Automated messages and notifications improve the accuracy and efficiency of communications by preventing delays and streamlining messages. For example, Bubble integrates with email management systems, allowing you to automatically send a message to the support team every time a support ticket is created.

Server automation

Server maintenance processes are rife with opportunities for automation. Restarts, shutdowns, disk space cleanup, backups, restores, provisioning, and de-provisioning are all tasks that IT personnel can schedule in advance to minimize ‌disruption. 

Automated asset tracking and management

Automated equipment oversight reduces losses and improves return rates by keeping accurate records of who has equipment and where assets are currently located. Every change to an asset’s status gets logged, so when something goes missing, you can easily track down who had it last. You can also automate reminders to return assets when they haven’t been received in time, or someone’s scheduled usage period has passed. 

Bubble’s asset management capabilities let you build custom tools to oversee assets from onboarding through offboarding and everything in between.

How to implement IT process automation

Unfortunately, you can’t simply flip a switch and “turn on” automation. Getting IT process automation right requires thoughtful planning, execution, and maintenance. Here’s how to implement ITPA from start to finish in your organization.

Step 1: Identify opportunities for automation

It doesn’t make sense to automate every workflow. As you consider which processes will yield the greatest benefits to your organization, you’ll want to consider five criteria. An IT process is a good fit for automation if it’s:

1. High-volume: Organizations gain the most significant boost in efficiency by automating high-volume processes. The more often the workflow needs to happen or the more time it takes employees, the more valuable process automation becomes.
2. Error-prone: Processes prone to human error can often be significantly improved through automation. These errors may occur due to delays and lack of prioritization, inconsistently following steps, negligence, or just mistakes.
3. A series of subtasks: The process can be broken into actions and reactions that each represent a “subtask” your organization can automate. Even complex processes can be automated, as long as you can reduce them to clear, actionable steps.
4. Fully automatable: The process doesn’t require manual intervention to continue from end-to-end. You can certainly automate subtasks of manual processes wherever possible, but ideally, you want to focus on workflows you can fully automate.
5. In a stable environment: Exceptions, technical errors, and unexpected conditions break down automated processes, so you want to consider workflows where these disruptions are unlikely to occur.

Once you’ve identified the IT processes you could automate, it’s time to align your list with your organization’s pain points. 

Step 2: Connect your ITPA initiative to goals

Understanding your organization’s goals will help you move from a list of what could be automated to a list of what should be automated.

Do you need to increase the number of completed service requests per month? Are you looking to lower the amount of asset loss per year? Maybe you simply want to reduce the time spent on administrative tasks. Or to decrease service impacts caused by network-related processes. Perhaps you want to eliminate errors caused by delayed responses to a category of events that’s been especially disruptive.

The point is to zero in on the IT processes that would be most beneficial to your organization if they were automated. Then you’ll be ready to look at developing your unique ITPA software.

Step 3: Evaluate ITPA resources and requirements

In this step, you need to evaluate your resources and the expected technical requirements to automate the tasks identified in Step 2. 

Evaluate your team’s technical capabilities and capacity. IT process automation tends to be so specific to your organization’s needs that an in-house solution is the most effective route. But coding custom business applications comes with significant overhead, and many organizations don’t have the dev resources to spare. That’s why IT teams often turn to Bubble’s full-stack programming platform to create custom IT process automation apps without coding. Multiple departments can participate in development, and you can customize roles and permissions for your users and collaborators. And with Bubble’s simple drag-and-drop interface and massive library of plugins, you can rapidly accelerate the development process and build integrations without labor-intensive manual coding. You get greater flexibility than a standardized ITPA solution and faster, more affordable implementation than a custom-coded solution.

Evaluate your ITPA development needs. No matter how you’re building your ITPA software, you’ll be looking at a similar set of technical needs:  

• Connections between your data and tools: APIs or native connections between all the tools and applications required to complete each workflow. XML, email, Command Line Interface, and web services are typical integrations in an IT process automation app, but the exact integrations you need depend on the tools your organization uses in each IT process. Bubble offers an extensive plugin marketplace and custom solutions to ensure your custom app can integrate with whatever tools you need.
• Workflow builder and logic: An intuitive workflow builder is the hallmark of an effective ITPA tool. Bubble lets you build out fully customized workflows with an easy-to-use drag-and-drop interface, so you can break down processes into subtasks and create workflows that match the branches. This ensures each process can flow into a series of related steps.
• Triggers: Actions and data types from one tool should be able to activate workflows in another. Different workflows and steps may require different kinds of triggers. Your ITPA solution should let you choose between scheduled, manual, and event-based triggers as needed. 
• Collaboration and permission management: As you manage, automate, and update your IT processes, it may involve stakeholders from multiple teams and departments with varying levels of authorization. Your app’s permissions and collaborators should be able to control who can add workflows, make changes, and stop processes. Bubble makes it easy to collaborate with version control, permission settings, point-in-time recovery, and account provisioning. So you always know who changed what, and only the people who need access to your ITPA tools will have it.
• A central dashboard: Your organization’s automated IT processes should be visible in one central dashboard where you can oversee them all, check statuses, workflow paths, and bottlenecks. Bubble pushes data in real time, so you always know what’s happening.
• Reporting: To ensure your automated processes are working as intended, your app should collect data on automation and performance over time, and ideally provide detailed reports on relevant metrics.
• Templating: Some IT processes you’ll want to automate will have similar pages and components. Instead of repeating the work to create these components for every process, you should be able to turn frequent subtasks into reusable templates.

Step 4: Deconstruct IT processes into actionable steps

In order to automate an IT process, you need to break it into individual steps defined by logical statements. Each workflow is a series of actions and reactions, and for software to follow the workflow, you have to translate human processes by framing each step as a logic statement. For example, a workflow about support tickets might use logic statements like, “If a user submits a support request categorized as [brand], [application] will notify [brandsupport]@[company.com].” Some steps will obviously require multiple logic statements to account for variables.

Step 5: Recreate the steps to build your ITPA solution

Once you’ve broken a workflow into all of the necessary logic statements and organized and connected them, you have a complete, automated IT process. 

When each step has the connections it needs to function (either through native integrations or APIs), test each workflow by activating any relevant triggers.

Assuming each workflow functions as intended, you can take your custom ITPA solution live when you’re ready. 

Then you just need to maintain it.

Step 6: Monitor your automated IT processes

ITPA monitoring ensures your workflows are performing correctly, and allows you to recognize trends and identify problems. Collect data that relates to each workflow’s key performance indicators, and generate automated reports to make analyzing performance simple. There are limitless possibilities to display automation data. Organize reporting into easy-to-digest visual representations that relate to each goal.

Step 7: Audit your ITPA workflows

Examine automated processes for opportunities regularly to refine your ITPA workflows and address bottlenecks or emergent issues. Processes evolve and laws change, so plan on performing regular audits and updates. You may find additional variables to incorporate in certain steps, or new steps that would improve the end result. The complexity and importance of each IT process should guide how often you choose to audit them.

Bring IT process automation to your organization

With a clear roadmap to ITPA implementation, it’s time to put the power of automation to work for you. While IT departments tend to have similar processes and workflows, your organization has a unique set of tools, protocols, goals, and needs, which calls for a unique IT process automation solution. 

By building your own ITPA application on Bubble, you can ensure it has everything your teams need to be effective — now and in the future.

Start building your ITPA app with no-code

Building your IT process automation solution doesn’t have to be a time-consuming development process. With a powerful full-stack no-code development solution like Bubble, you can use visual programming to build the application you need in weeks, not months.