Dive Brief:

• Martin Chavez, CIO for Goldman Sachs Group, said IT automation is key to the firm's future growth.

• Chavez said the company will move toward open platform and plans to introduce more IT automation in the near future. Chavez spoke at the Code/Enterprise Series event in New York this week.

• Goldman targeted some areas "ripe for workflow automation" by creating a flow chart that included the 160 steps involved in a traditional IPO process.

Dive Insight:

To remain competitive, businesses need to be able to "sort through huge volumes of data and to respond quickly to a market geared toward quickly moving, data-intensive, mobile customers," said Chavez. And that means IT automation.

"With financial leverage gone, the only thing you've got is old-fashioned operating leverage, automating things, workflow efficiencies," Chavez said. "There are a lot of respects in which our business is becoming more like Wal-Mart, having the right products on the shelves before the clients actually show up to buy them." 

Chavez is not the only IT executive touting IT automation. When Hewlett-Packard CEO Meg Whitman announced that the company would layoff 25,000 to 30,000 people earlier this month, she also pointed to IT automation as a key component of future growth.