Organizations are eyeing automation, but culture needs to catch up

Dive Brief:

Organizations are accepting disruptive technologies, evidenced by 72% of companies considering or already adopting robotic process automation (RPA), according to Deloitte's 2018 outsourcing survey of more than 500 executives internationally. The IT and finance industries are the largest RPA adopters followed by HR and legal.
About 64% of organizations view cloud adoption as a catalyst for IT innovation, yet 7% of organizations are neither considering nor adopting the cloud, according to the report. More than one-third of organizations still expect an increase in operating costs by moving to the cloud.
More companies, 35%, moved to contractually enforcing security protocols with providers. More audits were also completed in 2018 (61%) compared to 2016 (53%) and were concluded with less material issues being identified. Still, more than three-quarters of respondents said data privacy regulations were impacting 'their disruptive outsourcing decisions, according to Deloitte.

Dive Insight:

Challenges that arise from adopting disruptive technologies like the cloud include those faced in data migration, security and application manipulations, according to the report. RPA challenges include fragmented processes and a cultural resistance.

The cloud, however, is largely viewed as an emerged technology and therefore met with less resistance than automated solutions. Half of IT decision makers express having a difficult time convincing their board of IT investments. But unlike other technologies, the cloud requires little persuasion to get C-suite officials on board with its potential.

Its value isn't limited to a goal only the CIO can picture, but instead members of an organization recognize the cloud as a tool that improves business functions. However, RPA and other automated tools need more convincing on a cultural front.

Half of organizations have an organizational resistance to adopting RPA, thus contributing to implementation challenges, according to Deloitte. But with an experimental approach, in the form of agile or bimodal development, companies can move at more structured paces to ease into change.

Measuring how tools impact productivity is a gradual process and leaders should be cautious to not inundate employees with too many tools. But RPA and automation is a tech disruption 83% of employees agee will enable more innovative work processes.