ServiceNow Survey: 2018 Will Be Big Year for Enterprise Automation

SERVICENOW KNOWLEDGE17 — Highly automated companies are six times more likely to experience revenue growth of more than 15 percent, according to a new report by enterprise software vendor ServiceNow.

The report, “Today’s State of Work: At the Breaking Point,” was released during ServiceNow’s Knowledge 17 conference Tuesday in Orlando, Florida. The company surveyed more than 1,850 corporate leaders – C-level, VPs, directors and managers – in seven countries.

Chris Pope, ServiceNow’s senior director of strategy, tells Channel Partners that nine out of 10 respondents said that by 2020, “we’ve got to have our act together; we’ve got to be in a good shape by then.”

“It was a real eye-opener for us … IT now are really talking about the benefit to the business and how they can bring value,” he said.

A majority of organizations have introduced advanced automation in their workplace, and nearly half of executives surveyed said they will require it more broadly by 2018 to cope with rising work volumes.

Adding machines to everyday work drives revenue growth, creates new job opportunities and connects employees back to the work they want to do, according to the survey.{ad}

ServiceNow this week launched its Intelligent Automation Engine. Tony Beller, ServiceNow’s vice president of worldwide alliances and channels, said partners of all types are looking for ways to “make more money with things like this.”

“So how do we automate the enterprise, how do we create intelligent automation and things like that,” he said. “We’re doing everything we can to our platform to make it easy to implement with a lot of best practices, so partners need to monetize stuff around that because customers don’t want heavy customization.”

More than half of those surveyed have started using intelligent automation in one or more business processes, while 87 percent plan to investigate or use intelligent automation moving forward.

“In a world of smarter homes, cars and commerce, the workplace has been a holdout — but not for long,” said Dave Wright, ServiceNow’s chief strategy officer. “The shift to greater automation is coming now to transform everyday work.”

Companies with more than 20 percent revenue growth are 61 percent automated on average, whereas those with flat or negative growth are only 35 percent automated, according to the survey.

Executives believe automation can create jobs despite employees’ fears of job losses. Some 79 percent believe automation could lead to job creation, while 87 percent said employees are worried that automation will eliminate jobs.

The top three obstacles to automation adoption include: committing the resources (budget and personnel) required; employees’ resistance to change; and concerns about eliminating jobs.