Workato’s Second Annual Work Automation Index Shows Automation Surging Beyond IT

Workato’s industry report shows that finance, customer support and marketing automations are the biggest focus areas for businesses in the Asia Pacific and Japan  region. 

Workato, the leading enterprise automation platform, unveiled today  its second annual Work Automation Index, the company’s data report focused on the key trends  that shaped automation over the past year. For this year’s report, the anonymized data was  collected from 900 midsize to enterprise Workato customers who utilize automation across their organizations.

Twenty-one percent of these businesses have a presence in the Asia Pacific and  Japan region. The data revealed a massive shift in which departments are using automation  tools and creating those automations. At a time when the world is rapidly changing and  organizations are finding that how we work is continually evolving, automation has become the great equalizer, creating an opportunity to be more efficient and delivering better business  outcomes.  

Workato discovered that the role of IT has shifted from delivering projects to being an enabler of  the business. Sixty-six percent of organizations now have 5 or more departments using  automation and the number of organizations with seven departments automating has nearly  tripled since 2019.  

“It’s amazing to see that IT teams are now becoming the less dominant automation creators  within organizations. This demonstrates that when you have the right guardrails, the right  governorship, and the right tools in place, business users can create automations safely,” said  Carter Busse, CIO at Workato. “From finance becoming the most automated department to HR  seeing the value in automation to help improve the employee experience, we’ll continue to see  this type of growth and adoption as automation becomes more accessible across departments.”  

This year’s report identified the following key findings:  

● APJ and EMEA regions are tapping into the power of automation. For the APJ region, financial automations are a big focus with record-to-report growing 569 percent in  the past year, and procure-to-pay growing 514 percent. In EMEA, the growth in automations for processes like insights and analytics, which has grown 403 percent in  the past year, as well as in financial processes like record-to-report, and in IT operations. 

● Customer support operations is a big automation growth area in APJ. As retail  continues to migrate online, the region is turning to automation to meet the ongoing need for customers to easily return items. Returns and refunds automations increased by a  massive 1005 percent for our user base in APJ.  

● Departments outside of IT are automating more than ever before. The number of  organizations with seven departments automating has nearly tripled since 2019. Twenty three percent of automations were built by non-technical users in business operations  roles, the highest of any persona in both business and IT. 

● Finance rises to the top as the most automated department. Surpassing IT for the  first time, Finance departments made up 26 percent of all automations. Order-to-cash  continues to be one of the top automated processes with record-to-report automation  also seeing significant growth with a 290 percent increase. In the Asia Pacific and Japan  region, record-to-report and procure-to-pay are the top two most automated processes. 

● HR automation continues to be a focus with recruiting automations growing 316  percent As the competition for top talent continues and “work from anywhere” becomes  the norm, HR teams are using automation to stand out and improve the employee  experience right from the start.  

● Data creates a way for IT to add strategic value to the business. Businesses are striving to become more data-driven and to use their data to make real-time decisions.  The DataOps function is one of the top departments with 3x growth in automations in the  past year.  

“Business leaders increasingly recognize that pervasive use of automation technology leads to  improved efficiency, greater business agility, faster innovation, and shorter time to value,” said  Massimo Pezzini, Head of Research, Future of the Enterprise at Workato. “Consequently we’re  

seeing a foundational shift in how IT and business decision makers are embracing automation  tools. A business-led, IT-enabled democratized model will become the dominant approach to  automation over the next five years.”  

Designed to uncover the workflows used and the role automation plays across departments and  functions, the 2022 Work Automation Index analyzed 900 midsize ($50M to $2B in annual  revenue) to enterprise (over $2B in annual revenue) Workato customers who use automation in  their businesses. The team looked at all of the automated workflows created at these  companies from February 2021 to January 2022, as well as compared to the period from  February 2020 to January 2021 for year-over-year trends.  

Click here to access the full report. To learn more about Workato’s enterprise automation  solutions, visit http://www.workato.com.