Complexity is the first barrier to automation adoption

Lack of digital skills - at least partly the result of complex business practices - is the single biggest blocker to automation

Although businesses are increasingly adopting automation, there are hurdles they must overcome before they can claim to have fully enabled the technology. According to the results of Computing research, presented in a new whitepaper, these barriers can be divided into three areas: the three Cs of business process automation (BPA).

The first is Complexity: an element that is not only driving automation adoption, but ironically also one of the key factors frustrating it.

According to participants in our research, the single biggest automation blocker is a lack of skills and the right people to actually push automation through. The skills shortfall is at least in part a result of infrastructure complexity.

The skills required to manage this complexity and to integrate applications to the degree necessary to automate workflows are considerable. The shortfall in digital expertise has been widely documented, and complex data integration is rarely a core skill - hence the rising use of external specialists to resolve integration challenges.

After the skills shortage, the two most commonly-cited barriers to automation adoption were both related to applications and the movement of data between them. 40 per cent of respondents said that their present applications did not support automation, and 39 per cent mentioned the inability to integrate data between applications.

Legacy applications were named as the most significant challenge arising specifically from the application area, cited by 65 per cent of survey participants. 44 per cent named bespoke and homegrown applications; 39 per cent said that it was the lack of integration capabilities; and 33 per cent had a problem with vendor lock-in.

This mix of untouchable bespoke and legacy applications, sharp vendor practice, multiple platforms and limited integration is incredibly volatile, which leads to reluctance from all concerned to do anything that might start a metaphorical fire.

The solution is to focus on data, not applications, by introducing data management capabilities alongside integrations. To find out more, read the whitepaper.