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CIO Guide
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Contents
Introduction 03

What do we mean by automation? 04

1 Automation has been harder than it needs to be 05

Top three challenges to automation

2 Begin building your automation strategy 06

Getting started
Sourcing and prioritizing automations

3 Taking the modern approach to business process management 10

Domain ownership
Adopting a product mindset
Future-proofing your organization

What’s next? 14
Introduction
Organizations succeeding in the digital economy have something in
common — their IT and business strategy are becoming one in the same.
In other words, every IT initiative is tied to a business initiative. This
means that IT leaders are facing a daunting task: drive tangible increases
in business growth, productivity and revenue, while saving costs.

However, IT teams are more bandwidth-strapped than ever due to

increased project requests. There has been a 39% increase in the
number of projects from 2023, resulting in many IT teams spending
time triaging project requests and catching up on their backlog rather
than focusing on cost savings or revenue growth.

Automation, now paired with AI, introduces unique opportunities here.

If done correctly, IT leaders can seize this challenging moment to do

3
more, with more — more operational productivity, more automation,
more simplification, and more flexibility. But just implementing
automation alone won’t solve for this, in fact, the majority (80%) of IT
teams will have automation on their roadmap by the end of the year.
The more interesting question becomes: which automation solutions
are going to help me solve my business problems, and how should I
implement them in a way that will scale with my business?
What do we mean by automation?
Organizations have been digitally automating for decades. And today, It’s easier
than ever to create automations for your business. And that’s incredibly helpful
for IT teams, as 75% of companies report their teams across the business are
demanding automation solutions, with IT teams managing two-thirds of those
automations. With such a clear demand for automation across the business, IT
leaders must have a clear understanding of the types of automation — and how
they can drive value.

Automation solutions fit into a few It’s important to note that these
categories. automations must be created responsibly
and incorporate IT oversight across all
development activities. Additionally,
• Human task automation targets they must provide business teams the
manual, repetitive tasks, allowing autonomy to complete tasks while
teams to focus on more strategic allowing IT teams to govern and monitor
activities. their solutions.

4
• Workflow automation addresses When IT teams can govern all business-
a set of interconnected tasks. developed automations from a centralized
location, they can quickly ensure that
• Process automation involves all automation projects are secure and
automating an entire business aligned with the organizational and
process end-to-end across external governance standards. At the
an organization. same time, business teams can use low-
code solutions with AI to connect multiple
systems in a streamlined web-based user
Automation doesn’t just impact IT teams experience. This grants business users the
– it can help across the entire business. autonomy to develop automations that
With new development tools powered by serve immediate needs.
AI, automation solutions allow IT teams
to use existing resources and personnel Meanwhile, IT is free to shift resources
more efficiently, work within budgetary away from day-to-day business-oriented
limitations, and focus on high-priority IT tasks, allowing them to shrink the IT
projects. delivery gap and focus on transformative
projects that unlock innovation for the
business and ultimately create exceptional
customer and employee experiences.
1

Automation has been harder than

it needs to be
Historically, there has been a disconnect between IT and business teams across
the organization. When thinking about aspects of key technology initiatives,
like delivery speed and quality, each side often has points of view that are
diametrically opposed.

IT teams are focused on enabling business teams, managing automation solutions,

and balancing delivering a realistic technical solution, among the numerous other
tasks expected of them. Meanwhile, business teams are pressured to deliver
revenue goals and optimize customer. To drive productivity and ultimately deliver
exceptional customer experiences, the entire organization must be aligned and
able to support each other as quickly and efficiently as possible.

Top Three Challenges to Automation

01. Inertia.

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As with any strategic initiative in an organization, the biggest challenge is often
considerable resistance to change. In many organizations, we’ve seen that
teams are held back by processes that everyone knows are inefficient – often,
the status quo trumps progress.

02. Accelerating expectations.

Increasingly high customer expectations of the businesses they interact
with drives internal pressure to evolve, streamline, and improve processes.
Organizations often need additional workers with specific technical skills to
keep up with the innovation challenges ahead of them. In fact, the expected
number of projects will increase by 39% from 2023.

03. Operating complexity.

These complexities arise from the technology and processes available. Technical
debt creates friction to your organization’s ability to adapt. The average enterprise
reports using nearly 1000 applications, leading to a complex ecosystem sprawl.
And IT teams are not solely responsible for this friction, as other business units
often try to solve technology challenges independently — often unsuccessfully.
Additionally, your organization is likely attempting to navigate the application
ecosystem sprawl and vastly complex compliance and security landscape. On top
of this, AI has added additional complexities that require IT attention.
Only 26% of businesses report providing a completely connected experience over
all channels, leaving plenty of room for market disruption. Larger organizations are
less likely to react to marketplace changes and shifting demands quickly, while new
companies’ innovative solutions emerge and disrupt the status quo. Customers now
expect seamless experiences between platforms and applications, which means
IT leaders need to adopt a comprehensive automation strategy that addresses the
previous three challenges to thrive.

Automation is Key to Cost Savings

Operational Efficiency Employee Productivity

13.5% 1.9 Hours

Average operational cost Saved per week per employee

6
reduction with automation on average through automation

Source: Automation: Profitability, Efficiency, Source: State of IT 3rd Edition

and Time to Market Depend On It, IDC, 2023
 2

Begin building your automation strategy

Automation itself is not a new technology. Organizations have been automating
using earlier automation technologies over 40 years. Today the breadth of
capabilities available takes things to the next level, and that pace is only accelerating.
In fact, 87% of IT leaders expect more investment in automation at their
organizations over the next 18 months. But how do you fully embrace automation
and make it a fundamental piece of your organization’s technology strategy?

First, it’s critical to bring the right stakeholders together.

7
Getting started
Many technologies have gained traction within organizations through centers of
excellence. However, the right approach is to build a center of enablement. What’s the
difference? This model works well for some organizations and may still be appropriate
in some cases. But for organizations facing constant change to adapt, this approach
needs to evolve and be more adaptable. That’s where centers of enablement are a
resource multiplier.

Center of excellence models requires IT to drive automation development, provide

necessary resourcing, while interfacing with the rest of the organization. This model
extends beyond the CIO’s office and extends across the organization.

Center for enablement models empower business teams and require more effort to
get started, but ultimately result in long-term benefits: scalability, agility, and often
overlooked sustainability. Automation is not an end state – it’s a ongoing journey.
.
Sourcing and prioritizing automations.
Once you have the center of enablement established. How do you strategize and
implement? Organizations typically have no problem sourcing opportunities, while
resourcing consistently proves challenging – how should your distributed teams tackle this?

Align to business priorities

The most impactful opportunities for automation will often span multiple
business units. And aligning to key business priorities can help eliminate
friction and roadblocks.

Identify low-hanging fruit

It’s essential to take a grounded approach and not shy away from the most
manageable challenges when starting your automation journey. To help
prioritize we suggest a simple two-axis matrix, using risk and complexity as
your primary evaluation metrics.

Establish a governance framework

It’s as important as ever for IT to maintain oversight of the automations created
within an organization. But today’s model of IT as the ultimate gatekeeper

8
(and, too often, unwitting roadblock) must change. It’s critical to employ
a governance and security framework that enables innovation instead of
inhibiting it. Using the proper set of automation tools can help facilitate this.

Risk and complexity

Risk

Complexity
 3

Taking the modern approach to

business process management
After you’ve established an automation strategy, it’s important to use a modern
approach to implementing your automations. This helps ensure continued
success for your organization.

A Modern Approach to BPM

Key Principles

Domain Product Future

Ownership Mindset Focus

9
Domain ownership
Domain ownership – giving business teams agency over automations – is is vitally
important in the modern approach to automation, this means giving business users
agency over their automations. For example, a controller will have more intimate
knowledge of an accounts receivable process than a member of an IT organization will
ever have. By meeting future automation users where they are and empowering them, you
can ultimately build better automations.

Adopting a product mindset

For your long-term success, shifting from a project mindset to a product mindset is
essential. A product mindset prioritizes the customer’s point-of-view – whether that
customer is internal or external – and understanding their challenges and needs in detail.

Next, your team will develop and deliver an automation. Post-delivery, keeping the project
team together is critical to continue to evolve the automation. By iterating, continuously
improving, and adapting that automation to meet customer needs over time, you can
ensure that your investments in automation will be successful and worthwhile.
Future-proofing your organization
How can you make sure that automation is sustainable over the long term? It’s
critical to carefully prioritize your investments so they don’t rapidly fall by the
wayside and become obsolete. It’s important to plan and build with a couple of
concepts in mind.

Composability
In the mid-2010s, microservices gained an enormous amount of popularity
in the realm of large-scale web application development. When thinking
about business automations many of the microservices best practices also
apply. Making your automations independently deployable and focused on
a single business capability will maximize your ability to reuse automations
over time. This approach will allow you to advance and create automations
that can handle more complex tasks.

Discovery
A composability strategy is only complete with a complementary discovery
strategy. In a large, distributed organization it’s often impossible for

12
development teams to have any peripheral vision and awareness of other
teams. By opening up discoverability, teams across the organization can
work together seamlessly and quickly. Giving your organization access to
centralized automation asset catalogs or repositories is the easiest path to
enabling discovery
What’s next?
Automation has found its place across the organization, but it takes a complete
vision to establish correctly. Discover the benefits of automation firsthand with
MuleSoft Automation and enable your business teams to self-serve while freeing
up your IT teams to focus on critical innovations.

Adopt a trusted platform for automation and more.

Learn how MuleSoft can help your team increase
productivity, democratize innovation, and ultimately
create exceptional customer experiences.
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Explore top insights from IT leaders across the globe.

Get a comprehensive analysis of the trends shaping the
IT landscape and how IT departments evaluate the role
of AI, automation, integration, and APIs in the 2024

13
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