Introduction to Automation

Automation is a broad concept that can encompass both physical and cognitive activities across a large number of different contexts. PagerDuty Workflow Automation is focused on people-friendly process automation. That means that we are focused on the automation of repetitive processes, primarily within the workplace, in a way that helps people, Bots, and AI work together.

A recent McKinsey study provides a number of remarkable findings that should not be surprising to anyone in the workplace:

• “45 percent of work activities could be automated using already demonstrated technology.”

• “Fewer than 5 percent of occupations can be entirely automated while about 60 percent of occupations could have 30 percent or more of their constituent activities automated.”

• “Just 4 percent of the work activities across the US economy require creativity at a median human level of performance. Similarly, only 29 percent of work activities require a median human level of performance in sensing emotion.”

These facts point to a modern workplace that has become the digital equivalent of the  pre-industrial factory – where workers spend entirely too much time doing mundane, repetitive tasks. PagerDuty Workflow Automation has been purpose-built to address this problem. We focus on automating mundane, repetitive tasks so people can focus on higher value activities.

The primary benefits of using PagerDuty Workflow Automation for process automation include:

• Freeing up your team to do more meaningful work.

• Increase your speed of doing business.

• Improve the quality and reliability of your outcomes.

Process automation in the workplace is not a new concept; however, in the past few years, new technologies have powered a new wave of products. These products provide different capabilities to the modern automation professional. Different types of automation today include:

• Robotic Process Automation (RPA)

• Natural Language Processing and Natural Language Generation (NLP/NLG)

• Cognitive Agents

• Smart Workflows

• Machine Learning

Additionally, automation can be achieved via at least two other common approaches:

• Point systems often solve automation focused on workflows within their specific domain.

• More traditional IT technologies can be leveraged to create custom automation solutions.