A global study conducted by Vanson Bourne for Mulesoft, a Salesforce subsidiary and integration and API solution provider, reveals that demands for automation within organizations are increasing dramatically. These demands are coming from various departments looking to increase their efficiency and productivity in the face of the current macroeconomic uncertainty. Although 90% of CIOs in France are seeing an increase in demand within their companies, 69% of French organizations are concerned that taking on automation will add to their technical debt.

Faced with the current macroeconomic uncertainties (markets, employment, costs…), CEOs and executives want to boost growth, reduce costs and increase productivity in their companies. With a set of integration and API management tools, they are turning to automation technologies to create value faster at all levels, whether it’s for sales, customer service, marketing, or business operations teams.

To understand how IT departments are responding to the challenges they face, Salesforce commissioned a global study from Vanson Bourne.

The study is based on an online survey conducted in February 2022 in the United States, United Kingdom, France, Germany and Australia. The 600 respondents, including about 100 in France, were IT managers in public or private organizations with at least 1,000 employees.

A clear increase in the demand for automation

The vast majority (87%) of respondents have seen an increase in demand for automation from business teams over the past two years. According to the results, the bulk of this demand comes from four departments:

• research and development (41%);
• administrative department/production teams (41%) ;
• marketing (33%);
• customer service (23%).

On the other hand, the survey reveals that existing technology solutions, some of which are very old, are slowing down IT teams in their response to business teams’ automation needs.

• 93% of respondents in France believe that changing and rebuilding automation is a challenge as systems and business requirements change;
• 69% of respondents believe that application and data restructuring is likely to increase their organization’s technical debt.

Matt McLarty, global field technical director, and vice president of Digital Transformation Office at MuleSoft, states:

“Organizations across all industries want to automate their processes and customer experiences as quickly as possible. However, by relying on the wrong tools and techniques, they may actually be holding back innovation. It’s critical for them to be able to adapt to technological advancements in order to create their automations and connect their applications and data in a holistic way. Without a more composable approach, organizations risk adding to their technical debt rather than reducing it.”

Boosting growth through automation

In France, companies intend to take full advantage of the potential of automation, whether it’s to boost their growth or to expand more quickly and in a less disruptive way. As a result, 51% of them rely on integration and API management capabilities to support their business process automation efforts and deliver a better customer experience.

Some are opting for a hyperautomation strategy, a business-driven approach organizations are taking to quickly identify, control and automate as many business and IT processes as possible. According to the survey, 78% of French organizations will include hyperautomation in their roadmap in the next 24 months. This means they will need the right tools and capabilities to create and modify automations.

Matt McLarty states:

“Organizations should never consider their mission accomplished once the process has been automated.If there is one lesson we need to learn in these uncertain times, it is the need to adopt a new mindset in the workplace.”

He adds:

“In this digital economy, successful organizations are the ones that adapt to change the fastest. So established players need to focus on three goals: growing efficiently and sustainably; increasing agility in a way that is safe at scale; and constantly innovating.”

Translated from La demande en automatisation au sein des entreprises est en forte hausse