Introduction to IT Process Automation (ITPA) using AI.

Every IT team members are very busy daily. There are a lot of activities, including handling user service requests and their tickets, managing and observing systems and applications, adopting new technologies and implementing them without any issues, analyzing and enforcing compliance and security, system maintenance, and a lot more in a day. So it is very important to have a solution to automate these IT tasks. 
IT Process Automation (ITPA),  earlier known as Run Book Automation (RBA), was the solution. It is the automation of IT processes, services, support activities, and administration into workflows to avoid errors and the cost of manually managing them. As a result, ITPA helps the IT team optimize the delivery and management of data center activities, including cloud, on-premise, and hybrid. In addition, ITPA facilitates the orchestration and integration of tools, people, and processes through automated workflows.
The IT process automation can be done in two areas. The first one is IT Operational (ITOps) area. This mainly deals with data center processes, focusing on operational IT systems and procedures. The example activities are backup and recovery, temporary folder cleanup, access management, etc. The second area is IT-related business service management and process automation. This can span across multiple IT systems and have a direct impact on the business.
How AI can improve IT Process Automation
AI-powered IT Process Automation is an innovative approach that automates the processes, eliminating manual intervention, resulting in lower turnaround time and higher efficiency. For example, In this approach, tickets are generated automatically from Omni channels. Furthermore, AI-powered software bots can understand the natural language which was entered in email or on chat and reply immediately with resolution without waiting for humans. In addition, AI-based systems can collect historical and diverse information and create a knowledge base or repository, which is then used to make decisions. AI-based process automation goes beyond simple tasks to more complex activities like patch automation and changes management activities.
AI-based IT Process Automation Use Cases
The IT team can identify many processes or workflows that can be automated, and some of the most important use cases are below.

Service Request Ticket Management:
The IT Process Automation (ITPA) can begin with help desk and service requests automation. The IT team manually prioritizes the service requests according to urgency, follows a step-by-step procedure for the fulfillment, and ensures IT users have fulfilled their IT requests as per the SLA guidelines with the highest quality.  This process can go beyond a typical web form o customer-facing support portals or simple email requests when it comes to automation. For example, the IT process automation of service ticket management can automate initial steps like filtering out duplicate requests, classifying tickets, searching in the knowledge graph, and creating tickets in the ticket management system and automatically fulfilling them.

Patch Management:
Patch management is an important task for the IT team to reduce the risk of unpatched systems and applications. The update systems will help to prevent vulnerabilities and other cyber threats. But this is a very time-consuming activity, and they often cannot prioritize this due to other firefighting activities. Automating patch management gives a lot of advantages for the IT organization, including cost reduction, accuracy, and ensuring systems are safe from cyber security.

Improve the use of the ticketing system:
Context sensitively during tasks from the ticketing system is a key requirement for the IT operators. IT process automation can enhance the ticketing system and enable IT operators to trigger tasks from the ticketing system from the context of the ticket and the request they are currently working on. This includes common troubleshooting, starting applications, commands, and API calls, automatically categorizing and assigning tasks, and tracking and managing the ticket lifecycle. 

Asset Management:
Asset management helps IT organizations to keep track of IT assets available in the organizations, and keeping tabs on those assets helps streamline their IT operations. In addition, IT process automation can automate asset discovery, creation of asset inventory, and up-to-date status of asset usage. 

IT Policy Compliance and Risk Management:
Many IT organizations are struggling to meet compliance requirements. The IT compliance requirements are critical to IT organizations because they meet customers' and governments' privacy and security requirements. With IT process automation in place, the IT teams can create automated compliance controls as part of their regular compliance checking workflows and trigger automated compliance analytics and enforcement.

IT onboarding and offboarding of employees:
Every new employee needs to be smoothly onboarded into the in-house tech stack, and usually, this activity takes a lot of time.  The use of advanced IT process automation will reduce the onboarding time and increase the efficiency of employees onboarding. Similarly, we can apply the same for offboarding a departing employee as well.


Benefits of ITPA with AI
There are several benefits that organizations can get if they use AI-based IT Process Automation techniques.
IT process automation software can bridge multiple systems, applications, and platforms, unifying the infrastructure and eliminating bottlenecks.
The IT Process Automation will free up your valuable IT human resources and allowing them to focus on strategic IT initiatives instead of spending time on repetitive, time-consuming tasks.
It speeds up the resolution and offers better SLA compliance, particularly during odd shifts.
The AI-based IT Process Automation reduces errors and improves the service quality.
IT process automation reduces the cost of IT operations and helps the IT team spend more budget for strategic IT projects. 
IT increases the compliance level automatically and auto-corrects any issues without any human intervention. 
IT process automation is the primary step for the IT organizations, and to know more about IT Process Automation, please visit our AIOps product page