2 IT Tasks Your Company Should Automate - York Solutions

Artificial intelligence and machine learning open up new opportunities for your organization to save time and money, while increasing efficiency, reducing errors, and improving overall operations.

In a CIO article published earlier this year, experts recommended making automation a strategic priority, pinpointing the tasks or systems you can automate to free up employee time to focus on problems that require critical thinking. One expert encouraged CIOs to reach 90% automation by 2025 in areas including cybersecurity, operations, project administration, and reporting.

Your company could implement automation in multiple beneficial ways, but we have identified two areas where automation can have a significant impact on an IT Delivery organization: security and test data management.

1. Security

Security is still a highly reactive discipline. In general, companies put a lot of energy into preparing a security environment that protects systems, data, and access – then they simply sit back and wait for something to happen. But an automated approach using AI or machine learning is far more proactive and comprehensive.

Most breaches and security incidents happen long before they are identified. By setting up an automated system to scan for suspicious activities – like fraudulent user access – you can ensure that your systems are being monitored constantly. You can put robust checks in place and design solutions around all possible scenarios, running them on a regular basis. It would be impossible to manage these security checks manually. There are far too many variables, and it is unrealistic to keep up with that volume with human labor. Automation ensures that your systems are secure around the clock.

2. Test Data Management

A large volume of robust test data drives an effective testing practice. There is a direct correlation between the quality of data the tests are running against and the defects the test raises. If the data pool the tests are running against is not high-quality, then the results will be incomplete or flawed. But manually running a suite of tests is incredibly labor-intensive. An employee has to re-enter test data or reset and restore backups on an individual basis, repeating the task over and over.

Automating test data generation can significantly increase efficiency, saving staff time and energy. An automated process can reset test data between test cycles, pulling production data and then de-identifying it so it can be used in testing efforts. This generates large volumes of robust data to support scalability and performance testing, and the result is a better overall data set.

York Solutions’ Project Delivery Service (PDS) works with organizations to identify opportunities for automation. The benefits from automating these two important areas of IT include:

• Access to specialty skills: Implementing a strong automated security system requires a niche skillset that most organizations don’t have access to in-house. They don’t need to hire a long-term employee for this role, so they partner with PDS to place an expert in the company for the duration of the project. The security specialist can set up the automated system and train employees on monitoring and maintenance going forward.
• Increase in capacity: Automating test data generation allows organizations to make better use of their employees’ time and effort. But creating an automated system requires an initial time investment as well. By partnering with PDS, companies receive expert help to script and mechanize these processes, without having to pull their own resources away from their day-to-day responsibilities.

Are you ready to set up automated IT systems in your organization? Learn more about York Solutions’ Project Delivery Service (PDS).