Automation is Dead, Long Live Intelligent Automation
If, like me, you’ve benefitted from automation in your IT service management (ITSM) role for at least the last decade, if not two, you might have read this blog’s title with a “What?!” (or a “Poppycock!” if you’re British and well-to-do). But don’t worry. It’s merely a play on the traditional French proclamation of “The king is dead, long live the king.” To call out that the long-serving automation capabilities “of old” are being replaced by a new breed of “intelligent automation” capabilities that better serve the needs of modern businesses.
Much has happened in automation development over the last few years. To help you better understand the opportunity of this change, this blog looks at the evolution of the intelligent automation capabilities currently available to ITSM and wider service management teams.
This blog by @Joe_the_IT_Guy looks at the evolution of the intelligent #automation capabilities currently available to #ITSM and wider service management teams. Click To TweetWhat’s “intelligent automation”?
This may or may not be a term that you’re familiar with, and I can’t say that it’s an industry standard (yet). We started with a lot of buzz around artificial intelligence (AI) 5+ years ago and what this would mean to service management teams. Some people began to use AITSM, a portmanteau of AI and ITSM, but this hasn’t become an industry standard either.
Old-fashioned me liked the phrase “automation and AI” (or “AI and automation”). Still, I’ve finally been converted to “intelligent automation” to describe how AI-enablement – in the form of machine learning and natural language understanding (NLU) – is now a part of modern ITSM tools.
The industry will eventually decide on the preferred terminology – for example, AI Service Desk – but, as with webmail and then cloud-based email services, we’ll likely end up with the mention of the employed technology being lost. For instance, who calls Gmail anything other than email these days?
Importantly, no matter the term(s) we end up with as an industry, the ITSM use of AI-enabled capabilities is not simply for “doing the work” in “heavy-lifting” terms; it’s also relevant for analytics and decision-making, i.e. the “heavy thinking.”
The evolution of automation to intelligent automation
Automation has been a business staple since the Industrial Revolution in the 18th Century (am I showing my age?). Manufacturing operations started to use machines over the traditional hand-production methods, and we never looked back.
The introduction of IT help desk tools and their evolution to ITIL-aligned ITSM “suites” is the ITSM view of this (albeit much later, at the end of the 20th Century) with ITSM tools increasingly automating the manual work involved with the management and support of IT services.
This automation was a “no brainer” for IT personnel, with them appreciating the power of technology to speed up operations, reduce costs, and improve end-user experiences and outcomes. Plus, that automation would make us (humans) better versions of ourselves by enhancing our capabilities and minimizing our errors.
The addition of AI capabilities – and, yes, I know we have a constant war of words over the term “AI,” but machine learning and NLU are both considered part of the AI landscape – now increase and extend the available benefits.
I find that talking about “intelligent automation,” while not as sexy as “AI,” does make things easier. Because people aren’t agitated by the term and are less likely to divert the conversation down the “This is just machine learning, not true AI” argument rabbit hole.
'I find that talking about 'intelligent automation,' while not as sexy as 'AI,' does make things easier - @Joe_the_IT_Guy #automation #AI Click To TweetIntelligent automation and ITSM
There are many opportunities for intelligent automation to benefit ITSM operations. The common use cases offered by ITSM and other IT management tools include:
- Chatbot virtual assistants – which provide an automated 24/7 first-contact support capability. They allow end-users to get immediate assistance from a self-service portal, IT support mobile app, or within employee work-collaboration tools such as Microsoft Teams and Slack.
- Virtual agents – which extend both the knowledge and capabilities of your IT service desk agents. They provide human agents with real-time access to knowledge, based on machine learning and NLU capabilities, plus one-click invocation of appropriate service orchestration.
- Intelligent ticket processing – which leverages machine learning and NLU capabilities to automatically categorize, prioritize, assign, and even action incoming incident and service request tickets.
- Machine-learning-assisted trend identification and decision support – the technology can handle far more extensive data sets and more quickly than humans. This “heavy thinking” can focus on hot-topic and problem identification based on ticket data or demand planning and staffing optimization based on historical workload patterns.
- AI-assisted knowledge sharing – knowledge management has traditionally been a difficult nut to crack for ITSM teams, so using AI capabilities for intelligent search and “recommendations” helps with knowledge access. However, machine learning and NLU also offer additional assistance, such as intelligent email responders that automatically provide the most likely solutions, plus the automatic identification of knowledge gaps and technology-crafted knowledge articles from incident ticket notes.
If your organization is extending its ITSM capabilities throughout the business using an enterprise service management approach or digital transformation strategy, then some of these intelligent automation capabilities will be shared too.
Understanding the reality of intelligent automation for ITSM
It can take a long time for new concepts to be adopted within the ITSM community, or to be adopted successfully. So, while all the talk about the impact of AI might feel as though it has been around forever, the reality is that it’s already here within enhanced IT service desk capabilities – with the use of chatbots, virtual agents, and intelligent ticket processing leading the charge.
Importantly, this isn’t just the introduction of new capabilities because the technology is available. Instead, the ITSM community’s expectations of intelligent automation are rising rapidly. For example, a late-2021 AXELOS survey identified that between Q1 2021 and Q4 2021, the “positivity” for intelligent automation jumped from 57% to 71% (with the “negativity” dropping from 39% to 22%)
A late-2021 @AXELOS_GBP survey identified that between Q1 2021 and Q4 2021, the 'positivity' for intelligent #automation jumped from 57% to 71%. Click To TweetWould using AI/intelligent automation at work improve your job and customer satisfaction?
Response | 2019 | 2021 | Delta |
Yes, considerably | 9% | 37% | +28% |
Yes, but not dramatically | 48% | 34% | -14% |
No | 39% | 22% | -17% |
Don’t know | 5% | 6% | +1% |
What’s artificial intelligence? | 0% | 1% | +1% |
Source: AXELOS, 2022 ITSM Benchmarking Report
It’s a good indication of the evolution of automation to intelligent automation gaining pace, with the opportunity of the AI-enablement adding to the long-known power of automation to improve operations, services, experiences, and outcomes.
#Automation hasn’t really died; it’s just evolved through the opportunities provided by #AI, says @Joe_the_IT_Guy. Click To TweetAutomation hasn’t really died; it’s just evolved through the opportunities provided by AI. Such that, as with the passing of power between French kings, it’s time to realize that “Automation is dead, long live intelligent automation.”
