We are living in a truly unique moment. The coronavirus pandemic affects all of our families, our clients, our first front-line courageous respondents.

Most people equate continuity of business with catastrophes like earthquakes, hurricanes or terrorist attacks. But while such disasters can affect business, there are plenty of other forms of relatively minor incidents that can have an effect that is just as devastating. These issues can vary from an employee or to delays in reacting to changes. In reality, according to Gartner, people or process failures directly cause an average of 80 percent of mission-critical application service downtime. Intelligent automation can help businesses plan for specific conditions and prevent them in these uncertain times.

As the situation continues to impact our country, we decided to reach out and provide our services and companies which are struggling with continuity of operation.

Underlying Factors

Back-office systems are a vital and deeply integrated part of the IT infrastructure at large. As part of a dynamic, multi-tiered architecture, it not only needs to interoperate with an increasing number of other services, but it must also satisfy the demand for 24/7 operability. The days of scheduled maintenance periods are all but gone, requiring IT teams to perform such activities–such as updating, fixing bugs, and implementing new software–while the program is still running.

The Internet has further complicated matters by exposing the back-office systems to the thousands or even millions of external users. Back-office systems will also enable interactions with foreign entities outside the enterprise as a vital component of the business processes of a company.

This complexity multiplies the potential for errant code and human error by tenfold. Complexity and human reliance on processing transactions and manually handling tasks often make it difficult for operations to respond quickly and accurately to changing conditions in the IT environment. All of this will lead to loss of efficiency and downtime in the network.

Traditional Models are Outdated

Outdated data security strategies–such as backup, recovery, and mirroring–are no longer adequate to ensure continuity of operation. Take, for example, the case of a sensitive database being compromised as a result of an incorrect application entry or, as in our particular circumstances, workers are remote or dispersed and unable to function as normal.

Manual management of devices is no longer a viable business practice. Manual processes can also slow down response times which can lead to performance issues. Eventually, manual processes are extremely difficult to audit, thereby making them often a risk of compliance.

Intelligent Automation Is The Critical Factor

Organizations need to decrease their manual system-management processes and augment their current methods of disaster recovery with more robust security to improve business continuity. That is where smart automation comes into play. An IA platform uses tools to execute workflows for automated IT service management and general business process execution. Since automation is driven by artificial intelligence, these systems can also make decisions based on business strategy and effect independently of human inputs.

Intelligent automation provides a range of valuable advantages, particularly in terms of promoting business continuity. First, it overcomes the complexities of IT infrastructure and ensures that ITSM functions are conducted reliably and promptly based on the best practices. As a result, the risk of mistakes are decreased significantly, and a completely auditable trail is created to ensure compliance with regulations.

Is your organization able to tackle possible downtime in these unusual times? Intelligent automation improves and strengthens business continuity plans, reduces the risk of an accident and minimizes the harm caused by these incidents.

Now is the time to support and provide guidance, so we offer our consultation at no cost and under no obligation.  We want to be part of the solution, and until April 30, 2020, for 12 business, we will consult and build your business continuity bots at no-cost.  Speak with us today to learn more.