IDC Analyst Brief: Taking the Digitization of Operations to the Next Level

As part of their digital transformation agendas and accelerated by the challenges of the COVID-19 pandemic, organizations the world over are racing ahead with business automation initiatives. In a worldwide IDC survey of over 900 technology and business leaders, over 60% of organizations say they have prioritized increased investment for 2021 on automation and augmentation technologies to create adaptive business operations.

In this new article from research firm IDC, analyst and VP Automation, Analytics & AI Europe, Neil Ward-Dutton explains how effective business operations – which execute the processes that are core to achieving an organization’s business objectives, such as the production and delivery of goods or services – depend on the ability to co-ordinate people and systems to get the right work done at the right time. Organizations that attempt to manage this work by emailing (or using other workarounds) create risks that are difficult to understand, and impossible to manage.

ABOUT THE WRITER

Neil Ward-Dutton, VP Automation, Analytics & AI Europe, IDC Research

Neil Ward-Dutton is vice president, Automation, Analytics and AI, Europe at IDC, where he helps to shape the company’s research in these areas and help clients “join the dots” between these increasingly interwoven areas. Neil is recognized as one of Europe’s most experienced and high-profile technology industry analysts and has regularly appeared on TV and in print media over his 25-year industry analyst career, as well as authoring over 10 books on IT and business strategy.

ABOUT WORK-RELAY

Work-Relay seamlessly overlays your Salesforce implementation, simplifying the design, management, and optimization of complex operational work to maximize worker productivity, increase company-wide visibility and enable business agility. Work-Relay is the only system for digitizing, managing and optimizing highly customizable process-driven projects and decision-intensive processes in one unified application. Work-Relay clients include large enterprises like The Home Depot, Mars Corporation, and Proctor & Gamble, as well as small and mid-size companies across 12 industries. Typical use cases include installing fiber optics, managing clinical trials, coordinating custom manufacturing, and managing product design.