Automation Cynicism Signals Challenges for AI, New Torii Report Finds

Torii, creator of the Distributed SaaS Management Platform for IT professionals, today announced its newest report, "State of IT Automation: Breakthrough or Buzzkill?," which reveals that many IT professionals have been burned by the promise of automation largely due to poorly designed tools (44% of respondents) and a lack of education surrounding solutions (64%). But even though only 13% of respondents have found great success with automation, 92% are still championing it within their organizations - a signal that many still see its potential to eliminate mundane work, deliver consistent, error-free results, and streamline operations.

According to Evanta, a Gartner company, CIOs cite that increasing efficiency and productivity are top priorities for 2023. To do this, IT teams are increasingly turning to AI and automation solutions. However, as Torii's report shows, all the hype can lead to disillusionment and ultimately impact adoption.

"OpenAI's ChatGPT and Google's Bard have ignited an intense interest in emerging AI tools that can streamline work and empower employees to do their jobs smarter and more effectively, and for good reason," said Uri Haramati, CEO and co-founder of Torii. "However, as Torii's report shows, automation and, ultimately, AI solutions, will be hard-pressed to cross the chasm until people feel they can truly trust and rely on them, easily integrate them into their daily work lives, and see that they make a profound difference. This is exactly why our SaaS management technology has intuitive automation baked into it, eliminating the learning curve and allowing IT to see meaningful impact from the start."

Key findings from the report include:

• The need for speed? Not so much: IT pros value consistency (48%) and error reduction (27%) more than speed (21%) in automation. Although conventional wisdom says speed is important for accelerating operations, these contrary findings make sense. Speed without reliability can actually add more work than it saves. Going faster in the wrong direction will only result in more ? and more severe ? problems.
• Barriers to automation remain high: 64% of IT professionals cite a lack of tool education, and nearly half (44%) cite poorly designed automation tools. They are so stretched that they don't have time to properly investigate automation solutions. And they've been burned in the past by false promises, so the incentive to find time isn't there.
• Automation adoption is lagging: Automation technologies have been around for a long time, so it was surprising that less than half of respondents have fully automated appropriate tasks, and only 13% reported great success with automation. This speaks to the automation tools' perceived inadequacy and time commitment that many require to gain real value from them.
• Ease of use is paramount: Over half (54%) of IT professionals prioritize ease of use over things like transparency, cost-savings, and productivity, when evaluating new automation software. If it's not simple to use, it's not worth the effort. After all, you want the tool to do the work for you, and not the other way around. That's why IT pros want automation in the first place.

Click here to access Torii's report, "State of IT Automation: Breakthrough or Buzzkill?"

Looking for more insights into IT professionals' views, tech adoption, challenges, and perceptions of SaaS? Explore these Torii's surveys that keep a finger on the pulse of the IT community:

• State of IT Mind
• State of SaaS at Work
• State of SaaS Visibility and Impact

To learn how to use Torii to automate key SaaS management processes, check out this webinar, "Automation is More than Just Onboarding and Offboarding" on June 28, 2023.

Methodology

Torii and the Gartner Peer Community queried 200 IT professionals, from CIOs and IT Directors to IT Managers, about how their organizations are currently using automation and the benefits and challenges of doing so. For additional survey findings and implications, access Torii's complimentary "State of IT Automation" report for additional survey findings and implications.

About Torii

Torii is the go-to SaaS management partner for IT pros at businesses around the world. Torii's Distributed SaaS Management Platform provides a single source of truth for all things SaaS. It empowers IT teams to automate SaaS operations, and equip their finance, procurement, security, and app owner stakeholders with the app usage, user, spend, and risk insights needed to make smart decisions and take meaningful actions. Torii's award-winning customer success team helps ensure customers continuously gain significant value from the platform, eliminating hundreds of hours of manual processes, eradicating wasted SaaS spend, and de-risking known and Shadow IT applications.

Global customers such as Instacart, Sisense, Bumble, Hired, Athletic Greens and Palo Alto Networks rely on Torii. The company is backed by Tiger Global Management, Wing Venture Capital, Global Founders Capital, Uncork Capital, Entree Capital, and Scopus Ventures. Learn more at www.toriihq.com and follow on Twitter @Torii_hq or LinkedIn.