The rise of cloud computing has brought many benefits to small businesses, from lower labor costs to better scalability. And, there are two crucial processes that make all this possible and that’s automation and orchestration.
Still, the majority of small business owners are not quite sure what these terms actually mean. According to the 2017 market report done by Fujitsu, 70% of the respondents don’t know the difference between cloud automation and orchestration, while 25% believe that these processes are the same.
Unfortunately, that’s not true. Even though these two terms are closely related and are constantly intertwining, they cannot be used interchangeably.
So, how are these processes different and how can your business benefit from them?
Business Automation and Orchestration are not the Same
Cloud automation is all about automating different individual tasks. This way, businesses can boost their performance and save a lot of time. Tasks that required investing days or even weeks of work can now be completed in a few hours or even minutes.
The automation of workload can be taken to the next level with business orchestration. This is the process of coordinating and bringing together a wide range of automated tasks into larger, perfectly optimized series of the workflow. Simply put, cloud orchestration makes sure that all automated segments of your business work in harmony.
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Now, let’ see what the major advantages of these processes are.
It Improves User Experience
Today, investing in marketing is not enough to ensure your business’ sustainable growth. There are numerous startups and SMBs just like yours and they use similar business promotion methods. So, to rise above your competition and get your customers to choose you, you need to provide them with the impeccable user experience.
Here is why.
Stats show that a second delay may reduce your conversions by 7%. And, lower conversions lead to lower revenue.
The same goes for apps. When taken into consideration, your sales, customer acquisition costs, the cost of the IT support, an app crash may have a major monetary impact on your business.
Not providing instant feedback may make your customers look for the information or buy products somewhere else. They want you to be available to them 24/7.
This is all the result of a poor user experience.
By orchestrating your business’ processes, you will make sure that your online business works perfectly. Most importantly, you will be able to provide your customers with instant customer support. These pieces of software are based on AI, meaning that they constantly gather customer information and memorize the most common problems your customers face, offering them actionable tips and helping them fix those issues faster.
It Boosts your Business’ Agility
Your business’ agility is directly related to the user experience statistics mentioned above. Namely, it has a fundamental role in bringing value to your target audience.
And, this value lies offering spotless services on demand, solving problems in real time, and delivering your products faster than the top drivers in your industry. In other words, you need to boost the overall performance of your business.
This is also one of the most challenging tasks for any business owner. The Fujitsu’s report claims that 56% of the respondents find it difficult to “balance agility and technology in our technology choices.”
This is where business orchestration comes to shine, as it includes the coordination of both lifecycle and performance processes. Namely, Forrester claims that businesses point out that managing multiple workloads simultaneously is the major benefit of orchestration.
It Minimizes Costs
One of the major problems small businesses face is large operational costs they cannot cover. And, if your workloads are not optimized properly, these costs will keep growing. This is something workflow automation and orchestration can solve.
The Fujitsu’s report shows that 35% of businesses believe that better cost control is one of the major benefits of business orchestration, while 40% of them claim that it’s long-term savings.
The Cisco’s report claims the same. Namely, they surveyed a plethora of organizations and came to a conclusion that those that automated their businesses processes managed to minimize their operational expenses. They managed to align their business’ demands with their data, infrastructure, and applications, building well-functioning, dynamic, and standardized business workflows. This helped them get the most of their tools, deliver their services faster, and reduce the time their teams spend on repetitive tasks. Unsurprisingly, the boost in workplace productivity results in a higher ROI.
It Boosts Transparency and Cooperation
Today, both small businesses and large conglomerates invest in effective workplace collaboration. And, to harness all the power of these processes, you need to automate and orchestrate them. Cloud orchestration is all about creating a centralized management system that will help you merge all your technologies together and allow an uninterrupted data flow.
First, your employees will be able to monitor their major KPIs in real-time on user-friendly dashboards and solve problems instantly. Their every input or change is visible to the rest of the team. This way, you will actually start building a comprehensive knowledge base and boost the overall workplace transparency.
Second, unified automation gives your team the opportunity to get rid of repetitive tasks and work together on more creative projects. They will be able to make changes, share files, and communicate efficiently, meaning that both their communication and collaboration will be improved.
Conclusions
You can conclude from the previous examples that business orchestration is not yet another synonym for automation. These two processes are quite different, but together, they help you get the most of your company’s performance. They will improve your employees’ productivity, improve collaboration, enhance user experience and, above all, help you save money and boost your ROI.
