When asked, “Which automation technologies are the key drivers of enterprise digital transformation?” 47% of business and IT leaders identified workload automation (WLA) as their top choice, with robotic process automation (RPA) following closely behind.1
Workload automation (WLA) tools are a type of software that automates business processes by scheduling, executing, and logging tasks across different business platforms. They are used to automate both back office workflows as well as some customer-facing tasks in order to improve tech effectiveness, data management and manage automation costs by aggregating automation tasks under one tool.
Workload Automation (WLA) Software use cases with real-life examples
Workflow automation
Orchestrates and automates multi-step processes across departments, improving efficiency, reducing errors, and ensuring compliance.
Real Life Examples
Graymont Services, a mining company based in Canada, turned to ActiveBatch to automate their data mining processes. By using ActiveBatch, they were able to reduce batch runtimes by 55%, improve processing success to over 95%, and centralize task scheduling and database scripts. The company saw significant improvements in their batch processing success rate and overall productivity within the IT organization.
Xcel Energy, a major U.S. electricity and natural gas company, implemented ActiveBatch to automate their data warehousing and reporting processes. ActiveBatch provided a reliable, enterprise-wide job scheduling solution that integrated with Informatica PowerCenter. The solution allowed Xcel Energy to increase productivity, free up overnight IT staff for other projects, and automate Oracle database functions. ActiveBatch also enabled end-to-end automation of Xcel Energy's business applications and reduced the time spent on managing Oracle Database processes by over 80%.
SUBWAY® implemented ActiveBatch to automate and manage complex processes and dependencies between data sources, legacy platforms, and a Teradata Data Warehouse Appliance. The solution allowed them to dynamically manage workflows, improve report deliverability, and increase staff efficiency. ActiveBatch reduced the time spent on managing and updating data loads from 10 hours to less than 4 hours per week. The company also achieved a 99.5% report deliverability rate.
IT operations automation
Automating IT workflows, monitoring, and incident management to ensure system reliability and efficiency.
Real Life Examples
Lamar Advertising, the largest outdoor advertising company in North America, achieved real-time data transfer efficiency with ActiveBatch. The company was struggling with its homegrown job scheduler and needed a solution that could handle the complexity of real-time data and business demands. ActiveBatch provided improved functionality, ease of use, and reduced the need for scripting, resulting in cost savings, increased visibility, and time savings for Lamar Advertising.
The Finnish Tax Administration (FTA) used ActiveBatch IT Automation and Job Scheduling to automate its IT processes across multiple environments. ActiveBatch provided a central point of control and management, improved security with Active Directory integration, decreased manual labor, and improved efficiency of IT operations. The FTA experienced cost savings, improved compliance, and time savings as a result of implementing ActiveBatch.
Precision Dialogue, a marketing services company, successfully automated their Microsoft and SAS business intelligence processes using the ActiveBatch solution. They were able to securely receive, analyze, and return customer data, centralize task management, and achieve streamlined IT operations. ActiveBatch ran 8,700 jobs per week with a 99.95% success rate, resulting in time and resource savings. The company also automated SAS business intelligence reports and standardized processes, leading to increased productivity and self-sufficiency.
Batch / Enterprise job processing
Orchestrates and schedules large-scale, repetitive IT and business processes, ensuring efficiency and reducing manual intervention.
Real Life Examples
ACES, an energy management company, achieved improved productivity and resource savings by using the ActiveBatch IT Automation solution. They were able to reduce processing time from several hours to minutes and significantly increase job processing from 50-100 jobs a day to thousands of jobs. ActiveBatch provided them with a centralized automation environment, improved operations with ITPA capabilities, and faster troubleshooting and remediation with comprehensive alerting.
The Finnish Tax Administration (FTA) used ActiveBatch IT Automation and Job Scheduling to automate its IT processes across multiple environments. ActiveBatch provided a central point of control and management, improved security with Active Directory integration, decreased manual labor, and improved efficiency of IT operations. The FTA experienced cost savings, improved compliance, and time savings as a result of implementing ActiveBatch.
Graymont Services, a mining company based in Canada, turned to ActiveBatch to automate their data mining processes. By using ActiveBatch, they were able to reduce batch runtimes by 55%, improve processing success to over 95%, and centralize task scheduling and database scripts. The company saw significant improvements in their batch processing success rate and overall productivity within the IT organization.
Data warehouse (DWH) management / automation
Streamlines data ingestion, reporting, and compliance checks by automating ETL, monitoring, and failure handling in data warehouses.
Real Life Examples
ACES, an energy management company, achieved improved productivity and resource savings by using the ActiveBatch IT Automation solution. They were able to reduce processing time from several hours to minutes and significantly increase job processing from 50-100 jobs a day to thousands of jobs. ActiveBatch provided them with a centralized automation environment, improved operations with ITPA capabilities, and faster troubleshooting and remediation with comprehensive alerting.
Lamar Advertising, the largest outdoor advertising company in North America, achieved real-time data transfer efficiency with ActiveBatch. The company was struggling with its homegrown job scheduler and needed a solution that could handle the complexity of real-time data and business demands. ActiveBatch provided improved functionality, ease of use, and reduced the need for scripting, resulting in cost savings, increased visibility, and time savings for Lamar Advertising.
The Finnish Tax Administration (FTA) used ActiveBatch IT Automation and Job Scheduling to automate its IT processes across multiple environments. ActiveBatch provided a central point of control and management, improved security with Active Directory integration, decreased manual labor, and improved efficiency of IT operations. The FTA experienced cost savings, improved compliance, and time savings as a result of implementing ActiveBatch.
File / data transfers
Schedules and secures high-volume file transfers between systems, ensuring reliability, encryption, and error handling.
Real Life Examples
ACES, an energy management company, achieved improved productivity and resource savings by using the ActiveBatch IT Automation solution. They were able to reduce processing time from several hours to minutes and significantly increase job processing from 50-100 jobs a day to thousands of jobs. ActiveBatch provided them with a centralized automation environment, improved operations with ITPA capabilities, and faster troubleshooting and remediation with comprehensive alerting.
Lamar Advertising, the largest outdoor advertising company in North America, achieved real-time data transfer efficiency with ActiveBatch. The company was struggling with its homegrown job scheduler and needed a solution that could handle the complexity of real-time data and business demands. ActiveBatch provided improved functionality, ease of use, and reduced the need for scripting, resulting in cost savings, increased visibility, and time savings for Lamar Advertising.
The Retail Equation, a retail services company based in Irvine, California, improved IT service levels and staff productivity by transitioning from a legacy, script-driven scheduler to the ActiveBatch solution. With ActiveBatch, the company reduced the time spent on building and managing batch workloads, executed 350,000 jobs a year with a 99.5% success rate, and achieved improved reporting, alerting, and visibility into errors and log files.
KPI monitoring
Automates the collection, visualization, and alerting of key performance indicators, providing real-time insights for decision-making.
Real Life Examples
GuideOne Insurance, a leading insurer of churches and faith-based institutions, automated their job scheduling environment using Stonebranch's Universal Agent solution. They achieved centralized monitoring, cost savings of $32,000 in the first year, and better communication between IT departments. The solution integrated their mainframe and distributed platforms, improving integrity of processing and enabling root cause analysis. The implementation resulted in increased productivity and time savings for the company.
Service Level Agreement (SLA) management
Monitors SLA commitments, triggers alerts for potential violations, and automates escalations to maintain compliance and performance standards.
Real Life Examples
Genera Trust Corporation (GTC), a subsidiary of a Fortune 500 diversified financial services company, implemented JAMS Enterprise Job Scheduler to re-engineer their business processes and provide timely, accurate on-demand reporting of portfolio performance. With JAMS, GTC improved productivity, achieved proactive problem-solving, and established enduring customer relationships.
The Department of Sustainability and Environment in Australia automated their Victorian Water Register using JAMS Enterprise Job Scheduler. They faced challenges with unreliable failure notifications and lack of granular controls in their previous scheduling tools. JAMS provided a consolidated solution with easy-to-use GUI and interdependence between subsystems. The department achieved benefits such as improved SLA adherence, efficient failure resolution, elimination of human error, and increased system reliability.
On-premise or cloud server management / provisioning
Automates provisioning, scaling, and maintenance of servers, optimizing resources and reducing IT workload.
Real Life Examples
The case study is about Creos Luxembourg, a company that manages electricity and natural gas networks in Luxembourg. They migrated from Jams Scheduler to ActiveEon Orchestrator CREOS to optimize their IT management. The key benefits include increased productivity and efficiency, centralized IT system, and highly qualified technical support. The case study highlights the usability and flexibility of Activeeon's solution, as well as the professional services and training provided. The company also benefits from the advanced capabilities and high availability of the solution.
SAP job processing
Schedules and automates complex SAP workloads, ensuring timely execution of business-critical processes without manual intervention.
Real Life Examples
PrimeSource, a leading distributor of building materials, implemented ActiveBatch by Redwood to automate and streamline their IT operations. With ActiveBatch's certified SAP integration, PrimeSource was able to improve their SAP job processing, data warehouse management, and achieve cost and time savings. The case study does not mention the creation year.
Robeco, a financial services company based in Benelux, improved efficiency and enabled business growth by using Redwood RunMyJobs solution. They reduced IT operations costs, increased tasks processed per month, and achieved strategic vendor status within the company.
BSH Home Appliances Ltd, a leading home appliance manufacturer in Europe, improved supply chain efficiency and reduced costs by implementing Redwood RunMyJobs solution. By replacing CA AutoSys with Redwood, BSH gained better control over its processes, eliminated production shutdowns, and improved forecasting and analysis through end-to-end visibility. With Redwood's automation capabilities, BSH achieved cost savings, increased visibility, and time savings in its manufacturing operations.
Based on our experience researching and publishing 50+ articles covering WLA, we present the top use cases of workload automation among different business functions and the benefits of automation to businesses:
IT processes
1. ETLs
Extract, transform, and load (ETL) process is the repetitive procedure of copying data from one or multiple sources to a designated system that represents the data differently from the source or in a different context than the source. ETL tools which often encompass WLA software can:
- automate data updates at specific times or triggering events
- load data from one platform to another
- automate triggering events (e.g. file completions) before starting dependent workflows to ensure reliable data
Benefits to business and real-life case study
Leveraging workload automation for automating ETL processes reduces time spent on repetitive data processes and minimizes human intervention, reducing subsequent data errors.
Graymont, a lime and stone products manufacturer, faced unreliable ETL processes, with only 30% of batch jobs succeeding due to failed dependencies. They implemented ActiveBatch to automate data updates and scheduling, increasing batch success rates to 95% and reducing batch runtimes by 55%.
If you’re interested in more real-life case studies of Workload Automation Software, see the Workload Automation Tools Case Studies.
2. Data warehouse management
ETL processes are the first steps of data warehouse management. For an end-to-end automation approach, WLA software can:
- monitor processes and automate status-checking
- audit and log ETL events for compliance purposes
- notify users of failures and errors
- automate reporting of data warehouses
Benefits to business and real-life case study
Automating data warehouse management via workload automation tools increases the transparency of compliance reports as all processes are recorded and have a detailed audit trail.
Subway, the global restaurant chain, struggled with fragmented SQL servers managing Teradata data warehouses, requiring manual oversight. By deploying ActiveBatch, they automated job dependencies, cut data load management time from 10 to 4 hours per week, and improved report reliability to 99.5%.
3. FTPs
File Transfer Protocols (FTP) move files between servers but lack notifications and require manual cleanup. Workload automation (WLA) software improves FTP management by scheduling transfers, monitoring events, logging activities, and notifying users of success or failure. Additionally, WLA tools can automatically retry failed transfers, ensuring completion and reducing manual intervention in file transfer processes.
See the top MFT software.
Benefits to business and real-life case study
Automating FTPs with workload automation software reduces the time spent on recurring, high-volume file transfers and enables the monitoring of file transfers both on premise and on the cloud.
Kansas City Public Schools (KCPS) relied on Windows Task Scheduler for FTP transfers but lacked visibility and error handling, leading to frequent failures. They adopted GoAnywhere MFT and JAMS Workload Automation to automate transfers, monitor job statuses, and ensure error-free execution. This eliminated manual file transfers and provided full system visibility.
Other IT processes suitable for WLA
According to a survey,2 users believed that WLA software was a good candidate to automate:
- Workflow lifecycle management
- Server/agent additions in on-premise environments: While some systems auto scale, auto scaling can be hard to configure within each environment. Building auto scaling mechanisms with WLA can save teams time and help them manage auto scaling in a more centralized manner
- Cloud management/provisioning: For cloud management, IT teams can rely on workload automation tools to manage the provisioning and de-provisioning of virtual machines on multiple clouds from a single platform
- KPI monitoring: Automating KPI monitoring and displaying results in self-service dashboards
- SLA management: Alerting (e.g. via emails, slack, text messages) when KPIs fall under the levels in SLAs
- Critical path monitoring: Every time a predecessor of a critical job in a path starts delaying, the scheduler automatically recalculates the critical path, enabling users to monitor the path more accurately
Figure 1: WLA Aspects
Source: Broadcom 3
See other IT automation software:
HR processes
10. Payrolls
Payroll calculation is a repetitive process that relies on large data from different resources (e.g. HR and ERP data). WLA tools enable users to create workflows that rely on relevant updated data from different platforms and sequence events and interdependencies to ensure accurate payroll calculation.
Benefits to business
Leveraging automation solutions to automate payroll processes:
- Reduces payroll errors
- Creates a comprehensive and transparent audit trail
- Protects privileged employee data
11. Onboarding
Automating new hire onboarding can minimize the time spent by the IT team to create device logins, email addresses, or passwords, and to add them to work groups, calendars, and mail distribution lists.
Benefits to business and real-life case study
Automating onboarding using WLA can:
- Reduce the time spent on repetitive and scripted tasks
- Minimize breaches or unauthorized access
- Eliminate duplicates within an employee’s archive.
Three faced challenges in onboarding/offboarding employees and supporting a global Bring Your Own Device (BYOD) program. Managing a 24/7 worldwide IT environment was complex: processes were manual and time-consuming, and provisioning mobile devices for new hires (and de-provisioning for exits) was a heavy burden on IT staff. These manual HR IT workflows were error-prone and couldn’t scale with the company’s growth.
Explore employee onboarding automation in more details.
Accounting processes
12. P&L creation
Workload automation tools leverage scheduling and triggering to convert accounting and trading data, pull financial data from different sources (finance, HR, procurement, etc.), and distribute P&L reports to employees and clients.
13. Billing
Using a WLA tool, users can create a workflow that pulls financial data from designated platforms, validates source files, triggers invoice creation processes, and updates journal entry datasets on the relevant platforms.
Benefits to business and real-life case study
Leveraging workload automation for automating accounting processes enhances the quality of generated reports by:
- Minimizing data errors
- Limiting time spent on report generation
- Ensuring that employees meet deadlines (e.g. complete repetitive tasks, notify users of data errors and task completion.)
UBS AG, a global bank, faced delays in processing financial reports across 170 applications, taking over a week to compile reports. They integrated Redwood RunMyJobs to automate financial reporting workflows, reducing reporting time from 9 to 5 days and improving IT process efficiency by 30%.
Explore the top 5 finance workload automation benefits and use cases in more detail.
How can AI improve WLA?
- Analytics: Leveraging analytics on a centralized data warehouse can help identify business gaps, improve decision-making, and optimize the overall business operation.
- Forecasting: Forecasting tasks and estimating any implications on the company (e.g. there will be significantly more cloud computing costs this month because of significantly more data storage in an expensive storage medium)
- Pattern recognition: Additionally, machine learning algorithms can detect trends and patterns in event logs for optimizing scheduling and triggering events according to daily/weekly/monthly patterns.
- OCR and image recognition: Implementing optical character recognition (OCR) and image recognition will enable the WLA tool to perform ETL and data updates and management on both structured and unstructured formats of data.
- Conversational AI: Chatbot or digital assistants can guide users through creating workflows and scheduling tasks. They can also notify users of errors and lead them to bugs, as well as pull event logs for review or auditing purposes.
- Natural Language Processing (NLP): GenAI can allow users to interact with workload automation platforms using natural language, simplifying the management of automation tasks for non-technical users.
Real-life case study
Global Upside Corporation, a payroll outsourcing firm, struggled with slow and error-prone payroll processing across 170+ countries. They implemented AutomationEdge with AI-driven OCR and NLP capabilities to automate payroll inputs and compliance checks. This reduced payroll errors by 15%, improved processing speed, and minimized manual intervention.
To explore which tasks can be automated using AI, feel free to read our in-depth article AI in Automation.
Further reading
It is important to understand that workload automation is one of many automation practices that businesses are trying to implement; other examples, while being similar to WLA, include Enterprise Job Scheduling.
For a visual summary of the automation landscape, feel free to check out our automation market map and top workload automation vendors which we are constantly updating by adding new automation areas and vendors.
If you feel like your business could benefit from WLA solutions, feel free to scroll through our data-driven list of workload automation tools to find the right vendor for you.
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