With approximately 96% of companies now utilizing public cloud services, businesses across industries are leveraging the flexibility, scalability, and cost-efficiency of the cloud. Yet, despite these clear advantages, many organizations encounter obstacles during their cloud migration journey. With the right approach, however, businesses can overcome these hurdles. From streamlining workflows to enabling data-driven decision-making, cloud-based intelligent automation (IA) offers businesses across sectors the opportunity to significantly enhance their operational efficiency.
Assess Your Current Environment
Cloud migration presents several challenges, including infrastructure compatibility, data security and compliance concerns, and organizational change management. The process requires careful planning and training.
The first step toward an effective intelligent automation cloud migration is understanding your current environment and identifying where cloud automation can provide the most value. Begin by assessing which operations would benefit most from IA in the cloud. To do this, partner with a cloud provider that has deep experience in your sector and can offer proven solutions for your needs.
A thorough evaluation includes examining both current and future architecture with your vendor, paying close attention to security, reliability, and compliance needs. Particularly in highly regulated industries like financial services, energy, and healthcare, compliance with industry standards may require a hybrid cloud approach, maintaining certain operations on-premises while using cloud solutions for others.
Ensuring the involvement of your IT security and infrastructure teams from the start is crucial to maintaining momentum and avoiding rework later in the migration process. By laying a solid foundation through this evaluation phase, your business can mitigate risks and ensure a successful transition.
A Top-Down Approach
It is essential to set clear goals: What are you trying to achieve? Are you reducing operational costs, replacing legacy infrastructure, addressing skill gaps, or driving innovation?
A top-down approach to planning – guided by executive leadership – helps create alignment across the organization. Engaging all relevant stakeholders, including executives, security teams, and infrastructure managers, ensures a unified vision for success. This method accelerates time to value and ensures that all departments are working toward the same objectives.
When onboarding your cloud partner, clearly communicate your long-term strategy and the specific workflows that will offer the most value by being moved to the cloud. For example, industries with highly elastic demand – like airlines, which face unpredictable surges in customer interactions due to weather or other disruptions – can benefit from the scalability the cloud offers. Cloud platforms allow businesses to scale digital workers up or down as needed, without maintaining expensive, year-round infrastructure.
Also, consider which IA technologies will support your long-term goals. Start by integrating tools like optical character recognition (OCR) for automating data entry, then explore advanced generative AI technologies to enhance communication channels and address broader use cases. One of the cloud’s greatest advantages is its flexibility: You can add or remove technologies seamlessly, scaling automation as your business evolves.
Migrate to the Cloud
Once your environment is evaluated and a comprehensive plan is in place, it’s time to begin the IA cloud migration. By this stage, all steps for a seamless transition should be coordinated with your team and your cloud provider.
With proper planning, the actual migration process should be efficient, though timelines will vary based on your organization’s specific needs and your cloud partner’s capabilities. Post-migration, it is critical to review and validate that all processes are functioning as expected. Select a vendor that offers tools to automate this validation process, minimizing the time and effort required to ensure everything runs smoothly.
Continual Learning Is Essential
Completing the migration is just the beginning. To fully unlock the potential of IA in the cloud, businesses must commit to a future-proof strategy that evolves with their needs. Cloud platforms offer agility and scalability, so be prepared to adjust as business demands fluctuate.
Continue collaborating with your cloud provider to scale digital workers, adopt new technologies, and ensure alignment between your goals and outcomes. Regularly update your automation pipeline by identifying new workflows to optimize and additional IA technologies to integrate. If your initial outcomes don’t match your expectations, reassess and adjust your strategy.
Adopting a thoughtful, phased approach to cloud migration can help businesses navigate the challenges of implementing intelligent automation. While obstacles may arise, focusing on long-term value and careful planning can ensure a successful transition that supports business growth.