A troubling trend in the broader economy is having a positive effect on the willingness of business leaders to consider intelligent automation as an essential technology.
The tech world has been beset by layoffs since late 2022 as the sector has shed more than 300,000 employees during that time. The most recent numbers from the U.S. Department of Labor suggest the layoffs could be spreading to the wider economy. According to outplacement firm Challenger, Gray and Christmas, layoff announcements have had their worst February since 2009. Additionally, for many months in a row, initially positive employment numbers have been revised down by the Labor Department.
Tech sector layoffs have been construed as an opportunity for automation in the past—it streamlines workflows, eliminates manual tasks, and minimizes human error, which can lead directly to cost savings for organizations navigating an economic downturn—but those in the automation space are more confident now than they have ever been that businesses have jettisoned any remaining doubts.
“We talk to stakeholders in the software automation space constantly, and the resistance end users may have shown in the past to considering and implementing automation solutions has been crumbling day by day,” says Steve Casco, CEO & publisher of Automation Today. “Over the past year, businesses have been shedding jobs and are forced to do more with fewer resources. Automation technology providers, consultants and the end users themselves have been pretty consistent in our conversations: Firms that might have been hesitant in adopting intelligent automation six months or a year ago because they were concerned about cost or ROI are now on board because those calculations are changing.”
