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03.11.2026
The IT industry faces a double challenge: While the demands on IT services are continuously increasing, qualified professionals are in short supply in many places. Companies therefore need to find ways to provide their services more efficiently without compromising on quality and safety.
Service Automation offers an important approach to this: it not only automates individual work steps, but entire service processes – from the request to the implementation. But which tasks are suitable for this? Where should the human factor still play a role? And what should companies pay attention to when implementing it? We discuss this with Dr. Christian Attinger, Customer Success Manager at accompio.
In the full expert interview speaks Dr. Christian Attinger, Customer Success Manager at accompio, On the potential of service automation for modern IT operations, including practical recommendations for initial use cases in automation.
Many companies have already digitized their IT processes. Requests are captured through forms, tickets are automatically created, and information is forwarded to the appropriate departments. However, the actual process is often not yet complete: the technical implementation still takes place manually.
This is where service automation comes into play. While classic process automation initially primarily converts analog processes into digital systems, Service automation the entire service process. A request not only triggers a ticket, but in the next step triggers automated actions in the corresponding IT systems.
A so-called automation engine then takes over the execution of the defined steps and provides the desired result.
The crucial difference lies in the end-to-end approach: Not only the request is processed digitally, but the underlying service is also provided automatically.
The demand for IT services is growing, while qualified professionals, especially in the fields of IT and cybersecurity, are limited in availability. Therefore, companies cannot increase their teams proportionally to the growing customer demand.
Service Automation helps to bridge this gap. Recurring tasks are automated, allowing IT teams to gain more capacity for more complex tasks. This allows an existing team to serve more customers without the need for the number of technicians to increase in proportion.
Standardized workflows are particularly suitable, where individual parameters differ, but the basic workflow remains the same. These include, for example, recurring requests, standardized deployments, or the implementation of defined changes.
A special added value arises with so-called request fulfillment: new functions or changes can be provided faster and more reproducible. At the same time, the risk of manual errors, such as typing errors or inconsistent execution, decreases.
The potential is enormous: Service automation does not mean handing over all tasks to machines. Especially complex architectural decisions should continue to be made by experienced professionals.
This applies, for example, to the transition between different manufacturers or architectures, the design of security policies and the evaluation of regulatory requirements. Automation can help to implement defined specifications. However, the fundamental decisions and the design of the corresponding guidelines remain human tasks.
The quality of the data is also a key success factor. Outdated or incomplete information in a Configuration Management Database (CMDB) can lead to automations accessing non-existent systems or making changes on the wrong basis.
Dr. Christian Attinger therefore sees data quality as one of the most important obstacles in practice. Equally crucial is user friendliness: automation portals and self-service offerings must be understandable and easy to use. Otherwise, they will not be accepted by the users.
„Service automation, even though it sounds relatively technocratic, still has a lot to do with people and with cooperation between people.“
Dr. Christian Attinger, Customer Success Manager at accompio
In addition, there are organizational interfaces. Especially when several departments or service providers are involved in a service, clear responsibilities and close collaboration are necessary. Service automation is therefore not only a technical task, but also a matter of collaboration.
Individual automations often arise in companies from specific requirements of the working day. This is a useful starting point – but in the long run it can lead to a cluttered mess: different scripts, different programming languages, and multiple developed solutions for the same tasks.
To avoid this wild growth, a Overall strategy. Companies should not only consider individual automations, but also analyze the entire service and its interfaces.
„It rarely fails due to technology, but it is actually more often due to the quality of the data models and the maintenance of the data models.“
Dr. Christian Attinger, Customer Success Manager at accompio
Standardized processes, for example based on ITIL, provide a good foundation for this. A well-maintained IT service management system and a reliable CMDB also help to consistently implement automations.
For technical management, Dr. Christian Attinger also recommends approaches from software development. Infrastructure as Code, central code repositories, and CI/CD pipelines enable the manageable automation of deployments, the versioning of changes, and testing before product deployment.
This creates a central foundation on which teams can build together, instead of developing isolated individual solutions.
Companies do not need to immediately implement a comprehensive automation platform. A pragmatic approach can even be more beneficial: First, IT teams should analyze which requests and tasks occur most frequently in daily operations and consume a lot of time.
The ticketing system usually provides a good data base for this purpose. Subsequently, one or two concrete use cases can be identified, with which initial experiences can be gathered and quick improvements achieved.
However, it is important to plan security mechanisms from the outset. Automations must not make uncontrolled changes to critical systems. Tests, defined guidelines, and control mechanisms should therefore be part of the implementation. In the event of erroneous changes, automated checks and an auto-rollback can help restore the previous state, for example.
The success can then be evaluated using specific metrics:
In addition to speed, the quality of the results is also important. Automation is particularly valuable when it not only speeds up processes but also makes them more reliable and stable at the same time.
accompio helps companies develop appropriate approaches for their IT infrastructure and their service processes.
Service automation can significantly relieve IT teams and help companies meet increasing demands despite limited human resources. This requires standardized processes, reliable data, centralized control, and a clear understanding of which tasks can be automated and which require human expertise.
At the same time, the role of IT professionals is changing: In addition to classic infrastructure knowledge, skills in scripting languages, automation platforms, and programming languages are becoming increasingly important. DevOps-Methodology matters. The time gained creates spaces for architecture, security, documentation, and individual customer requirements.
The best way to get started is often smaller than expected: identify recurring tasks, select a concrete use case, and collect first experiences in a controlled manner.
Christian knows which tasks are particularly easy to automate and why a continuous service perspective is crucial for clear data quality.
Service automation refers to the continuous automation of IT services. This involves not only capturing requests digitally, but also automating the subsequent technical implementation.
Process automation digitizes and supports individual process steps, such as creating a ticket. Service automation goes further and also automates the downstream steps until the desired service is provided.
Especially recurring, standardized tasks such as requests, deployments, and defined changes are well suited. Automation is particularly useful when processes repeat regularly and only a few parameters vary.
Standardized processes, good data quality, well-maintained data models, and clear responsibilities are important. A suitable ITSM environment and a reliable CMDB also facilitate entry.
Incomplete data, unclear processes, and lack of security mechanisms can lead to flawed automations. Furthermore, there is a risk of a disorganized proliferation of solutions when individual teams develop isolated solutions.
In addition to classic IT and infrastructure knowledge, knowledge of scripting languages such as Python and automation technologies such as Ansible and Terraform are becoming increasingly important. DevOps methods and an understanding of security guidelines are also becoming more important.
