Work is digitizing. A key part of this process is the application of automation in a variety of forms across business processes which we are now codifying into workflows. This essentially digital process enables organizations to understand where work happens and then audit its presence and position. From this point we can then drive human tasks (we used to call them jobs or roles, remember?) into automated workspace management tools.
Simple stuff, right? Take workplace activities spanning roles, tasks and plain old-fashioned jobs… and then drive their functions into digital platforms capable of running everything from call center support services to seedling fertilizer management on a farm.
The trouble is, it is simple enough to plan and strategize these things on a highest level, but implementation is someone tougher. It’s almost as if wrangling human tasks out of peoples’ hands is hard work, even when workflow automation generally focused on taking on repeatable tasks that humans consider drudgery and computers love for their standardized measurable form.
Good Progress, Untapped Potential
A recently published report – The Business Impact of Workflow Automation: Key Statistics for 2025 – suggests that while 66% of businesses have implemented automation across multiple functions, a mere 4% have achieved fully automated workspaces. This gap may highlight both remarkable progress, but also vast untapped potential in the business automation landscape.
“Business automation has undergone a profound evolution, transforming from a supplementary technology into the cornerstone of strategic business transformation. The evidence of its impact is compelling and quantifiable,” said Israel Gaudette, founder of Quebec-based AI platform company Custom Workflows.
Gaudette points to customer successes in this space including Shell’s use of so-called “citizen development automation” (presumably an umbrella term used to cover all aspects of employee workload digitization) which generated $3 million in annual savings from just one refinery. Similarly, an unnamed California insurance provider revolutionized its operations by reducing quote generation time from two weeks to just four minutes, resulting in a 70% increase in sales volume. Healthcare, financial services and manufacturing are also highlighted as key areas for workload automation growth.
Where it is successfully applied, workflow automation may be fundamentally redefining the nature of work itself i.e. it is creating new opportunities for human-machine collaboration and challenging organizations to reimagine processes that were designed for a pre-digital era.
Analyzing the development of this, its own bread-and-butter sector as it has, Custom Workflows highlights the difficulty the technology industry is having is measuring and quantifying the elements at play. Discrepancies stem from fundamental differences in how business and IT systems analysts view the components parts of automation. Some analyses include only software components, while others incorporate hardware, services and adjacent technologies.
The Fragmented Nature of Automation
“The fragmented nature of automation – spanning robotic process automation, business process management, workflow tools and AI-powered solutions all further complicates consistent measurement,” lamented Gaudette. “Market segment overlap presents another challenge. As technologies increasingly converge, traditional category boundaries blur. A document processing solution might be classified under workflow automation by one analyst and digital process automation by another, creating inconsistent market size calculations.”
Other survey “findings” from Custom Workflows’ analysis report suggest that the integration of artificial intelligence with traditional automation represents a particularly powerful growth catalyst. McKinsey’s own analysis reveals that while basic automation delivers 20-30% cost reductions, intelligent automation incorporating AI can achieve 50-70% savings while simultaneously improving quality and customer experience.
Regionally (or internationally regionally let’s say), North America currently holds the largest revenue share in the global automation market. This is thought to be due to early adoption of digital technologies, substantial IT infrastructure investments and a concentration of technology vendors. Asia Pacific demonstrates the fastest CAGR. China has (perhaps unsuprisingly) emerged as a particular hotspot for manufacturing automation. Then comes Europe, which has steady growth in automation adoption, with 38% of UK corporate processes already automated according to Emergen Research.
A Market In Dynamic Transition
“The business automation landscape reveals a market in dynamic transition, with organizations scattered across the implementation spectrum,” said Gaudette. “We’re approaching an inflexion point where automation shifts from a competitive advantage to a competitive necessity. Organizations that fail to accelerate their automation initiatives risk falling behind more digitally mature competitors who can operate with greater efficiency, agility and resilience.”
As the market for workflow automation now goes into what we might call an amplified state of flux, it appears that current automation adoption follows a classic bell curve distribution, with most organizations clustered in the middle stages of implementation maturity. Surprisingly, smaller organizations often outperform their larger counterparts when it comes to automation success. That said, large enterprises demonstrate a stronger strategic commitment to advanced automation.
Advice from Gaudette and team advise firms to develop a clear automation roadmap with specific key performance indicators (KPIs) and measurable objectives. Organizations should of course implement security-by-design principles in all automation initiatives and consider combined human-automation approaches rather than full replacement.
As the white-collar jobs that were previously perceived as un-automatable are now subsumed into the gears of the automated workflow machine, the most successful implementations leverage automation for routine tasks while redirecting human workers to activities requiring judgment, creativity and interpersonal skills. This market can now evolve through its adolescence into something truly impactful and important… and you don’t need a machine to tell you that.
