Automation for IT job scheduling has a long history dating back to the introduction of batch scheduling decades ago. Naturally, there have been plenty of advancements and evolutions since then. But how do you know if you need the advanced capabilities of a workload automation solution?

Take a look at these 15 signs that indicate you may need workload automation and why now might be the time to consider a new solution for your job scheduling.

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1) You have silos of scheduling activities across your organization.

Centralized management of scheduling activities in a workload automation platform improves visibility and control of enterprise business processes and eliminates inefficiencies of siloed activities.

2) You have disparate scheduling tools being used.

Consolidation to an enterprise workload automation solution reduces training, resources and costs required to support separate tooling – and closes the gaps that naturally exist between different tools.

3) You are using scripting or manual processes for job scheduling.

Workload automation brings efficiency and consistency to your IT scheduling by replacing these time-consuming, expensive and error-prone processes with automation.

4) You have use cases not supported by embedded (native) schedulers.

A purpose-built workload automation platform provides significantly more advanced capabilities and automates activities far beyond those managed by a native scheduler in a single application.

5) You have job dependencies across applications and systems.

A workload automation solution that includes pre-built integrations can seamlessly manage complex dependencies across your IT environment with event-based processing.

6) You need to orchestrate workflows across time zones or geographies.

Advanced calendaring functionality automatically manages the nuances associated with time zones and Daylight Saving Time – and workload automation solutions provide dozens of built-in calendars along with the ability to build your own.

7) You are not consistently meeting process SLAs or monitoring SLAs effectively.

Workload automation platforms improve tracking and performance for SLAs with capabilities to define SLA policies, automate monitoring and issue alerts when SLAs are at risk or have been breached.

8) You want to delegate scheduling tasks yet maintain appropriate levels of control.

Highly granular role-based access security policies can be used to define and control who can add, change, delete or view jobs in your scheduling ecosystem.

9) You are not able to manage schedule changes effectively.

Best practices for change management in workload automation include ensuring only authorized users can make changes, the changes have been approved and all changes are captured in a central record.

10) You have jobs running on-prem, in the cloud or in a hybrid environment.

Regardless of where jobs are running, workload automation can orchestrate them within your end-to-end business processes.

11) You have legacy environments that aren’t compatible with modern scheduling tools.

Modern workload automation providers offer comprehensive integrations that span legacy systems as well as newer solutions in the constantly evolving technology landscape.

12) You need to manage dynamic resources – such as clouds, containers and servers.

By automating the processes for starting and stopping dynamic resources, those resources are running only when they need to be. That way, consumption is controlled and so are the associated costs.

13) You want to accelerate CI/CD processes for application and scheduling updates.

Application updates by development often involve scheduling updates as well. Easily promote scheduling updates from UAT to Production with advanced capabilities such as automated conversion of job names.

14) You have developers asking for scheduling automation.

Full APIs and a command line interface within workload automation enable developers to embed core scheduling capabilities within their applications.

15) You need to satisfy regulatory and compliance requirements.

Comprehensive, auditable logs maintain a high integrity record of what occurs in your processes so you can demonstrate you have the controls in place as required by laws and regulations.