It used to be that automation was limited to factory floors and robot product lines.
Now, automating business tasks is sweeping across every market and fast!
For many businesses, automation is a non-optional investment.
If they want to compete in their industry, then automation is a must.
But how did we get there?
How exactly has business process automation evolved?
When did it take over the workplace?
And whats next, now that seemingly every app has automation built-in?
The early pioneers of business automation software
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Even when two appscouldbe integrated, the options available wereso limitedthat it often wasnt worth the effort.
Still, some companies saw the potential.
But that hindsight was only made possible by a handful of pioneers.
The goal of WPS was to help businesses visually represent their workflows.
This software eventually became automation-oriented, but never managed to find mainstream success.
Still, it demonstrated that organic business processes could be digitized and, ultimately, automatized.
Pipes: The first major player
Enter Yahoo.
Back in the day, Yahoo!
was a sector leader, with their namesake search and Yahoo Mail making it a popular consumer software company.
So in 2007, whenYahoo!
Pipeslaunched, it quickly became a popular product, onesome users still mourntoday.
Pipes was a web app to create simple automations with a drag-and-drop interface.
As WPS and Pipes started the web automation market, SaaS apps began to take over.
Every new popular business app was a SaaS app, it seemed, with an API ready to automate.
Someone just needed to put all of these pieces together.
Just half a year after its official launch, IFTTT was already home to more thanone million automations.
IFTTT was the first service to introduce a plug-and-play approach to automation at a massive scale.
If this app does this, then this app does that, IFTTT taught the world.
What set IFTTT apart was that it made programming logic as user-friendly as possible.
Programming looks complicated, with its lines of code and fussy punctuation rules.
At its most basic, though, programming is simple logic tools.
And, more pertinently, it showed that the world wanted automation.
The time was right.
The rise and rise of Zapier
So I was thinking.
A killer web app might be something that extends the functionality of other apps APIs.
The tagline could be: Extending the functionality of the web.'
Dude, that would be awesome.
The API of all APIs.
~Bryan Helmig to Wade Foster, the prescient founders of Zapier.
From the beginning,Zapierwas a simple idea based on tools that were already there.
Similar to IFTTT, it used pre-existing APIs to connect business software and make automation simple and ubiquitous.
You could even add code, if you wanted.
And where IFTTT focused on more consumer apps and IoT devices, Zapier focused on business software and workflows.
It appealed to a massive audience, from startups to established businesses, non-coders to developers.
More often than not, its Zapier automations that makes these new no-code apps possible.
And with such a big slice of the pie, it wouldnt be long before Zapiers authority was challenged.
Today, however, the storys very different indeed.
While most of these apps offer limited options, many people onlyneedlimited automation.
But will it stick?
For now, it looks like these built-in automations are just a convenient feature of the growing SaaS market.
Until then, third-party solutions like IFTTT and Zapier will likely thrive.
Especially among those of us who like a little challenge.
If youre a business owner, automation can have a huge impact on your operations.
If it seems intimidating, dont worry well cover the first steps here.
Is automating this process cheaper?
Will it lead to fewer errors?
Is it simplifying things, or overcomplicating them?
Will you understand how it works, or will it become a blackbox?
At the time of writing, Zapier has over two thousand apps to choose from.
As you might imagine, many of these apps overlap, offering similar features to one another.
The future of automation
When Zapier first launched, it was largely a one-of-a-kind service.
Each of these apps is taking a unique approach to automation.
Parabola offers a data-centric approach, while built-in automations make things as simple as possible.
Regardless of which app is best for your business, the future of automation is exceedingly bright.
If it is a race towards automation, its a marathon not a sprint.
