How To Realize The Promise of Workflow Automation

In a survey of 800 IT managers (CIO.com) 62% of IT projects fail. This is due to budget overruns, higher-than-expected maintenance costs and lack of delivering ROI. All of these failures are also promises made by the manager of the initiative. These initiatives need not fail for these reasons.
The success of workflow automation comes down to three key factors:

Implementation Expertise
Ongoing Management
End-User Adoption

In the analogy of building a house, workflow automation solutions require skilled developers and knowledgeable professionals to implement a winning solution. Attempting to build or implement a solution with seemingly inexpensive tools often results in poor implementation, costly ongoing management and lackluster end-user adoption.
The right automation partner will bring a wealth of experience, an unmatched and appropriate toolset, and a customer-focused service approach. Then that partner will work with your specific rules, processes and users to design a solution that will ensure end-user adoption. Ensuring end-user adoption requires that the end-users derive direct value from the solution (e.g. a faster process, more closed sales, career evolvement, etc.).
Finally, the solution you implement needs to be an enterprise-level solution that is extensible, straight-forward to integrate with your legacy and future systems, and easy to maintain. Plan your maintenance costs to include future enhancements, tweaks and end-user demands as the system is adopted. Systems are not perfect but can become optimal when the system is easy to maintain and extend over time.