(When) Will Digital Process Automation Vendors Get Their Mojo Back? - Analyst Brief

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(When) Will Digital Process Automation Vendors Get Their Mojo Back? - Analyst Brief
Deep Analysis

     Analyst Brief

     (When) Will Digital Process
     Automation Vendors
     Get Their Mojo Back?
     By: Connie Moore

    The Essentials                                   comprehensive offerings, doesn’t matter, but
                                                     the process automation vendors need to get
    Digital process automation vendors have          moving. Otherwise, hotter markets will soon
    crossed the sales and marketing chasm, going     eclipse their software offerings and they will
    from niche software status to a mainstream       be relegated to a lesser status, particularly as
    IT-approved offering that empowers both          RPA and process mining vendors grab all the
    business processes and businesspeople. By        available mindshare.
    dumping the Lean/Six Sigma/BPM lingo
    in 2015-2016 and going full bore into low-code   What will it take for the process automation
    and robotic process automation (RPA)             vendors to get their mojo back? Some
    partnerships, process automation vendors         of the areas they must address – either
    have finally received the attention from IT      through internal product development, deep
    that they needed for their market to grow.       partnerships, and/or acquisitions – include:
    That acceptance, in turn, has opened the door       AI/ML for specific process automation
    to significantly more business buyers and           functions (many of them yet to be
    has finally “legitimized” the process               discovered)
    automation market.
                                                        Process mining for process insight and
    Unfortunately, many of the digital process          continuous improvement that also taps into
    automation vendors have lost their mojo along       AI/ML for making real-time improvements
    the way. Adjacent markets and process-related       in complex, dynamic environments
    technologies are ripe and even compelling for
    the vendors to pursue, while machine learning       New process modeling approaches that

    (ML) also beckons the R&D developers’               go well beyond BPMN – a notation standard

    attention. But still, the large majority of         first developed in 2004 (!) – making it

    vendors remain stuck in an automation box.          easier for businesspeople to envision and

    Whether they develop or acquire their way out       create new processes and to align process

    of an automation-only mindset, and into more        transformation with customer experience
                                                        initiatives

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(When) Will Digital Process Automation Vendors Get Their Mojo Back? - Analyst Brief
RPA for task automation within process               are all pursuing it from similar angles –
   transformation and automation                        which includes pushing deeper into
                                                        supporting citizen developers in addition to
   Process-based packaged business
                                                        providing tooling for business analysts and
   applications for functional and industry-
                                                        application developers.2
   specific processes
                                                        Case management is mainstream.
This list is not exhaustive; process automation
                                                        While straight-through processing is
vendors must pursue many other areas such
                                                        still important for transaction-intensive
as blockchain, process governance, workforce
                                                        processes that have low or no human touch,
intelligence, integrating customer journey
                                                        case management is the widely accepted
mapping with process mapping, automating
                                                        approach for long-running, people- and
more freestyle collaboration activities, and
                                                        document-intensive processes. Many
automating processes within digital business
                                                        vendors are comfortably positioned in the
networks that span multiple organizations and
                                                        case management market and continue to
business entities.
                                                        innovate (e.g., Alfresco, Hyland, IBM, and
                                                        OpenText) because they are strongly rooted
What Happened                                           in the document management and capture
to the Vendors’ Innovation                              markets, which enjoy a natural marriage
Momentum?                                               with dynamic case management. Other
                                                        process vendors fill the content technology
Last year Deep Analysis conducted deep-                 gap by partnering with document
dive research into the current state of the             management providers and may even
digital process automation market (2019) to             support federated content architectures
identify the five-year trends driving the market        (e.g., Pegasystems).
and products (2020-2025).1 The interviews
and demos made it clear that the process
automation vendors had lost their innovation           Stuck in an Automation Box
moorings. At that time, the vendors were
winning the low-code process battle but losing
                                                                                Process
the overall technology innovation war. Now, the                                Discovery                    RPA

state of the 2020 market can be summed up as
                                                                                                                                AI/ML
follows:                                                     Blockchain

   Low-code is king. For the past 3-5 years,
   process automation vendors have
   been rightly preoccupied with providing
   more low-code process design                                                                                       Process
                                                           Journey                                                    Mining
   and development functionality for                       Mapping

   developers, business analysts, and
   even businesspeople. Low-code is now
   where most vendors focus their R&D
                                                                                                                       Work
   and marketing energy. However, it is                         Business                                           Collaboration
                                                               Applications                    Customer
   getting harder for vendors to differentiate                                                 experience

   themselves on low-code alone because they

   Deep Analysis     © 2020 | info@deep-analysis.net               (When) Will Digital Process Automation Vendors Get Their Mojo Back?   2
(When) Will Digital Process Automation Vendors Get Their Mojo Back? - Analyst Brief
Packaged business apps are tantalizing             RPA was ascendant, most of the process
but too hard, too scary, or both. A couple         automation vendors missed their chance,
of process automation vendors (Appian              even though task automation is a crucial
and OpenText) have made initial forays into        part of process automation. One could even
developing packaged business applications          argue that task automation is subservient
such as customer service and contract              to more widely scoped process automation
management; however, with the exception            initiatives and the two technologies belong
of Pegasystems, most process automation            together. To make up for missing the RPA
vendors have been reluctant or very slow           market when it first emerged, virtually
to move definitively in this direction.            every process automation vendor has
In the meantime, Pegasystems zeroed                followed a well-trod path to partnerships
in on customer service and customer                with Automation Anywhere, Blue Prism, UI
experience long ago and has been a richly          Path, and other RPA companies. Some of
featured CRM vendor for years. Conversely,         these partnerships are barely more than
Salesforce has expanded from CRM into              co-marketing agreements, while others
the digital process automation space, and          involve deeper integration (e.g., IBM resells
SAP has added process automation and               Automation Anywhere).4
RPA throughout its portfolio of packaged
                                                   AI/ML is tantalizing but the details are
business apps.
                                                   hard to figure out. When asked about
“Workflow for all” is surfacing with a low-        R&D plans for artificial intelligence and
code focus and new technology building             machine learning, most process automation
blocks. A few vendors, such as Catalytic,          vendors say it is too early to make a call
Flowforma, and Nintex, started making a            about where and how to apply them. They
run at the general-purpose workflow market         aren’t even sure how ready their customers
with a full range of process automation            are to implement AI/ML within processes,
tools for businesspeople and those elusive         where the data for machine learning will
citizen developers. Catalytic has a deep war       come from (e.g., process transaction logs,
chest to become the next market maker.             process mining, IoT, case data, etc.), and
This “workflow for all” focus is unfolding         where that data will be stored. Clearly,
now despite the ever-present risk of being         most vendors are working hard to figure it
eclipsed by Microsoft, Amazon, or some             out. The challenge is that different AI/ML
other software mega-giant that supports a          solutions apply to specific pockets within
roll-your-own approach.       3
                                                   the process automation software, making
                                                   a blanket strategy hard to develop, plus
RPA partnerships are everywhere, but
                                                   totally new data sets are often needed to
high valuations hinder acquisitions. When
                                                   support machine learning. Although it’s

                      The challenge is that different AI/ML solutions apply to specific
                      pockets within the process automation software, making a blanket
                      strategy hard to develop, plus totally new data sets are often needed
                      to support machine learning.

Deep Analysis    © 2020 | info@deep-analysis.net            (When) Will Digital Process Automation Vendors Get Their Mojo Back?   3
(When) Will Digital Process Automation Vendors Get Their Mojo Back? - Analyst Brief
true that envisioning how to apply AI/ML              to email and may later ingest the results,
to process automation is hard work, the               but what happens within those emails,
vendors can’t shy away from embracing                 discussions, and document exchanges
it now.5
                                                      is usually outside the purview of the
                                                      automated process. But now, if nothing
Operational excellence and customer
                                                      else, the Covid-19 pandemic has shown
experience (CX) initiatives are miles apart.
                                                      how frequently important decisions are
Today, an inexcusable and yawning gulf
                                                      made by remote workers and teams using
separates business process transformation
                                                      a hodgepodge of tools. This crucially
projects from CX transformation projects.
                                                      important work could be – but hasn’t been
Although these efforts are actually two
                                                      – brought into the process automation
sides of the same coin and should be
                                                      fold, with AI/ML driving the collaborative
treated as such, business process and CX
                                                      processes. At the same time, collaboration
professionals rarely talk to one another,
                                                      vendors are aggressively adding their own
have been trained in different disciplines,
                                                      AI/ML capabilities to bring structure to
use different tools for transformation, and
                                                      these ad hoc scenarios.
report into different parts of the C-suite.
Much of this is historical: business process
initiatives have been heavily tilted toward
operational excellence in the back office          A Handful of Vendors Are
and championed by the COO and CIO, while           Pursuing New Innovations
CX is nascent in comparison and usually
                                                   While most of the digital process automation
championed by the chief customer officer,
                                                   vendors are stuck in an automation-only
chief digital officer, CXOs (i.e., functional
                                                   mentality, a few are envisioning a new future
heads), chief revenue officer, and/or the
                                                   for their evolving software products (see
CMO. As a result, process automation
                                                   Figure 1). Part of the problem is that the word
products offer very little thought-
                                                   “automation” has created a mindset that is
leadership in integrating with customer
                                                   too limiting and constraining for the digital
journey mapping and transforming digital
                                                   process automation market. To set the stage
touchpoints.6
                                                   for innovation, the vendors must get back
Supporting collaboration is an                     to thinking seriously about what it takes to
afterthought. Historically, digital process        successfully support business transformation,
automation has focused on the highly               end-to-end business processes, outside-in
structured processes that move data,               thinking, customer journeys, and – dare
information, work activities, and decision-        we say it? – continuous improvement.
making through a department or across              The future for digital process automation is
the organization. But a lot of work gets           an intelligent business automation platform
done informally – in email, conference calls,      that encompasses process mining, digital
web conferencing, and collaboration tools          process automation, and RPA, leverages AI/ML
– and this work largely goes unaddressed           throughout, and provides intelligent, predictive,
within the automated process. It’s true that       process-enabled business applications.7 The
workflow often hands activities or tasks           vendors need to get moving again.

Deep Analysis    © 2020 | info@deep-analysis.net                (When) Will Digital Process Automation Vendors Get Their Mojo Back?   4
(When) Will Digital Process Automation Vendors Get Their Mojo Back? - Analyst Brief
Figure 1
  Intelligent business automation platform encompasses many technologies

                                                                          CONTEXTUAL
                                                                            PROFILE
                                                                              Biometrics
                                                                            Personalization                PROCESS
                                           ENGAGEMENT                                                    APPLICATIONS
                                                 Chatbots                                                          CRM
                                            WFO/contact center                                                     WFO
                                                   Social                                                  Customer service
                                                Mobile apps                                               Digital supply chain
                                               Omnichannel                                                         ERP
                                         Virtual/augmented reality      DATA SOURCE(S)                       Vertical apps
                                                                                                         IoT/drone integration
                                                                             Data models
                                                                                                                   Etc.
                                                                              Data lakes
                                                                          Predictive analytics
                                                                                 CRM
        Emerging Tools                                                            ERP
                                                                                 MDM                      INTELLIGENT
                                             COGNITIVE                           CDP                        CONTENT
                                             SERVICES                                                     AUTOMATION
                                            Machine learning                                               Intelligent capture
                                              Deep learning                                              Content management
                                                Biometrics                                                 Sentiment analysis
                                       Natural language processing         PROCESS                      Information governance
                                       Natural language generation        AUTOMATION                       Predictive content
                                                                                                           Ephemeral content
                                                                           Process governance
                                                                      Process models/journey maps
                                                                     Low-code design & management
                                                                                 Workflow
                                                                       Straight-through processing
                                                                              Business rules
                                                                                   RPA

Innovators forge different                                            Timeline.8 Others rely on partnerships, such as

and often parallel paths                                              Alfresco’s relationship with Amazon, or K2’s
                                                                      and Nintex’s relationships with Microsoft.9 The
For enterprise buyers, the first thing to                             smaller vendors that can’t make acquisitions
understand about digital process automation                           but have big visions are partnering to round
vendors is that a handful of innovators are                           out their offerings – but buyers should use
pursuing many different paths, often at the                           caution because not all these partnerships
same time. For example, companies such as                             are very deep. An example of a smaller
Appian, Kofax, Nintex, and Pega have moved                            vendor differentiating itself through strategic
their competitive goalposts by acquiring                              partnerships is FireStart, an Austria-based
RPA vendors (among other ways), while                                 company that partners with process mining
others have developed something entirely                              vendor Celonis, as well as with RPA vendors, to
new and different, such as ABBYY’s Process                            cover the full spectrum of automation. While
IQ and Content IQ, and BP Logix’s Process                             other vendors may have similar partnerships,

   Deep Analysis         © 2020 | info@deep-analysis.net                               (When) Will Digital Process Automation Vendors Get Their Mojo Back?   5
FireStart intentionally goes to market with
                                                        Figure 2
an integrated approach that spans process
                                                        Digital Process Automation Innovators:
mining, digital process management, and RPA.            Three Dimensions
The end result is what matters. Ask these kinds
of questions: are our vendors’ products highly                       Strategic Innovation
                                                                     Pega leads the pack, followed by
differentiated? Has market and technology                            Appian, Kofax, and Nintex
convergence through acquisitions moved
some of our vendors more quickly toward the
intelligent business automation platform?
And finally, do their innovations allow us to                                                 Product Innovation
                                                                                              Pega, Nintex, BPLogix, ABBYY,
better transform the business by focusing on                                                  and IBM show leadership

operational excellence, customer experience,
and/or end-to-end, outside-in processes?10
                                                                                                             Business Apps Innovation
                                                                                                             Pega, Salesforce, and SAP lead
Overall innovation in the digital process                                                                    the pack, followed by Appian,
                                                                                                             Hyland, OpenText, and Ultimus
automation market is being driven by a handful
of vendors, most notably Pegasystems and
to a lesser extent Appian. Other standout
vendors include ABBYY, BPLogix, Hyland, IBM,
Kofax, Nintex, and OpenText, although these
                                                      The innovation path ahead
vendors are innovative for different reasons
                                                      includes at least eight directions
(and none of them should rest on their laurels).
The vendors can be clustered on these three           A deeper dive into the many dimensions of
dimensions (see Figure 2):                            innovation shows that the most innovative
                                                      vendors pursue more than one approach,
   Strategic innovation: Pega leads the pack,
                                                      often in parallel (see Figure 3). Many more
   followed by Appian, Kofax, and Nintex
                                                      approaches will surface as the market
   Product innovation: Pega, Nintex, BPLogix,         transitions to an intelligent business
   ABBYY, and IBM show leadership (although           automation platform over the next 3-5 years.
   they innovate their products in different
                                                      Process mining is crucial for business and
   areas and in varying ways)
                                                      process insight
   Business apps innovation: Pega,
                                                      The process mining market – which has taken
   Salesforce, and SAP clearly lead the pack
                                                      up the mantle of continuous improvement
   for process-enabled business applications,
                                                      and operational excellence in a way that the
   followed by Appian and OpenText; Hyland
                                                      digital process automation vendors have more
   and Ultimus provide many mature
                                                      recently ignored – is on the cusp of becoming a
   applications as part of their baseline
                                                      significant force, particularly in manufacturing,
   products11
                                                      pharma, oil & gas, and other regulated
                                                      industries. Business acceptance is still slow
                                                      (Celonis leads the market, along with Kofax,
                                                      Minit, QPR, Signavio, Software AG,
                                                      UiPath, and 25+ other pure-play vendors)
                                                      but enterprises are increasingly interested in

   Deep Analysis    © 2020 | info@deep-analysis.net                (When) Will Digital Process Automation Vendors Get Their Mojo Back?        6
Figure 3
  Digital Process Automation
  Innovators: By Approach                                                                      Process
                                                                                                Insight
                                                              AI/ML
                                                                                               (process
                                                                                                mining)

                                                                      ABBYY        Celonis
                                                                      Appian       Kofax
                                                                         IBM       QPR
                                                      Appian          Nintex       Signavio
                                                      Hyland            Pega       25+ others                              Process
                                   Business                                                                                 Design
                                    Apps              OpenText                                         BP Logix
                                                                                                                          (modeling)
                                                      Pega                                                 IBM
                                                      Salesforce                                         Nintex
                                                      SAP
                                                      Ultimus

                                                                                                         Appian
                                                      Catalytic                                           Kofax
                                                      Flowforma                                          Nintex
                                                      Nintex                                               Pega            Task
                                 Workflow for                                                                           Automation
                                                                     Alfresco      IBM                     SAP
                                  Everyone
                                                                      Hyland       Pega                                   (RPA)
                                                                          IBM      Progress
                                                                    OpenText
                                                                         Pega

                                                             Content
                                                             in Action
                                                               (case,                         Digital
                                                           blockchain &                     Decisioning
                                                           governance)

gleaning insights from their business processes              loop is getting much harder for digital process
and then improving the automation. Riding                    automation vendors, given the widespread
on the coattails of big data, process mining                 use of microservices, serverless systems,
software uses transaction logs from enterprise               cloud computing, dynamic case management,
apps, legacy apps, digital process automation                and more complex business processes. As a
systems, RPA software, and other systems to                  result, vendors are largely ignoring the need
identify and correct root causes for process                 for a continuous feedback loop. This myopic
inefficiencies and bottlenecks. Originally,                  thinking needs to stop. The vendors must
process mining applied to historical data, but               instead envision how process mining, AI/
now it can consume execution data that is                    ML, and automation can be combined in new
refreshed every hour.                                        and different ways for supporting process
                                                             improvement and business transformation. For
Historically, continuous improvement was
                                                             example, machine learning could be trained to
an important aspect of business process
                                                             identify and correct bottlenecks and deviations
management. But automating the improvement
                                                             within executing processes. Unlike with RPA,

   Deep Analysis    © 2020 | info@deep-analysis.net                       (When) Will Digital Process Automation Vendors Get Their Mojo Back?   7
which eluded the process automation vendors
                                                      Figure 4
until it was too late, these companies need to
                                                      The Deming Continuous Improvement Cycle
invest in process mining before the market
explodes. They also need to target process
mining at customer-facing processes, tracking
metrics such as net promoter scores and other
customer experience data. Process mining                                                PLAN                         The digital
                                                      Process mining                                                 process
is core to transformation and operational             software                                                       automation
                                                      tackles three            ACT                   DO
excellence, making it imperative for process                                                                         vendors have
                                                      parts of the                                                   concentrated on
automation vendors to pursue (see Figure 4).          Deming process                                                 one aspect of
                                                      improvement
Process design (or modeling) needs                                                     CHECK                         the continuous
                                                      cycle.                                                         improvement
rethinking and updating                                                                                              cycle.

Although flowcharting is the default for
depicting and designing business processes,
companies automating end-to-end processes
or highly dynamic case management solutions
often hit the wall at some point. And it’s            identify what each task and activity needs
no surprise. The world is moving beyond               before completing, and the timeline
flowcharting with BPMN as processes become            software determines which tasks and
increasingly more complex.12 Taking this into         activities execute, and in what order, while
account, some process automation vendors              the process runs.13
have developed innovative design approaches           Nintex allows its process mapping,
such as timeline-based process design or              modeling, and workflow users to describe
natural language processing for capturing             processes in plain English, then uses natural
business activities. Others are contemplating         language processing (a type of AI/ML) to
ways (but moving too slowly, in our opinion)          match the text to standard workflow actions
to integrate process models with customer             and automatically generate the skeleton
journey mapping and touchpoints.                      of a workflow process. These descriptions
For example:                                          are stored as parent/child process snippets
                                                      that can be reused in multiple processes.14
   BP Logix’s Process Timeline, which is
   a time-based modeling and execution                IBM Blueworks Live provides a SaaS-
   approach, offers the richness of BPMN              based collaboration environment for
   flowcharts without the complex depiction           business subject-matter experts to capture
   of dependencies, parallel processing, and          their process knowledge prior to process
   arrows pointing in all directions. When            modeling. Hundreds or even thousands of
   designing processes, businesspeople                business teams commonly use Blueworks

                         Historically, continuous improvement was an important aspect
                         of business process management. But automating the improvement
                         loop is getting much harder for digital process automation vendors ...

   Deep Analysis    © 2020 | info@deep-analysis.net              (When) Will Digital Process Automation Vendors Get Their Mojo Back?   8
Live to crowdsource innovation and                    customer micro-journeys usually involve
solicit process improvement ideas from                multiple channels.
colleagues, document their process
insights, and then pass this information           Task automation belongs
to process design business analysts and            with process automation
developers. Blueworks Live precedes the
process design and modeling stage, and             As a growing number of RPA customers
not all ideas captured by businesspeople           are learning, automating just the manual,
are incorporated into the process design.          laborious parts of a process without thinking
However, once the effort moves to process          about transforming and automating the
design, modeling, and automation,                  overall business process results in a myopic,
the platform provides low-code forms,              band-aid approach to operational excellence
documentation, prompts, checklists, etc. for       and business transformation. Think about
business analysts and developers to design         it – task automation is a fairly granular
the process.15                                     activity, with tasks belonging to activities
                                                   within one or more larger processes.
Signavio is focused on integrating                 This is one reason why so many process
customer journey mapping for digital               automation vendors have partnered
transformation projects and process                with RPA vendors. Ideally, the process
modeling for operational excellence                automation vendors should have developed
projects. These two worlds have                    or acquired RPA products long ago and
traditionally operated independently               folded them into their platforms, as Kofax
of each other, although they are highly            did with Kapow, and as Pega did with
intertwined and should be brought together.        OpenSpan. Now that RPA valuations are so
Specifically, customer journey mapping             high, it’s much more difficult for vendors to
depicts how the company’s customers                make acquisitions. But as Appian has shown
engage with the organization throughout            with its recent acquisition of Jidoka, there
the customer journey (the end-to-end               are still many small RPA companies that
process) and the business process model            would be smart investments – allowing the
represents what the organization does              combined functionality of RPA and process
internally to support the customer. Bringing       automation to execute work without band-
these two worlds together is an important          aids for achieving operational excellence,
breakthrough.                                      customer-facing processes, and end-to-end
Pega uses stage-based case modeling to             business transformation.16
design microjourneys and visualize the
customer journey. Pega's approach is               Digital decisioning could be a new point
pragmatic: rather than tackle the entire           of differentiation
customer journey, Pega recommends
automating micro-customer journeys                 The digital process automation firms know

and then integrating them into the overall         business rules technology very well, having

customer journey to support the                    used rules for many years to automate

end-to-end customer experience. Pega               business and process logic. However, a

cautions against automating customer               handful of vendors – namely Pega, Progress

journeys by channel because even                   Corticon, IBM, and Salesforce – have gone

Deep Analysis    © 2020 | info@deep-analysis.net                (When) Will Digital Process Automation Vendors Get Their Mojo Back?   9
beyond the more typical embedded business             process automation companies are now
rules by offering a full complement of digital        including intelligent capture and sentiment
decisioning that combines business rules,             analysis as part of their process automation
predictive analytics, AI/ML, and business             offerings, and, for example, Appian has
process automation software for intelligent           implemented an innovative solution using
decisioning. As organizational leaders move
             17
                                                      natural language generation. The biggest trend
more into algorithm-driven business decision-         the vendors should move on is blockchain,
making, process automation vendors have an            which provides a secure way to move
opportunity to differentiate their products by        information between business entities and
supporting real-time, predictive decisioning at       across the information supply chain.19
every customer touchpoint and by using digital
decisioning for next-best-action and fraud
                                                      “Workflow for everyone” is risky business but
detection.
                                                      an area of innovation

Content in action requires case management            The low-code era for workflow ushered in a

and blockchain                                        new breed of vendors willing to pursue selling
                                                      workflow as a general-purpose business
The digital process automation vendors have           tool for everyone in the organization. Just
always been bifurcated along the lines of how         as ordinary businesspeople routinely use
they support document management and                  fairly complicated software such as Excel
content services. Several vendors with deep           and PowerPoint and think nothing of it,
heritages in document management –                    these vendors believe the time has come for
namely Alfresco, Hyland, IBM, and OpenText –          workflow automation. There’s little argument,
are also significant players in dynamic case          and vendors such as Catalytic, Flowforma,
management and other types of process                 Nintex, and Ultimus are making inroads, but
automation. Also, many other vendors have             many market watchers think they are putting
forged deep partnerships using Microsoft              themselves at risk of competing against
SharePoint, such as K2, OpenText, and Nintex.18       Microsoft, Google, Amazon, or some other
For many years, content management was                mega-vendor. Differentiation can be had in this
considered a mature market, but AI/ML has             market segment, but for many other process
made deep inroads into case management                automation vendors, pursuing this target is too
through intelligent content, intelligent              much of a David and Goliath scenario for their
capture, sentiment analysis, and many other           comfort zone. In the meantime, Nintex stands
content-centric features. This gives the digital      out with the breadth of its product line (process
process automation vendors that stayed out            modeling, automation, and RPA) and use of
of the content market another opportunity             AI/ML. Companies like Nintex and Ultimus are
to differentiate themselves by managing               also hedging their bets by pushing hard into
unstructured information. As a result, some           departmental implementations for strategic
                                                      business processes.

                         The digital process automation vendors have always been bifurcated
                         along the lines of how they support document management and
                         content services.

   Deep Analysis    © 2020 | info@deep-analysis.net                (When) Will Digital Process Automation Vendors Get Their Mojo Back?   10
Business applications are ever so                     to move back and forth seamlessly between
slowly emerging                                       highly structured work and unpredictable,
                                                      ad hoc, and often messy work. But now,
It’s been over seven years since Forrester
                                                      with more companies depending almost
Research first coined the term “smart process
                                                      exclusively on remote workers in virtual teams,
applications” to describe functional and
                                                      they find very few tools at their disposal that
industry-specific business applications built on
                                                      support remote work. In the new “normal,”
a platform including digital process automation,
                                                      organizations require a more structured way
document management, collaboration, and
                                                      to capture collaborative decisions instead of
analytics. That view of the future has been
                                                      relying on creaky email and document-sharing
extremely slow to materialize, with the notable
                                                      tools coupled with web conferencing and
exception of Pega, which had always focused on
                                                      collaboration software. And they need those
the CRM market and further sealed the deal in
                                                      decisions and collaboration artifacts to be
2010 by acquiring Chordiant. Some vendors are
                                                      integrated into the automated process.
now making a serious – although constrained
– run at the business applications market for         One workflow automation vendor, Zapier, has
digital process automation platforms, including       created such an in-house tool to help manage
Appian and OpenText. Others, such as Hyland           its virtual workforce. This so-named “decision
and Ultimus, use a full complement of process-        log” software, called Async, substitutes for
based business applications to capture new            the firm’s email system by providing a place
customer wins and to deepen their footprints          to find important discussions and track
within existing customers without charging for        important information and documents.20
the applications. The opportunity for innovating      One could imagine such a tool, powered by
through business applications based on a              AI/ML, being integrated with digital process
process platform is a no-brainer. Maybe one           automation software to provide more structure,
day the rest of the vendors will wake up to this      governance, and knowledge management
opportunity for differentiation.                      (that really works this time around) for virtual
                                                      workers.

An untapped opportunity exists to marry
collaboration with structured business                AI/ML has a major role and vendors need to
processes                                             figure it out

For decades, process automation tools have            When we recently asked vendors about their
lacked true collaboration while, at the same          plans for AI/ML, many of them responded that
time, the collaboration tools have needed less        they think it is important but 1) don’t know
“mess” or “chaos” and more structure. Over the        where to apply it within process automation,
years, knowledge workers have been expected           and 2) don’t know if customers are ready yet.

                         In the new “normal,” organizations require a more structured way
                         to capture collaborative decisions instead of relying on creaky email
                         and document-sharing tools coupled with web conferencing and
                         collaboration software.

   Deep Analysis    © 2020 | info@deep-analysis.net                   (When) Will Digital Process Automation Vendors Get Their Mojo Back?   11
Still, some of the innovators have concrete              Recommend design options in modeling
plans for moving into AI/ML, even if they aren’t         and RPA scripting
ready to reveal their R&D roadmaps. Here’s a
                                                         Eliminate duplicated/conflicting processes
refresher on the AI/ML holy grail for process
                                                         that may be creating regulatory/compliance
automation:
                                                         issues
   An event from a dynamic case management
                                                         Improve process models based on process
   system automatically triggers human
                                                         mining outputs
   actions and automated systems based on
   machine advice and creates new processes              Identify duplicated global processes
   on the fly; for example, when a system                and recommend the best version to
   detects an intruder and dispatches a guard            operationalize
   to look at the situation while at the same
                                                         Analyze process performance data to
   time updating other people, systems, and
                                                         correct inefficiencies (e.g., customer
   even IoT devices.
                                                         shipments, billing, payments)
There’s a good reason why the vendors are so
                                                         Use process mining for predictions based
unsure. For AI/ML to work in applications, the
                                                         on process models
tools must be applied in very specific, targeted
ways. The AI/ML platforms – IBM Watson,                  Use AI/ML for intelligent capture (e.g., to
Salesforce Einstein, Google TensorFlow,                  completely streamline the input process,
Microsoft Azure AI, and Amazon AWS Machine               capture relevant data automatically, apply
Learning – are just that . . . platforms. They are       processing rules, and capture sentiment
pre-trained for generic purposes, but software           analysis to identify hot-button issues)
vendors looking to use them must build their
                                                      In the meantime, innovators like IBM and
own applications to meet their own needs.
                                                      Nintex are integrating with data lakes
Some of the areas that process automation
                                                      to store large amounts of process and business
vendors are considering include:
                                                      data needed for AI/ML and are targeting
   Analyze workstreams to determine the               specific areas to focus on. Already, several
   business value of different workflows and          vendors have trained their eyes on using
   select the highest performance workstream          AI/ML within process automation, including
                                                      IBM, Kofax, and Pegasystems, followed by
   Combine case data and business data
                                                      ABBYY, Alfresco, Appian, Bizagi, K2, Nintex,
   to improve decision-making and make
                                                      OpenText, and Ultimus. In particular, ABBYY
   predictions (e.g., automatic escalations,
                                                      is taking a highly innovative approach by
   preventing actions that would negatively
                                                      developing a neural network for analyzing
   impact high-value customers, and
                                                      dynamic case management instances,
   identifying the potential for missed
                                                      including forecasting process outcomes and
   deadlines before they occur)
                                                      event timing. For example, in a healthcare

   Deep Analysis    © 2020 | info@deep-analysis.net                (When) Will Digital Process Automation Vendors Get Their Mojo Back?   12
process, ABBYY’s system will predict whether             Process-based business applications
the patient will be sent home, sent to the
                                                         Process mining
hospital emergency room, or sent to the
operating room, and make recommendations                 RPA
for prepping the healthcare providers and
                                                         Many other technologies on the horizon
administrative staff based on those predictions.
                                                         that will impact the speed and direction
After defining the deadlines for a process
                                                         of product development for the intelligent
instance, the software can also predict the
                                                         business automation platform
probability of missing a deadline, and the
financial impact. Following this analysis, the        The main question isn’t whether these
software can then advise the businessperson of        technologies provide an opportunity for
the next best event for processing the case and       vendors to differentiate; it is whether the future
engaging with the patient.                            solutions will be best of breed or an integrated
                                                      platform. Well-formed arguments can be made
                                                      for either approach. The most likely answer will
                                                      be that vendors will use both approaches. The
Call to Action                                        vendors that like to offer everything in their own

Sometimes things just belong together, and            platform (e.g., Pega and Appian) and partner

this is one of those times. In fact, this research    out of necessity will be those leading the charge

– while directed at enterprise buyers – is a          toward an integrated platform – through

cri de coeur for digital process automation           in-house development or through acquisitions.

vendors to wake up and 1) move beyond their           Smaller vendors are more likely to partner their

automation comfort zone into other aspects            way to innovation and the intelligent business

of business process transformation, and               automation platform.

2) rethink how they’ve done automation in
the past. Process automation vendors must
expand their horizons, whether their approach
is a best-of-breed strategy that involves
partnerships or a single integrated platform.
The digital process automation vendors may
have successfully crossed the sales-marketing
chasm, but they need to wake up to the
many opportunities that involve combining
other technologies with process automation,
including:

   AI/ML

   Blockchain

   Customer journey mapping

   Intelligent content

   Predictive analytics

   Deep Analysis    © 2020 | info@deep-analysis.net                (When) Will Digital Process Automation Vendors Get Their Mojo Back?   13
Enterprise Buyer                                     3. Look at the different approaches for
Recommended Actions                                     automating the enterprise’s roadmap. Is
                                                        best of breed most attractive (e.g., faster to
1.   Create a 3-5 year strategic roadmap
                                                        implement, more selection, etc.) or does the
     for achieving your business technology
                                                        enterprise prefer integrated platforms from
     goals. These could be continuous process
                                                        single vendors. Or might it involve a combined
     improvement, operational excellence, customer
                                                        approach?
     experience, or business transformation
     through end-to-end processes, to name a few.    4. Review the product and strategic roadmaps
                                                        of your organization’s technology partners.
2. Identify the most critical software
                                                        See what innovations are on the horizon and
     components of an intelligent business
                                                        whether the timeline is sufficient.
     automation platform for achieving your
     strategic roadmap. For example:                 5. Review best-of-breed products that fit into an
     -- Does the roadmap require process-based          expanded view of digital process automation.
     business applications?                             This could include process mining, digital
     -- Should RPA and process automation be            decisioning, new types of process modeling,
     implemented together (to support processes,        RPA, and many other product categories on the
     activities, and tasks) or separately?              horizon that are AI/ML focused.
     -- Do you have customer-centric processes,
                                                     6. Circle back to the 3-5 year strategic roadmap
     meaning you need vendors with a customer
                                                        (in Step 1). Determine the best approach for
     touchpoint and journey mapping mindset that
                                                        successfully implementing that vision. (If for
     aligns with your organization’s vision?
                                                        any reason you don’t have that roadmap – e.g.,
                                                        mergers and acquisitions – it’s time to develop
                                                        a new one.)

 Deep Analysis     © 2020 | info@deep-analysis.net               (When) Will Digital Process Automation Vendors Get Their Mojo Back?   14
Endnotes
1   See State of the Digital Process Automation Market – Current         10 See Innovation—A Call to Action!
Assessment 2019 and State of the Digital Process Automation              https://www.deep-analysis.net/2020/02/innovation-a-call-to-
Market Trends 2020-2025                                                  action/

https://www.deep-analysis.net/report/state-of-the-digital-process-       11 See Hyland (Digital Process Automation) Vendor Vignette
automation-market-current-assesment-2019/                                https://www.deep-analysis.net/vendor-vignette/hyland-digital-
                                                                         process-automation/
https://www.deep-analysis.net/report/state-of-the-digital-process-
automation-market-trends-2020-202/                                       12 Business process model and notation (BPMN) is a standardized
                                                                         notation tool first developed in 2004 and released by the Object
2   Citizen developers are businesspeople who work in various
                                                                         Management Group in 2006. BPMN version 2.0 was released in
departments and lack formal training in technology or application
                                                                         2013.
development. A citizen developer could be a person in accounting,
HR, or customer support. One trend in digital process automation is      13 See BP Logix Vendor Vignette
to give businesspeople all the tools to develop their own processes      https://www.deep-analysis.net/vendor-vignette/bp-logix/
without assistance from IT. These individuals are elusive, however,
                                                                         14 See Nintex Vendor Vignette
because most organizations do not have the resources (i.e.,
                                                                         https://www.deep-analysis.net/vendor-vignette/nintex/
individuals working in their day jobs) or experience to build mission-
critical processes by themselves. Instead, these businesspeople
                                                                         15 See IBM Vendor Vignette
usually work side-by-side with business analysts to design and
                                                                         https://www.deep-analysis.net/vendor-vignette/ibm/
create processes. However, citizen developers are available for
“workflow for all” tools because these software products are             16 See Appian Buys Jidoka—Let the Acquisitions Begin!, RPA and
positioning process automation as true end-user computing tools          Process Automation—It’s An Upside Down World and SAP’s Take on
(similar to how businesspeople use PowerPoint and Excel).                the RPA Market
                                                                         https://www.deep-analysis.net/2020/02/appian-buys-jidoka-let-
3   See Catalytic, Flowforma, and Nintex Vendor Vignettes
                                                                         the-consolidation-begin/
https://www.deep-analysis.net/vendor-vignette/catalytic/
                                                                         https://www.deep-analysis.net/2019/10/rpa-and-process-
https://www.deep-analysis.net/vendor-vignette/flowforma/
                                                                         automation-its-an-upside-down-world/
https://www.deep-analysis.net/vendor-vignette/nintex/
                                                                         https://www.deep-analysis.net/2020/03/saps-take-on-the-rpa-
                                                                         market/
4   See RPA and Process Automation—It’s An Upside Down World
https://www.deep-analysis.net/2019/10/rpa-and-process-
                                                                         17 See Progress Corticon Vendor Vignette
automation-its-an-upside-down-world/
                                                                         https://www.deep-analysis.net/vendor-vignette/progress-software-
                                                                         corticon/
5   See AI in Digital Process Automation: It’s Complicated
https://www.deep-analysis.net/2020/05/ai-in-digital-process-
                                                                         18 See K2 and OpenText Vendor Vignettes
automation-its-complicated/
                                                                         https://www.deep-analysis.net/vendor-vignette/k2/
                                                                         https://www.deep-analysis.net/vendor-vignette/opentext/
6   See Digital Transformation – Bridge The Skills Abyss
https://www.deep-analysis.net/report/digital-transformation-
                                                                         19 See Three Recent Acquisitions – Hyland, OpenText & Alfresco,
bridge-the-skills-abyss/
                                                                         and Enterprise Blockchain Market Forecast
                                                                         https://www.deep-analysis.net/2020/03/three-recent-
7   See Intelligent Business Automation: The Nexus for Process,
                                                                         acquisitions-hyland-opentext-alfresco/
Content, Data, AI/ML, and More
                                                                         https://www.deep-analysis.net/2019/08/enterprise-blockchain-
https://www.deep-analysis.net/2020/04/intelligent-business-
                                                                         market-forecast/
automation-the-nexus-for-process-content-data-ai-ml-and-more/

                                                                         20 See The Key to Building a Successful Remote Organization?
8   See ABBYY Timeline and BP Logix Vendor Vignettes
                                                                         Data. Harvard Business Review, May 18, 2020
https://www.deep-analysis.net/vendor-vignette/abbyy-timeline/
                                                                         https://hbr.org/2020/05/the-key-to-building-a-successful-remote-
https://www.deep-analysis.net/vendor-vignette/bp-logix/
                                                                         organization-data
9   See Alfresco Software (Digital Process Automation) and Nintex
Vendor Vignettes, and Alfresco Software: Flying High in the Back
Office
https://www.deep-analysis.net/vendor-vignette/alfresco-software-
digital-process-automation/
https://www.deep-analysis.net/vendor-vignette/nintex/
https://www.deep-analysis.net/2019/04/alfresco-software-flying-
high-in-the-back-office/

     Deep Analysis          © 2020 | info@deep-analysis.net                                  (When) Will Digital Process Automation Vendors Get Their Mojo Back?   15
Deep Analysis

     About Deep Analysis
     Deep Analysis is an advisory firm that helps organizations
     understand and address the challenges of innovative and
     disruptive technologies in the enterprise software marketplace.

     Its work is built on decades of experience in advising and
     consulting to global technology firms large and small, from IBM,
     Oracle, and HP to countless start-ups.                                             About the Author
                                                                                        Connie Moore is Vice President and
     Led by Alan Pelz-Sharpe, the firm focuses on Information
                                                                                        Principal Analyst at Deep Analysis.
     Management and the business application of Cloud, Artificial                       She joined the firm after four years
     Intelligence, and Blockchain. Deep Analysis recently published                     as Senior Vice President, Research, at

     the book "Practical Artificial Intelligence: An Enterprise                         Digital Clarity Group, and more than
                                                                                        twenty years as Research Director and
     Playbook," co-authored by Alan and Kashyap Kompella,
                                                                                        Vice President at Forrester Research.
     outlining strategies for organizations to avoid pitfalls and                       Connie is a widely acclaimed speaker,
     successfully deploy AI.                                                            advisor, consultant, and expert in
                                                                                        digital process automation, customer
     Deep Analysis works with technology vendors to improve their                       experience management, digital
     understanding and provide actionable guidance on current and                       experience platforms, and content

     future market opportunities.                                                       services. In 2014 Connie received the
                                                                                        Workflow Management Coalition's
     Yet, unlike traditional analyst firms, Deep Analysis takes a buyer-                globally recognized Marvin Manheim
                                                                                        Award for influence, contribution,
     centric approach to its research and understands real-world
                                                                                        and distinction based on standout
     buyer and market needs versus the “echo chamber” of the
                                                                                        contributions to the field of workflow
     technology industry.                                                               and business process management.

     Contact us:
     info@deep-analysis.net
     +1 978 877 7915

Deep Analysis   © 2020 | info@deep-analysis.net                   (When) Will Digital Process Automation Vendors Get Their Mojo Back?   16
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