Market Perspectives

ISG Research is happy to share insights gleaned from our latest Buyers Guide, an assessment of how well software providers’ offerings meet buyers’ requirements. The Process Automation Platforms: ISG Research Buyers Guide is the distillation of a year of market and product research by ISG Research.

Enterprises face a perfect storm of challenges and opportunities. The pace of digital transformation, coupled with increasing customer expectations for personalized experiences, has applied pressure on enterprises to innovate and optimize. Simultaneously, the rapid expansion of data from diverse sources presents an opportunity for insight-driven decision-making and a challenge in processing and analysis. Enterprises that are grappling with legacy systems struggle to keep up with today’s demands while navigating complex regulatory environments that require detailed compliance and reporting. The global talent shortage, particularly in technology and IT-related fields, makes it difficult for enterprises to scale operations effectively. Moreover, the need for business agility and resilience, along with these converging factors, has created an urgency to automate routine tasks, but also enhance decision-making capabilities, improve customer interactions and accelerate continuous process improvement. In this context, intelligent automation has emerged as a transformative force.

ISG Research defines intelligent automation as an advanced approach to business process optimization that utilizes artificial intelligence (AI), machine learning (ML) and automation technologies. Intelligent automation enhances efficiency, reduces errors and improves decision-making across the enterprise. It shifts human resources from simple, repetitive tasks to more complex problem-solving activities while augmenting their capabilities through human-AI collaboration that embraces continuous learning systems and improves over time. ISG Research segments intelligent automation into four areas: Process Automation Platforms, Conversational Automation, Intelligent Document Processing and Process Discovery and Mining.

Process automation platforms, which form the foundation of intelligent automation, automate repetitive, rule-based tasks across various applications and systems. Originally designed using robotic process automation (RPA), they emulate human actions to perform high-volume, transactional activities efficiently and without error. ISG Research anticipates that RPA and generative AI (GenAI) will remain integral to task and process automation and that the software segment will soon focus on process orchestration and management. By integrating with existing systems and software tools and accessing large repositories of structured, semi-structured and unstructured data, intelligent automation with process automation platforms can lead to business process insights that contribute to innovation and competitive advantage. We assert that by 2026, RPA technology will evolve to address the broader needs of intelligent automation and distributed cloud architectures, and will be delivered as a SaaS platform, reducing the need for complex infrastructure setup and maintenance.

For chief information officers and IT leaders, task and process automation represents a strategic investment in digital transformation, offering the potential to enhance operational efficiency, improved accuracy and consistency, and drive greater innovation and agility.

Process automation platform software has become a focal point in enterprise technology discussions, driven by the convergence of several critical factors. The acceleration of digital transformation, catalyzed by the COVID-19 pandemic, has increased the need for operational agility and modernization of legacy systems. This urgency, combined with advancements in AI and machine learning, has expanded process automation capabilities to handle complex cognitive tasks.

The explosion of data across enterprises has further amplified the importance of this technology, as it offers powerful tools for processing and deriving insights from vast amounts of information, enabling data-driven decision-making at scale. Additionally, process automation platforms address the evolving workforce landscape by automating routine tasks and augmenting human capabilities, allowing workers to focus on higher-value, strategic activities.

Process automation platforms, which support an enterprise’s goal to increase operational efficiency, reduce errors in repetitive tasks and free up human resources for more strategic work. These platforms are particularly beneficial for organizations looking to streamline high-volume, rule-based processes across multiple departments or legacy systems. They offer quick wins in cost reduction and productivity gains, suitable for businesses seeking rapid return on investment from automation initiatives.

The choice of intelligent automation software should align with the enterprise’s strategic objectives and operational needs. It is also important to consider factors such as the current process landscape, compatibility and integration with the technology infrastructure, data availability and quality, ROI and financial impact and organizational readiness. A well-chosen automation strategy can drive operational excellence, improved customer experiences and enhanced decision-making.

GenAI and large language model technologies offer valuable capabilities in natural language understanding and processing, content generation and task automation, potentially streamlining operations and enhancing decision-making processes. It is crucial to understand the potential and challenges of these technologies. We assert that through 2026, only 1 in 5 enterprises will analyze patterns and generate insights from GenAI software that empower data-driven decision-making and lead to improved business outcomes.

GenAI and LLMs are enhancing process automation platform software in several ways, including:

• Automated code generation, with large language models generating code snippets or entire scripts based on natural language descriptions of desired automation tasks. This speeds the development of automation workflows and reduces the technical expertise required to create automations.
• Natural language process design, which allows users to describe complex processes in plain language and generates a visual flowchart or process map, making it easier for non-technical staff to contribute to automation projects.
• Intelligent decision-making, using large language models to analyze vast amounts of historical data and current content to make more granular decisions within automation workflows, handling exceptions and edge cases more effectively.
• Dynamic process optimization, using GenAI to suggest process improvements by analyzing execution data and identifying inefficiencies or bottlenecks on a continuous basis. 

CIOs and IT leaders should approach intelligent automation software incorporating GenAI and LLMs with enthusiasm and caution. While these technologies offer significant benefits, they also come with unique challenges and prerequisites. A holistic evaluation must include technical aspects and also business, ethical and strategic considerations. Other areas of focus include risk awareness, critical infrastructure, organizational readiness, governance and compliance and a long-term perspective on sustainability and scalability of AI approaches.

Our Process Automation Platforms Buyers Guide is designed to provide a 360-degree view of a software provider’s ability to use enterprise data to standardize and optimize a variety of business processes and tasks. ISG believes a methodical approach is essential to maximize competitiveness. It is critical to select the right software provider and product to improve the performance of your enterprise’s people, process, information and technology components.

The ISG Buyers Guide™ for Process Automation Platforms evaluates product capabilities including attended and unattended RPA, system integrations, natural language processing (NLP), data analytics, workflow builders, user interface, AI/ML, cognitive automation, load balancing, citizen developers, error handling and exceptions, and demonstrated investment in product capabilities. To be included in this Buyers Guide, software providers must meet or exceed the inclusion criteria and have commercially available products in task and process automation.

This Buyers Guide report evaluates the following software providers that offer products addressing key elements of process automation platforms: Appian, Automation Anywhere, Datamatics, Fortra, IBM, Microsoft, MuleSoft, Newgen, Nintex, Nividous, Pegasystems, ProcessMaker, SAP, ServiceNow, SS&C Blue Prism, Tungsten Automation, UiPath and Worksoft. Software providers that offer intelligent document processing, conversational automation or process discovery capabilities are represented in separate Buyers Guide research reports.

This research-based index evaluates the full business and information technology value of process automation platform software offerings. We encourage you to learn more about our Buyers Guide and its effectiveness as a provider selection and RFI/RFP tool.

We urge organizations to do a thorough job of evaluating process automation platform offerings in this Buyers Guide as both the results of our in-depth analysis of these software providers and as an evaluation methodology. The Buyers Guide can be used to evaluate existing suppliers, plus provides evaluation criteria for new projects. Using it can shorten the cycle time for an RFP and the definition of an RFI.

The Buyers Guide for Process Automation Platforms in 2024 finds ServiceNow first on the list, followed by UiPath and Appian.

Software providers that rated in the top three of any category ﹘ including the product and customer experience dimensions ﹘ earn the designation of Leader.

The Leaders in Product Experience are:

• UiPath
• ServiceNow
• Automation Anywhere

The Leaders in Customer Experience are:

• ServiceNow
• UiPath
• IBM

The Leaders across any of the seven categories are:

• UiPath, which has achieved this rating in seven of the seven categories.
• ServiceNow in five categories.
• Appian and Automation Anywhere in three categories.
• MuleSoft, SAP and SS&C Blue Prism in one category.

The overall performance chart provides a visual representation of how providers rate across product and customer experience. Software providers with products scoring higher in a weighted rating of the five product experience categories place farther to the right. The combination of ratings for the two customer experience categories determines their placement on the vertical axis. As a result, providers that place closer to the upper-right are “exemplary” and rated higher than those closer to the lower-left and identified as providers of “merit.” Software providers that excelled at customer experience over product experience have an “assurance” rating, and those excelling instead in product experience have an “innovative” rating.

Note that close provider scores should not be taken to imply that the packages evaluated are functionally identical or equally well-suited for use by every enterprise or process. Although there is a high degree of commonality in how organizations handle process automation platforms, there are many idiosyncrasies and differences that can make one provider’s offering a better fit than another.

ISG Research has made every effort to encompass in this Buyers Guide the overall product and customer experience from our process automation platform blueprint, which we believe reflects what a well-crafted RFP should contain. Even so, there may be additional areas that affect which software provider and products best fit an enterprise’s particular requirements. Therefore, while this research is complete as it stands, utilizing it in your own organizational context is critical to ensure that products deliver the highest level of support for your projects.

You can find more details on our community as well as on our expertise in the research for this Buyers Guide.