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 Discovery and Mining: 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 discovery and mining analyzes event logs and system data to provide insights into business processes, identify inefficiencies and recommend change. They offer a data-driven approach to process optimization and continuous improvement. ISG Research predicts that this software segment will evolve into enterprise-wide process intelligence. Once enterprise process improvements are identified, process intelligence will coordinate with process orchestration and management to develop the most effective automation workflow. By integrating with existing systems and software tools and accessing large repositories of structured, semi-structured and unstructured data, intelligent automation can lead to business process insights that contribute to innovation and competitive advantage. By 2026, one-half of enterprises will examine methods to gain intelligence on the events and activities of people and machines, elevating the importance of process mining technology.

For chief information officers and IT leaders, process discovery and mining represent a strategic investment in digital transformation, offering the potential to gain valuable insights, streamline operations and make data-driven decisions to help enterprises be agile and responsive to changing market conditions.

Process discovery and mining 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 discovery and mining 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, processing discovery and mining addresses the evolving workforce landscape by automating routine tasks and augmenting human capabilities, allowing workers to focus on higher-value, strategic activities.

When an enterprise CIO or IT leader considers process discovery and mining software, the choice should correlate to the organization’s specific objectives, goals and desired outcomes. Process discovery and mining helps organizations identify deep insights into existing processes, pinpoint inefficiencies and drive continuous improvement. This technology is crucial for enterprises undergoing digital transformation, those looking to optimize complex business processes or organizations aiming to ensure compliance with industry regulations. It is particularly beneficial for businesses with intricate, multi-step processes that span various systems and departments.

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 discovery and mining capabilities through:

• Automated process narrative generation. LLMs can generate detailed, narrative descriptions of discovered processes, making it easier for stakeholders to understand complex process flows.
• Intelligent anomaly detection. By understanding the context and purpose of process steps, LLMs can identify anomalies that go beyond simple statistical deviations.
• Predictive process modeling. GenAI can create predictive models of how processes might evolve under different scenarios, aiding in strategic planning. Digital “process twins” are applied in simulations without impacting operational conditions.
• Automated improvement suggestions. Based on discovered processes and best practices, GenAI can propose specific process improvements or redesigns that affect a department or the entire enterprise organization.

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 Discovery and Mining Buyers Guide is designed to provide a 360-degree view of a software provider’s ability to use enterprise data to discover, 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 Discovery and Mining evaluates product capabilities including cognitive automation, optical character recognition (OCR), natural language processing (NLP), AI/ML, predictive analytics, process discovery, process prioritization, application connectors and connector framework, automated model generation, process documentation, visual representation of processes, deviation detection from target models, customizable business rules, process pattern analysis and recommendation, continuous tracking of metrics, process improvement insights, data ingest from various sources, load balancing and data ingest optimization, creating digital “process twins,” create end-to-end process maps, citizen development with low-code / no-code / code-first interfaces, the ability to context switch between code-first and no-code interfaces, roles-based access controls, multilingual support, proactive risk mitigation, team collaboration features, task mining, 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 one or more intelligent automation segments.

This Buyers Guide report evaluates the following software providers that offer products addressing key elements of process discovery and mining: ABBYY, Appian, Automation Anywhere, Bizagi, Celonis, IBM, Microsoft, Nintex, Pegasystems, ProcessMaker, ServiceNow, Software AG, Tungsten Automation and UiPath. Software providers that provide process automation platforms, intelligent document processing or conversational automation capabilities are represented in separate Buyers Guide research reports.

This research-based index evaluates the full business and information technology value of process discovery and mining 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 discovery and mining 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 Discovery and Mining in 2024 finds ServiceNow first on the list, followed by Microsoft and UiPath.

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:

• ServiceNow
• Microsoft
• Celonis

The Leaders in Customer Experience are:

• ServiceNow
• UiPath
• IBM

The Leaders across any of the seven categories are:

• ServiceNow and UiPath, which has achieved this rating in six of the seven categories.
• Appian in three categories.
• Automation Anywhere in two categories.
• Celonis, IBM, Microsoft and ProcessMaker 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 discovery and mining, 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 discovery and mining 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.