sson intelligent automation global market report …

SSON INTELLIGENT AUTOMATION GLOBAL MARKET REPORT 2021 (H1)New Automation Platforms Scale Reliably Through A Low-Code Approach

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Driving real capability through enterprise apps and workflow

Barbara Hodge Global Editor and Principal Analyst, Shared Services and Outsourcing Network, [email protected]

Editorial

Barbara Hodge is Principal Analyst and Global Digital Content Editor with the Shared Services & Outsourcing Network (SSON), the largest and most respected forum for executives responsible for delivering optimized business services. Barbara is responsible for SSON’s global digital content – including specialist reports – which cements SSON’s position as the most trusted resource for practitioners from around the world. As the voice of SSON, she ensures the content reflects current trends and opportunities to help SSO leaders continuously drive performance. Email: [email protected]

Table of Contents Page

Introduction 3

What is business resilience and what drives it? 4

The evolution of machine & human collaboration 5

Holistic automation supports the digital enterprise 6

Plug and play: a low-code toolkit for the future 7

Platforms “having a moment” 8

Summary 9

2 SSON INTELLIGENT AUTOMATION GLOBAL MARKET REPORT 2021 (H1)

© 2021 SSON

IntroductionThe pandemic highlighted many shortcomings within enterprises’ internal working environments and business processes. As a result, over the past year and a half organizations have been reevaluating their business operations to address these gaps. SSON survey data highlights accelerated automation and future of work as key initiatives to building a more resilient future. Indeed, the real value of intelligent automation (IA) was perhaps only truly recognized and consolidated as process resiliency faltered and automation emerged as a reliable solution.

Having weathered the stormy waters of the past 18 months, shared services are today more focused than ever on building a robust foundation to support digital transformation. Their enterprise-wide efforts are supported by a growing range of evolving IA solutions. However, internal skills shortages are a problem – and a hurdle – when it comes to understanding the ins and outs of automation. Indeed, half the respondents to a recent SSON survey confirmed lack of skills was slowing automation’s progress*. As a result, many enterprises have found themselves limited in terms of what they can do. Forward-thinking organizations are looking for solutions that don’t require technical expertise on the part of users, but can be deployed by those working in the business. They are also evaluating holistic platforms as a foundation for data processing and analytics to enable enterprise-wide automation. New low-code automation platforms provide just this opportunity: an easy way to deploy and scale automation through non-technical user-driven implementations.

Many organizations are still struggling to understand how to make this work. Just consider:

>> 73% of organizations confirm the pandemic has accelerated automation initiatives and implementations

>> 59% of organizations say IT function constraints are acting as barriers to scaling IA

>> the preferred means of accessing IA capability is via a multi-vendor stack approach*.

This report rethinks the basics of operational support within a digitized context. While the task-oriented fixes of RPA have been effective, developments in recent years have exposed such siloed solutions as limited in terms of impact. For a long-term strategy, enterprises need to stop band-aiding problems, and instead develop a truly far-sighted platforms that support future growth.

Footnote: *Global Market Review: Intelligent Automation in Shared Services

Source: SSON Analytics: Impact of the Pandemic

Source: SSON Analytics: Global Market Review: Intelligent Automation in Shared Services

Over the past year, did you accelerate your automation initiatives as a result

of your pandemic?

Is the skills shortage in IA real, and is it impacting your automation potential?

15%

24% 61%

0% 100%

Yes

No

56% 44%

Yes No

N/A

NEW AUTOMATION PLATFORMS SCALE RELIABLY THROUGH A LOW-CODE APPROACH 3

© 2021 SSON

https://www.sson-analytics.com/technology-automation/analytics-workbooks/global-market-review-intelligent-automation-in-shared-services

https://www.sson-analytics.com/state-of-shared-services/analytics-workbooks/one-year-on-impact-of-the-pandemic-on-sso-delivery-models



What is business resilience and what drives it?

Business resilience means not just the ability to navigate unexpected crises from time to time, but it also means being agile enough to adapt to the changing needs of tomorrow. SSON Analytics data confirms that automation has emerged as a silver bullet by reducing dependency on humans and locations. Another star of the resilience movement is the cloud-based environment that has come into its own over the past 18 months, enabling new working environments irrespective of where, who and what – offering speed and agility. Also effective is the integration of artificial intelligence and machine learning into automation platforms. These enable a new kind of collaboration between human workers and self-improving, cognitive-driven technologies to drive better decisions and increase the scope and range of automated execution. Finally, new low-code approaches drive a much broader uptake and participation by business users because they don’t require highly skilled IT resources to initiate automation applications. As such, low-code is a game changer and significantly improves collaboration between the business and IT.

These developments are creating a much more robust and resilient processing ecosystem that allows enterprises to maximize the insights and value-adding inputs of staff while leveraging data-driven, intelligent automation-enabled platforms for execution.


© 2021 SSON

The evolution of machine & human collaboration

Automation’s evolution has occurred over three distinct phases. Early RPA implementation addressed the low hanging fruit of broken or interrupted tasks by eliminating the need for human intervention; the next level addressed overall business processes by considering the various stakeholder groups that connected with an end-to-end process and integrating additional capabilities; the current, third level reflects an environment where automated applications are able to use enterprise data to enable fully automate workflows end-to-end and front-to-back; this stage repositions intelligence-driven business process management and workflow as the backbone for automation.

In parallel, there has been a shift in the human value proposition. “One of the benefits RPA providers had always touted was the ability to remove people from the process. While that reduced cost and improved reliability, it proved short sighted,” says Malcolm Ross, VP Product Strategy & Deputy CTO at Appian Corporation. The objective should not be to remove people, Ross says, but rather empower them with automations in greater workflows that drive business efficiency.

“The future includes people, bots, AI, systems and data – all orchestrated in a single workflow,” explains Ross. “This approach recognizes that people still make the best cognitive decisions so we need to keep them in control, not just in the loop. Top performance isn’t achieved by replacing people but by shifting transactional work to software and ensuring employees focus on cognitive activity.”

The entire formula is wrong, he says, if it fixates on headcount. It should be fixating on optimizing workflow and reimagining enterprise processes.

“Instead of eliminating humans we should be focusing humans on using automations to deliver new business innovations and adapting to changing business conditions more quickly.”

Up to now, of course, the answer to every problem has been to build a bot, but this meant organizations lost sight of long-term opportunities in favor of short term problem resolution, Ross warns. “Solving for immediate needs blinded enterprises to the bigger picture. As a result, many previous investments have been of limited value and have created more technical debt for organizations to deal with.”

Today, there are more lucrative and effective opportunities available. Organizations can connect digitally-inspired ways of working into business systems and thus expand their capability while innovative solutions can automate, coordinate, and optimize activity without being held back by RPA’s limited applicability. This new iteration of business automation is powered by more easily consumable tools and a user-friendly interface.

“Such solutions are falling on fertile ground precisely because traditional approaches to automation have been somewhat hit and miss,” explains Ross. “Although automation has been the most significant transformative endeavor organizations have undertaken this century, what’s been missing has been a broad, integrated vision.”

Now, therefore, is the time to rethink that approach. Robots have been exposed as fragile; scaling is still problematic; and the ever-increasing menu of capabilities only adds to the confusion rather than builds competency.

So, where does that leave us?


© 2021 SSON

�Very well Well enough Struggling Failing N/A

Holistic automation supports the digital enterprise

The role automation is playing in facilitating the digital enterprise is all too clear. But the value proposition has shifted from cost and quality to building a modern platform based on multiple capabilities and leveraging enterprise data. SSON Analytics stats confirm that investment priorities are focused on:

1) data extraction from unstructured documents to facilitate data sharing;

2) predictive analytics to support business decisions; and

3) artificial intelligence to drive cognitive processing.

Connectivity, in other words, is the name of the game and the objective is to build sustainable, digital operations.

Getting there won’t be easy. Despite the fact that 42% of organizations want a best-of-breed technology stack solution, the majority are struggling to integrate new tools like machine learning. Only one in 10 organizations feel they are succeeding in this effort.

The challenge is to correlate the desire for flexibility with the status quo.

The solution is to bring separate solutions together – i.e., integrate them – in a common platform.

The operating model of the future will need to access digitized data to facilitate frictionless workflows. Leveraging a variety of artificial intelligence and cognitive solutions is key to escalating the potential of machines. The trick is to make it easy for users.

What is your preference as far as accessing IA capability goes?

How would you rank your investment priorities below?

How well are you integrating additional solutions (ML, Congnitive, Computer Vision, NLP, AI) with RPA?

0% 100%

31%

7%

31%20%

11%

10%

42%

21%

27%

N/A

Integrating the best technology

components in-house via a multi-vendor

stack approach

A single provider for the entire IA stack: RPA through to AI

Very important

Somewhat important

Not very important

Not important at all

N/A

Reliance on RPA vendor to integrate relevant technology to the platform

Source: SSON Analytics: Global Market Review: Intelligent Automation in Shared Services

Automated decision making with Machine

Learning (ML)

Data extraction from emails using Natural Language Processing

(NLP)

Automated process discovery / process

mining

Customer engagements via

conversational user interface, e.g.

chatbots

Computer vision to analyze images

(pictures, etc.)

Document extraction like text /pdfs via Intelligent

Data Processing / Cognitive Automation

Predictive Analytics

Voice to text and Speech

Analytics

Artificial Intelligence

26%

30%

37% 20%

27%

41%18%

22% 26%

31%35% 54%

10%

26%33%

26% 9%

41%44%

5% 5% 3% 3% 3% 5%3% 3%3% 2% 1% 1% 4%9% 3%3%

8% 12%

31%50%

16%

38%42%

12%

47%

33%


© 2021 SSON


Plug and play: a low-code toolkit for the futureSSON Analytics data confirms shared services’ preference for a best-of-breed technology stack approach (see above).

While modern platforms can be everything to everyone, the reality is that most organizations have already invested, often heavily, in bespoke solutions over the past years. These investments cannot just be written off. What’s needed is a platform that is open and flexible enough to allow any other systems or data stores to be plugged in. That’s a critical objective.

Another is that these “capabilities” should be easy to use by business users, and not require highly skilled IT resources.

Again, the market has evolved to meet this demand.

Low-code represents a revolution of sorts in the contract between business users and technology staff, one that was long overdue given the struggle for sparse IT

resources as businesses, hungry to roll out more automations, scrambled for attention. At the same time, low-code addresses the gap in the automation skill levels of business users highlighted in SSON surveys year after year, by incorporating all the complexity and intelligence of state-of-the-art automation through a friendly user interface that requires no significant expertise.

“Low-code automation platforms offer the best of both worlds,” explains Ross. “They make it easy to build an application for a process like quote-to-cash, incorporating your previous investments in CRM, financial, and other systems and data into a single workflow. This results in improved fluidity as an application can kick in with an incoming email, for example, setting off a seamless, straight-through process. What’s key is that the process should constantly move along and not be kept waiting.”

Low-code represents a revolution of sorts in

the contract between business users and

technology staff.


© 2021 SSON

The shift towards “platform-based” reflects a much-needed democratized approach to leveraging automation’s capability and building this into a scalable framework. Nothing less will do, which is why platform approaches that offer access to best-of-breed, cloud-based solutions are having a moment.

The opportunities are certainly immense.

Vastly expanded IA capabilities are being built into – or are accessible through – low-code automation platforms that combine business process management and workflow, robotic process automation, artificial intelligence, intelligent document processing, and more. The most flexible of these are written in such a way as to easily integrate third-party tools, where best-of-breed solutions are preferred or already exist internally. The result is that organizations can build and deploy automation-driven applications that support an entirely automated workflow – the ultimate objective of an end-to-end focused enterprise strategy.

One of the costs of not embracing platform thinking is that organizations are accruing massive technical debt by building one-off applications that are not easily transferable or scalable. “What that means is that the investment can’t provide value in the long term and isn’t reflected in a long-term digitalization plan,” says Ross. “But organizations must build for the long term. Top low-code platforms are designed to adapt and eliminate much of the technical debt that is associated with application building.”

Another benefit of some of the more innovative platforms is that they focus on the user interface, so that it’s easy to build and interact with other applications. “If you believe humans are important then you must also prioritize the delivery of rich, dynamic and intuitive user experiences that work on all the latest devices,” explains Ross. “Low-code automation platforms combine typical headless automations with rich user experience design capabilities. These leverage business rules to deliver dynamic experiences that can guide users to complete tasks more efficiently.”

One of the costs of not embracing platform thinking is that organizations are accruing massive technical debt by building one-off applications that are not easily transferable or scalable.

Platforms “having a moment”


© 2021 SSON

SummaryMany enterprises have found themselves challenged by an inability to scale RPA. As an automation-based solution, it may be that too much was being asked – and expected – of a task-based tool.

Today, there are much more effective ways to solve business problems than throwing a bot at it.

Modern IA solutions reach across the enterprise with a single low-code automation-driven technology platform, share digitized data across workflows, and offer the capability and insight to escalate the ‘intelligence’ of software.

Such platforms thrive by the addition of specialist tools in a plug-and-play scenario, and are user friendly enough in the interface to encourage even the most technologically-challenged employees to access a needed application.

As we see enterprises rebounding from the stresses of the past 18 months, and highly focused on leveraging resilient and robust platforms for growth, the ability to tap digitized data and ensure seamless process flows across the enterprise will prove critical.

Platform thinking may come to define this strategy.


© 2021 SSON

ABOUT THE SHARED SERVICES & OUTSOURCING NETWORK (SSON)The Shared Services & Outsourcing Network (SSON) is the largest and most established community of shared services and outsourcing professionals in the world, with over 170,000 members.

Established in 1999, SSON recognized the revolution in support services as it was happening, and realized that a forum was needed through which practitioners could connect with each other on a regional and global basis.

SSON is a one-stop shop for shared services professionals, offering industry-leading events, training, reports, surveys, interviews, white papers, videos, editorial, infographics, and more.

ABOUT SSON ANALYTICSSSON Analytics is the global data analytics center of the Shared Services & Outsourcing Network (SSON), the world’s largest community of shared services and outsourcing professionals. SSON Analytics offers valuable, visual data insights to support decision-making on the basis of data trends and benchmarks.

Thousands of global business services and outsourcing professionals use our data to understand the Shared Services landscape in their region through a variety of interactive data tools, analytics reports and customized data insights.

www.sson-analytics.com

ABOUT APPIANAppian helps organizations build apps and workflows rapidly, with a low-code automation platform. Combining people, technologies, and data in a single workflow, Appian can help companies maximize their resources and improve business results. Many of the world’s largest organizations use Appian applications to improve customer experience, achieve operational excellence, and simplify global risk management and compliance. For more information, visit www.appian.com.


© 2021 SSON

http://www.appian.com

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