Net Score

The intensity of spend for a vendor. Higher Net Scores indicate a positive spend trajectory, while lower Net Scores indicate a flat or negative spend trajectory.

The Technology Spending Intentions Survey (TSIS) is our quarterly survey (Jan, Apr, July, Oct) of technology decision makers capturing forward-looking spending intentions for enterprise technology vendors across the global market. Our surveys are standardized, multiple choice format. For each survey question, the technology decision maker will select one of the following answers:

Adoption
Increase
Flat
Decrease
Replacing

The Emerging Technology Survey (ETS) is our quarterly survey of technology decision makers capturing the enterprise’s appetite for emerging technology vendors across the global market. Our surveys are standardized, multiple choice format. For each survey question, the technology decision maker will select one of the following answers: Allocating further Evaluated, plan to utilize Currently evaluating Plan to evaluate Aware of, no plan to evaluate Evaluated, no plan to utilize Replaced or in containment

Pervasion

How widespread a particular vendor is utilized, allowing users to gauge declines or growth over time and benchmark peers against each other.

Technology Spending Intentions Survey

Our quarterly survey of technology decision makers capturing forward-looking spending intentions for enterprise technology vendors across the global market. Our surveys are standardized, multiple choice format. For each survey question, the technology decision maker will select one of the following answers: • Adoption • Increase • Flat • Decrease • Replacing

Net Score

The intensity of spend for a vendor. Higher Net Scores indicate a positive spend trajectory, while lower Net Scores indicate a flat or negative spend trajectory.

Emerging Technology Survey

The Emerging Technology Survey (ETS) is our quarterly survey of technology decision makers capturing the enterprise’s appetite for emerging technology vendors across the global market. Our surveys are standardized, multiple choice format. For each survey question, the technology decision maker will select one of the following answers:

Allocating further
Evaluated, plan to utilize
Currently evaluating
Plan to evaluate
Aware of, no plan to evaluate
Evaluated, no plan to utilize
Replaced or in containment

The Technology Spending Intentions Survey (TSIS) is our quarterly survey (Jan, Apr, July, Oct) of technology decision makers capturing forward-looking spending intentions for enterprise technology vendors across the global market. Our surveys are standardized, multiple choice format. For each survey question, the technology decision maker will select one of the following answers:

Adoption
Increase
Flat
Decrease
Replacing

The Emerging Technology Survey (ETS) is our quarterly survey of technology decision makers capturing the enterprise’s appetite for emerging technology vendors across the global market. Our surveys are standardized, multiple choice format. For each survey question, the technology decision maker will select one of the following answers:

Allocating further
Evaluated, plan to utilize
Currently evaluating
Plan to evaluate
Aware of, no plan to evaluate
Evaluated, no plan to utilize
Replaced or in containment

Net Score represents the intensity of spend for a vendor.

Higher Net Scores = a positive spend trajectory
Lower Net Scores = a flat or negative spend trajectory

Pervasion represents how widely a vendor or product is utilized relative to a given sample.

Process Automation

Marketing and Niche Focus Differentiate Process Automation Competitors

Based on data collected October 2023

13-minute read

Automation, especially in times of budget belt-tightening, is a goal of many organizations, and enterprise-scale implementation of automation workflows signals a maturity phase in larger digital transformation journeys. The business world latched onto the term "robotic process automation," or RPA, in the early 2000s to describe a collection of automation tasks that had been developing decades prior. These early tasks included screen-scraping data from websites and workflow automation rules that routed alerts and assignments to different people in an organization based on data captured and entered into forms and databases. Today, the market for RPA tools – and the vocabulary around the concept – has enlarged to include business process software, intelligent automation, and other functions. The bailiwick of RPA, which focuses primarily on automating repetitive, tedious tasks involving human labor, such as data entry, has now combined a host of artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML) capabilities. Optical character recognition (OCR) and other forms of computer vision, ML model training, natural language processing (NLP), generative AI, and many other new techniques have enriched the domain of process automation. Indeed, the line between AI/ML and the process automation industry has thoroughly blurred, bringing opportunities and new threats to some long- standing RPA vendors.

The process automation market, as it is collectively referred to here, features many vendors offering low-code and no- code, drag-and-drop user interfaces, helping business users build automation workflows. The vendors provide similar core capabilities of building steps in a process to automate tasks or business rules in highly customizable ways. Each vendor also boasts of some aspect of AI enriching or streamlining the process. The more robust platforms in the market offer more sophisticated governance and security controls, monitoring and dashboarding capabilities to track workflow performance, and sometimes ready-made bots or workflow templates to help jumpstart the tool's deployment. Leading and Tracking vendors like Microsoft, UiPath, Automation Anywhere, and IBM are examples of these platforms. Beyond this set of core capabilities, most vendors in this space differ in their marketing approaches, their focus on different industry-relevant use cases, or an emphasis on some aspect of the automation workflow

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Positioning for the ETR Observatory on process automation was determined by ETR’s two core, syndicated surveys. Full methodology and graphic explanation are available on our About the ETR Observatory page.

This ETR Observatory report examines the vendors within a subsector grouping by triangulating data from ETR’s Technology Spending Intentions Survey (TSIS), Emerging Technology Survey (ETS), commentary from ETR Insights interviews with IT decision makers (ITDM) from the ETR Community, and proprietary industry analysis by our research staff.

TSIS data measures spending velocity on a vendor or product based on ETR’s proprietary measures of Net Score and Pervasion. ETR Insights interviews provide qualitative context and vendor evaluation to complement quantitative data. This report encompasses process automation vendors tracked within the Robotic Process Automation and Business Processes Software sectors of the TSIS, and smaller, private players tracked in the Intelligent Automation sector of the ETS.

The Process Automation Market

In the TSIS, the RPA and Business Processes Software sectors have fared about as well as most sectors, with overall spending intentions down year-over-year and from the prior survey (see Figure 1). The RPA sector, however, holds on to the fifth highest sector-wide Net Score across the TSIS vendor universe at 30%, trailing only the red-hot ML/AI sector and the Cloud Computing, Container Orchestration, and Container Platforms sectors. The Business Processes Software sector is lower with a 9% Net Score. In the ETS, the Intelligent Automation sector has a 15% Net Sentiment, a relatively mediocre sector positioning across the ETS field.

Sector Trends

Figure 1. The RPA sector holds a 30% Net Score, the fifth highest among all sectors in the TSIS. The Business Processes Software sector's Net Score is much weaker at 9%. Both sectors have weathered similar patterns in recent surveys as the rest of the field, with Net Score declining year-over-year and survey-over-survey.

I. Complete Process Automation Platforms for Enterprise Scale

Microsoft's Power Automate, UiPath, and Automation Anywhere comprise the Leading group in this Observatory, and IBM is the sole name in the Tracking group (see Figure 2). Each of these vendors are long-established names in automation, with Microsoft's entry into the space in 2016 (branded then as Microsoft Flow) the most recent arrival of these four. Microsoft has the highest Momentum in the process automation market, enjoying high spending and utilization from typically Microsoft-focused organizations deploying other products in the Microsoft Power Platform suite, such as Power BI. The process automation offerings from these established platform vendors are robust, with accessible user interfaces friendly to less tech-savvy business users who can build automation workflows themselves with drag-and-drop buttons, intuitive commands, and minimal coding. These platforms also come with management and governance capabilities, such as control over who can create, share, and implement workflows and other fine-tuning around the orchestration of automation scripts. Ease of use in this tool set is critical and essential for success.

Vendor Timeline

Figure 2. Net Scores (y-axis) for vendors in the Leading, Tracking, and Advancing groups of the ETR Observatory for Process Automation show Microsoft Power Automate a clear leader in spending intentions, followed by UiPath and Automation Anywhere.

In the TSIS, Microsoft Power Automate holds the highest Net Score of these five vendors at 59%, a score that is high in absolute terms and relative to peers. UiPath has the second highest Net Score at 30%, followed by Automation Anywhere (23%), Pegasystems (20%), and IBM (6%). In Pervasion, on the other hand, IBM leads with 66%, highly penetrated in many organizations’ tech stacks. Microsoft Power Automate is close behind in Pervasion at 61%, followed further behind by UiPath (30%), Automation Anywhere (22%), and Pegasystems (11%).

One VP of Information Technology and Services for a large agricultural enterprise described his experience with Microsoft Power Automate, noting it "worked well. It took a few iterations to get it right for the business, but it seemed simple enough." This ITDM also praised what "seemed relatively intuitive" and the "low code / no code capability" of Power Automate and previous tools his organization had explored. He said he is turning to UiPath for a new proof of concept, however, saying he sees "UiPath as more robust, mature, and capable than the Microsoft platform right now." Another ITDM, the CTO of a small pharma-tech enterprise, pointed out that Power Automate has come a long way in a few short years. "In 2018 or 2019, it was something out that was complicated but not really fully baked. We have definitely increased our usage of it in the past two calendar years." Some Power Automate capabilities are included with most Microsoft Office 365 licenses, and this common Microsoft licensing strategy poses a threat to stand-alone process automation vendors. A look at Microsoft’s other Leading group peers, UiPath and Automation Anywhere, through the lens of ETR’s proprietary shared accounts analysis reveals declining spending plans on UiPath and Automation Anywhere among Microsoft’s Azure cloud computing sector customers (see Figure 3).

Figure 3. Net Score for Automation Anywhere and UiPath among Microsoft Azure cloud computing sector customers has declined consistently since the JAN23 TSIS and has notably halved since JAN21.

Further to that point, the CIO of Global Technology Solutions for a large healthcare/tech enterprise said, "when you buy Microsoft anything, you tend to, let's say, get the 'best in suite,' as it's known, which means that you're getting a couple of powerful applications and then everything else is good enough." He added that he "would put Power Automate in the 'good enough but rapidly getting better' category." This ITDM elaborated on the reasoning, rhetorically asking "do you go and spend the money on a UiPath or an Automation Anywhere, which both tend to be more pricey apps than Power Automate, if Power Automate can solve for 95% to 97% of your use cases? I think that's really the driver." He pointed out that Power Automate is "super user friendly and doesn't take long to learn" as another reason to justify the investment in Microsoft for process automation in his organization. ETR’s proprietary adoption and replacement reasoning analysis further illustrates this tech stack alignment versus best-in-breed decision point many organizations are facing. Those indicating plans to adopt Microsoft Power Automate say the top reason is stack alignment or integration, whereas the top adoption reason for UiPath and Automation Anywhere is feature breadth.

Established platform players in process automation embrace fairly widespread connectivity, showcasing dozens of native integrations with major data sources, enterprise resource planning tools (ERPs), and customer relationship management tools (CRMs). And when integration is not available in a turnkey way, these vendors offer tech professionals bespoke ways to connect with APIs. Reducing friction between automation tools and an organization's tech architecture is a priority for process automation vendors, who are selling an idea of efficiency, ease of use, and speed to customers. One Director of IT for a large energy enterprise put a finer point on the value of automation: "Automation is probably one of the highest payback options that there is out there. If you delve in and do it properly, it is a high payback because you can reduce staffing, frankly."

II. Trailing Vendors Building on a Niche

Clustered behind the leaders and giants in the process automation market are several other vendors in the Trailing group offering similar capabilities but packaged in slightly different skin. Many of these differences amount to nuances in marketing or in how different vendors emphasize a particular user or use case in an organization. Tines, for example, claims they are truly no-code and emphasizes a simple and clean UI for business users. Zinier takes a similar approach, highlighting no-code UI but focusing instead on helping organizations manage and automate field operations, such as tech equipment installation teams. Cutover targets tech professionals and has built a reputation for helping automate IT tasks such as disaster recovery or release management.

Other vendors are flexible in their applicability but have targeted ready-made bots, workflows, and templates to specific industries. Tonkean, for example, showcases its ability to automate procurement and legal processes with aptly named ProcurementWorks and LegalWorks branded experiences within their platform. A few vendors in the market have also focused strategically on a freemium model, with vendors such as N8n and Tines offering free community editions of their products, which they hope lead to paid enterprise licenses as organizations expand their use of automation pipelines.

Celonis is a bird of a different feather in the Trailing group, though, focusing on its AI-powered process mining capabilities. Process mining allows the tool to monitor and diagnose common business workflows across the organization and suggest improvements and prioritization in those workflows to help an organization improve on key business metrics.

ETR Data: Several vendors in the Trailing group are tracked in ETR’s Emerging Technology Survey’s Intelligent Automation sector. Camunda’s Net Sentiment is 16%, Cutover’s is 13%, and N8n’s is 12%. Zinier, Tonkean, and Pipefy each have just 7% Net Sentiment, the lowest in the sector. Celonis, WorkFusion, and Automation Anywhere, which are also tracked in the TSIS, have generally higher Net Sentiment. Celonis ties Camunda at 16%, WorkFusion’s is 19%, and Automation Anywhere’s is 27%.

While some vendors mention enlisting "digital workers" or expanding the capabilities of a workforce with digital bots or agents, no vendor has seemed to double down on the idea of embodiment of bots quite like WorkFusion. Perhaps spurred by anxieties about worker shortages and the so-called Great Resignation that came as a hangover to the global pandemic, WorkFusion built a marketing campaign in early 2022 that labeled AI-enabled bots Digital Workers. The company even showcases these supposed digital workers prominently on its website, with stock profile images, names, and backgrounds for a slew of characters. For example, Ilana is featured as an insurance underwriter with a resume-like list of skills next to her photo and a call-to-action to "hire Ilana." It is arguably a quirky approach but one that stands out. The pinnacle of bots is that they are as good as humans. As one Director of IT for a large retail/consumer enterprise noted, his organization has focused "on the customer service side, on the bots, making those chatbots much more efficient and friendly. When you cannot identify if it's a real person behind the chatbot, that's when you are being successful, when people feel like they're having a friendly operator behind that chatbot."

III. Generative AI Enhances and Threatens Process Automation

Across the board, process automation vendors are hammering home a message of AI, whether it is specifically a ChatGPT or other generative AI integration or a general AI-enhanced set of capabilities to make automating workflows smarter in the long run. Building automation workflows is still fairly tedious, but some see an opportunity for technologies such as generative AI to accelerate the construction of these pipelines. One CIO and CISO for a nonprofit medical research institute noted tools like OpenAI's ChatGPT "can get rid of a lot of the 'overhead,' complicated artifact building or user actors around typical RPA." He added that "people have fallen in love with that interface" of ChatGPT in a short time, and "it’s going to be tough to bring to market a [process automation] product that doesn’t at least align somehow” with that experience.

In the same breath, however, that ITDM warns, “I would be worried if I was an RPA vendor.” RPA has “a lot of overhead, and it has to deal with many unique situations. Sometimes the tooling is very difficult to configure and get to work optimally.” The power of generative AI and large language models (LLMs) is that simple queries and commands in a chat box can result in the complex mining of large data sets to produce elegant outputs. A command to ChatGPT to “find a way to streamline the invoicing process” with a data set that consists of an entire procurement system and company email inboxes could very well generate simple, optimized workflow suggestions. In that scenario, building these steps into a process automation vendor’s system seems an unnecessary burden in a generative AI world. In this way, generative AI poses a real threat to process automation vendors that do not find ways to capitalize on generative AI capabilities within their proprietary platforms. Amid this unfolding, ETR data shows that the popularity of generative AI continues to grow (see Figure 4). And organizations are nearly evenly split on whether to seek generative AI solutions directly from the companies developing them versus using embedded generative AI capabilities within existing vendors’ offerings.

Figure 4. Evaluation of generative AI is a growing priority for organizations, with customer support, text and data summarization, and code generation and documentation as the leading business use cases being explored.

Conclusion: Process Automation’s Critical Moment

A set of forces is currently articulating into a critical moment for the process automation market. First are macroeconomic conditions. The global pandemic forced organizations to face worker shortages and deep budget cuts, prompting a search for ways to do more with less, automate routine work, and operate with fewer human resources. Second is the arrival of generative AI and LLMs, which, while under development for many years, splashed into the popular imagination in a big way a year ago with the public release of OpenAI’s ChatGPT. A demand for intuitive, chat-based interactions with AI-powered bots and high-quality outputs will no doubt grow in the coming years. Third is the general movement toward self-service paradigms in digital transformation programs in business, enabled by slick and intuitive no-code and low-code, drag-and-drop interfaces that are accessible to non-tech-savvy business users. Business users are now seeking hands-on ways to improve their work with technology right in the line of business, but without needing programming knowledge or IT staff intervention.

These forces make for fertile ground for process automation vendors, an opportunity for them to integrate at scale within enterprises as indispensable vehicles for making work more efficient, cost-effective, and error-free. Yet, generative AI technology, in particular, threatens these vendors, potentially leap-frogging over process automation tools entirely and using AI directly to streamline the business. In response, process automation vendors are hurrying to integrate AI capabilities, exploiting the power of AI rather than succumbing to it as a competitive threat.

Contact the ETR Insights Team to discuss all the details from this analysis or request custom research. ETR Insights:

Our ETR Insights library contains transcripts and executive summaries from 360+ live and virtual events, totaling 15,000+ minutes of audio interviews. Uncover inflection points, understand what drives the decisions of enterprise technology purchasing leaders, and aggregate end-user sentiment around progressive technology trends.

ETR Insights Team:

Erik Bradley, Chief Strategist epb@etr.ai

Daren Brabham, PhD, Sr. Director Analyst dbrabham@etr.ai

Jake Fabrizio, Associate Analyst jf@etr.ai

Media Contact:

Contact our press team at press@etr.ai

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