#66 celonis Sphere, SAP Low-Code and other Automation News Roundup

Hallo und willkommen zu another episode of the Process and Automation Podcast with the Automation Guys. Today I'm here again with Arno talking about all things process and automation, and today we thought it would be nice to do another news roundup, uh, talking about the latest developments in the process and automation workflow, no-code, low-code sector. And yeah, let's kick it off with the first update. Arnold, you like to get started?

Yeah, so thanks Sascha, and it's good to be in Canary Wharf again in London. It's good to be together to do the recording together, and today we really want to look at I guess two broad areas of news. The first one, of course, is looking at intelligent automation platforms and the expansion of technology offers, you know, of vendors to really, you know, proliferate their enterprise digital transformation offering and the journeys they offer to customers. So we'll start with Celonis. So Celonis, you know, is, it's, a very big name in the automation space, and they recently announced the launch of ProcessSphere. And according to Celonis, this provides a multidimensional understanding of processes and all related business factors and dependencies. You know, and this Celonis Business Miner is a new workspace that surfaces insights for users that can help them better understand how their processes are working across a number of systems, and these include ERP systems, SCM systems, which is of course supply chain management systems, and CRM systems, which is customer relationship management. So any views on that that you wish to add, Sascha, on Celonis?

Yes, Celonis is still going very strong and just had their conference recently, and yeah, We're adding new functionality every year really to help businesses to understand processes more and really take the right action to make long-lasting business changes and get incredible results from that.

So, I guess with this Process Sphere and then the Business Miner, what they're starting to do is really just kind of bring more insights into processes dependencies between processes. And then, you know, with this Business Miner, it looks like a nice exciting feature where you've got this, this workspace to surface inside. Another news article, again, this is still with Celonis. They announced a new set of accounts receivable applications for collections management, of course. AR, hot topic in automation. It's one of those use cases that is what we would call low-hanging fruit. Everybody wants to do accounts receivable and accounts payable.

Evergreen.

Evergreen automation initiatives. And, you know, again, this accounts receivable sort of module helps with collection management, credit management, and of course, dispute management as well. And these applications will combine the Celonis process mining and also the execution management technology with Sailfin, AR solution provider expert. So moving on to Microsoft. So again, we still in the intelligent automation platform, category. Microsoft announced, um, the Microsoft Supply Chain Platform, and Microsoft says that this helps organizations maximize their supply chain data estate investment with an open approach, bringing the best of Microsoft AI, collaboration, low-code security, and SaaS applications in a Composable platform. So no doubt that Microsoft is moving into, um, I guess various sort of vertical spaces. It's interesting with the, the supply chain, um, platform itself, um, of course, you know, with supply chains under pressure these days with, um, disruption going on, uh, around the world, um, I can see that this is certainly something that will be of benefit for companies in the space. It's interesting that they've combined it also with low-code. Of course, their low-code platform is called Power Automate. I suspect that this will provide companies with that ability to take advantage of this supply chain platform, but probably also use the underlying low-code tools to provide some customization. So this is as of last week. So watch this space. So I'll hand over to Sasha again and Sasha, you can take us through the low-code, no-code news roundup.

Of course. Yeah. So the next section is looking at low-code and no-code and yeah, what we will see in general, a continuation for tech stack expansion and enabling more automation opportunities for enterprise customers. So one very interesting news I think came up. SAP, SAP is a company you probably relate not necessarily to, so like agile software development and low-code development, those kind of things. But SAP announced the launch of their low-code platform called SAP Build. Right. So Now in the portfolio, it makes it much simpler for organizations to build custom applications. And also, yeah, I think making use of the low-code movement there, building those applications not just simpler, faster, and based on the SAP product stack. So that's really cool to see. Obviously, it would be interesting to follow that topic a bit more over, over the next couple of weeks to see how powerful it really is. A very strong one in the market, you will certainly know, is OutSystems. Yeah, was there a low-code application platform? So they, they announced the latest evolution of their platform, Project Neo, with the OutSystems Developer Cloud. And additionally, OutSystems announced the launch of the OutSystems AI Mentor, which is an interesting new set of AI-based application development, security, and also quality analysis tools that will, yeah, help during critical phases of the software development lifecycle. So yeah, these, these long standing, uh, low-code vendors adding more and more to their platform to, to be even stronger. Um, yeah, and Swimlane of course announced the launch of low-code security and as part of their platform to create a centralized system of record and control. And yeah, this allows Yeah, the security teams to unify threat detection and response by providing access to intelligence and telemetry.

Okay, that's very interesting, especially the OutSystems announcement. It looks like the traditional low-code vendors are bringing more AI into their technology stack, you know, to obviously provide some support, you know, during these, as you mentioned, Sasha, critical phases of the software development lifecycle. We're going to move it on slightly. What we want to look at next is a couple of news articles with regards to specialized vendors that are augmenting their existing platform capabilities to really provide competitive differentiation. And recently, Automation Anywhere announced the launch of its new Automation Success Platform, And this new revamped platform includes process discovery capabilities from FortressIQ. And of course, FortressIQ is an AI startup that Automation Anywhere acquired last year. So again, very interesting process discovery, bringing in the artificial intelligence element in there. And of course, you know, from a competitive differentiation, that will obviously be another capability with inside the Automation Anywhere stack that the vendor provides. No doubt, you know, some of the bigger players in the space, UiPath, will obviously bring out, I suppose, similar capabilities. So it's a very interesting space to watch. And Sasha and myself, We'll, um, we'll make sure that if there's a, you know, news roundups and interesting news that we can share with, with our audience, um, we will continue to do so. Um, the next one is S&S and Sea Technologies. Um, so they announced the launch of Blue Prism, and of course S&S and Sea Technologies, um, acquired Blue Prism recently, and Blue Prism is an intelligent automation portfolio that's now S&S and C Blue Prism, you know, it forms part of the brand. So the, this platform combines RPA, and of course Blue Prism tradition was RPA, but this new platform now combines RPA with BPM and also low and no-code capabilities to, as they say, provide a comprehensive menu of intelligent automation services. So that's certainly quite interesting. And another one in the vendor augmenting their capabilities category is Microsoft. Again, so they announced recently updates for their Power Platform, which is of course their low and no-code platform. And they're adding new AI capabilities that makes it easier for users to describe processes. So again, kind of reaches into, I guess, process discovery, you know, process definition. And also the company relaunched its Microsoft Syntex, a set of automated document and data processing services to create a set of content apps and low-code tools. So that's one to look out for.

Yeah, Microsoft is really pushing strong into the market and that for many years already. And yeah, it's really, really good to see the new ideas from Microsoft, and it's really worthwhile looking into that and trying that out. Yeah, so other vendors are going strong as well to adding more to their tech stack. Salesforce, everyone knows that company, so they announced the inclusion of Flow for Industries, which is an expansion of its Flow product suite that utilizes also low-code automation for those in financial services, healthcare, and manufacturing sectors. So yeah, so pretty much all the vendors these days added low-code to their product. The next one is ServiceNow. They announced the launch of Now Platform Tokyo to help its customers design to supercharge operational intelligence and trust. Yeah, additionally, ServiceNow released the new AI-powered features and developer and risk management tools to help organizations operate more efficiently and power more resilient business models. So, yeah.

So I'll grab another one as well, which is an interesting one. That I just spotted, and this is NewGen Software, um, and they sell themselves as a digital transformation platform. And these guys announced the launch of the world's first low-code trade finance platform recently. And the idea here is to enable banks to go paperless and of course streamline their end-to-end trade processes, you know, while ensuring, um, you know, there's compliancy with domestic and international regulations. So that's quite interesting, quite niche for them. Oracle NetSuite also announced the launch of NetSuite AAP automation solution that embeds banking services into cloud ERP, their cloud ERP offering. The solution will offer organizations quick and easy access to financial services, all from within one single suite. And then, if I may, Sasha, I'll grab one more. Um, I think I'm probably slightly ahead, um, as a, as a news reader here. Um, Cognito Forms. Um, so these guys are online form builder, um, so they provide a platform for that, and they recently announced, um, that they are launching a workflow automation and a set of upgraded features such as assigning, I guess, workflow tasks to custom roles. They brought in some custom statuses. So I guess that's all to do with workflow state changes. And you know, they are saying that this triggers meaningful connections while collaborating around data. Changing the game for remote teams and customers. So that's certainly one to look out for. They are of course very strong in traditionally in just the online form builder space. So if you've ever used Google Forms, for example, very similar. So they brought in workflow automation as well. Probably wouldn't be long before we see artificial intelligence being part of one of their updates. Um, so that is a roundup of the news, um, as of the last week in November 2022. I don't know if there's anything else.

Yeah, there's of course probably lots of other news we, we haven't included now, but if you, if you hear about some stuff we should talk about more in depth here on the podcast, let us know on theautomationguys.net, send us a message there, reach out on all our social channels, and yeah, we will include that in our next news roundup.

Yeah, I think, um, just to kind of round off the episode, um, we had a look at a lot of our listeners' feedback, which we appreciate, and thanks for everybody that contributes and asks questions, and A lot of the questions is with regards to how to get started with automation. And of course, today's episode is all about the news and there's some, some, some great articles, there's some great technology out there and a lot of the vendors are adding a lot more exciting future features to their products. But ultimately, how do you get started? So we have mentioned in our previous episodes that The Automation Guys actually offers a subscription to a sandbox, and this is a sandbox where we've got a pre-configured, um, tool installed for you to get started with, with automation. It's very easy to subscribe if you go to our website, theautomationguys.net, scroll down, there's a subscribe button. And, um, what this provides you is a sandbox, like I mentioned earlier, and the sandbox is like loaded with some exciting features that can help you to build up your first set of automations. If you want to get started, you want to dip your toe in it, perhaps you want to build something very small to understand, you know, what this hype is all about, robotics and low-code. And I would invite you guys to go out and have a look at that. Again, it's either reach out to Sasha or myself if you've got any questions. You know, we're here to support everybody. And to help everybody along their automation journey. And, you know, the most important thing is to, to get started. Yeah.

And it is not just the sandbox, it is a whole community around that as well. So starting with like-minded people going through the same kind of stuff, interested in the same kind of use cases, is very, very beneficial. So yeah, you can exchange lots of thoughts, ideas, discuss topics in our community.

Yeah.

And get things really going and be really hands-on. So much stuff to experiment with. So yeah, join the community. We will be there for you and let's automate it. Unfortunately, that's it again with this episode of the Process in Automation Podcast. If you like this episode, please give us a 5-star rating and don't forget to subscribe to this podcast so you don't miss any upcoming episode. We hope you will tune in next time, and until then, let's automate it!