Reviewing The Forrester Wave: RPA Q1 2021

Hello and welcome back to another episode of the Process and Automation Podcast with the Automation Guys. Do you like to learn more about the 14 RPA providers that matter most and how they stack up? In today's episode, we will go through the 14 most significant ones from the recent Forrester Wave Robotic Process Automation Q1 2021 report, and we will go through how each RPA vendor measures up And hopefully this will help you to select the right vendor for your needs. So, the latest Forrester Wave of robotic process automation. This is, uh, yeah, exciting news.

Very good. And we are also awaiting the Gardner report, which I believe will also be out a bit later this year. Forrester has obviously released the Wave for Q1 2021, which is good. It's quite exciting, quite a few surprises in there. So what they've done is they've, they've looked at the 14 providers that matters the most in their opinion, and basically how they stack up and how they compete. So for those of the listeners who are new to the Forrester Wave, it is basically a way to categorize robotic process automation vendors, you know, based on their position in the market in terms of leadership and, you know, the categories are typically leaders at the front, then strong performers, contenders, and challengers. And they do that as a function of the market presence. So they've done that now for the 14 mainstream providers.

I guess it's like the Oscars, isn't it?

Yeah, it is a bit like the Oscars for RPA, I suppose. And it is interesting reading, especially for people that need to make decisions, that want to procure robotic process automation software. So that, you know, so that's— this is a good go-to report, which is as objective as it can be for the analyst to make sure you, you, you as an enterprise architect select the right one for your business. And you know what the report does, it does sort sort of lay out various criteria, strengths, weaknesses, market position. So I thought, Sascha, today is a good idea just to run through these with our audience.

So who are sort of the contenders in this year's, in this quarter's Forrester Wave?

So no surprises here. Automation Anywhere, of course, quite a strong RPA vendor. Totally rewritten their product a few years ago. Blue Prism is there, quite a go-to provider, very stable.

Yeah, enterprise, yeah, enterprise focused a lot.

Yeah, very enterprise focused, you know, quite old hands in, in, in that sort of area. We've got Cyclone Robotics as well, probably a bit less known to our listeners. Datamatics is out there as well. I have heard quite a lot in, in the market recently on news about Datamatics. Then we've got Edgeberth, Highland, and the likes of Cofax is still lingering around. And then of course, I think the big one is Microsoft. Microsoft has now joined this club as well.

Yeah, I think after the acquisition of Softomotive, isn't it?

That's right, yes. So they sort of excelled themselves to, to the front of the class. Kryon is still in the wave as well. Then we've got NICE, Pegasystems, the likes of SAP, WorkFusion, and then of course UiPath.

Yeah, I think there's generally a lot of activity in the market, and it feels like the some of the businesses, some of the companies from previous Forrester webs that they come closer towards the leaders, isn't it? So everyone is— lots of businesses are catching up with the leaders in the market.

Yes, that's right. I think that there are some of those that are probably not as progressive. It doesn't mean they are bad providers, but we do tend to find that there is a sort of a cluster building in some of the top performers in the leader section.

Who is the number one? Who is sort of, oh, not necessarily number one, but who's in the leaders currently and who has been there for a while?

Yes, if we look at the wave, no surprises there. UiPath is in the front, so they in the lead. Very strong offering currently, quite a big market presence, the biggest one out there. So, you know, I believe that with UiPath, there's been quite a lot of investment inside the business. You know, their innovation sort of spent is pretty good. We are seeing new things that are coming out, especially things that is more aligned towards AI capabilities. So they call it the RPA adjacent automation technologies, and these are kind of peripheral things that builds on top of RPA that actually makes the offering a lot better. So, so UiPath obviously very, very strong contender, um, and, um, you know, I would suspect that they would probably maintain that, uh, leader position, um, for, for 2021, uh, possibly, um, beyond as well, you know, into, into, into 2022 as well.

Yeah. And then as you mentioned, Microsoft has caught up, uh, quite, uh, quite, quite a lot, isn't it? So it wasn't, wasn't even in the, in the, in the, in the Forester wave before, because before it was just their own offering. And now after the acquisition of Softomotive, that happened I think last year, isn't it?

Yeah.

So yeah, that helped them to really be, be in the wave and be a big player now in the field.

Yeah, of course, with the acquisition, I think it happened in, in May 2020. You know, that accelerated their execution of being in this automation space. So that strategy worked. Of course, with Microsoft, they are called the so-called mega vendors. You know, they've got a lot of a rich set of training and learning resources, a big community behind them, a very broad global partner ecosystem, and Of course, all of this helps customers succeed at every stage. And like we've spoken in our Clubhouse sessions, Microsoft is a player that always looks to make RPA available to the masses, right? Very low barrier of entry. You can start immediately almost at no cost. You can deploy within 5 minutes, and it's really, really easy to get started. Some of the features inside the platform is quite rudiment— rudimental, but, you know, at the same time, it gets people hands-on experience. They can get started quite quickly. Then, of course, you know, Microsoft also made significant investments in AS/400 connectors, Citrix support, broader support for additional browsers. The designer experience is better. So, you know, a lot of this coupled with the fact that there's quite significant Office 365 users out there really puts them in a strong position you know, within Site, the Forester Wave.

All right, yeah, so the next big one which has been there for a long time is Automation Anywhere. So they, as you mentioned, yeah, they have completely rebuilt their product to turn it really into and to compete with the cloud offerings from others. So it's a fully cloud-native web-based application now, was similar like Microsoft, so they stepping up on the AI a lot. So it's lots of AI power in that platform. Yeah, and it's also supporting the discovery of process automation. And yeah, so that's Automation Anywhere.

So very strong player still, very strong partner base. Multinational spread of partners, you know, over 90 countries that you can find Automation Anywhere partners, well established. I think they do focus a lot on, you know, progressive AI-infused technologies, a very comprehensive platform like you mentioned earlier. They have built the product or rebuilt it from scratch to turn it into a a cloud-native, web-based, AI-infused platform. And you know, this, this makes a really, really strong offering, especially for, for, you know, cloud-based RPA vendors, very strong. So, you know, definitely a big player, you know, in the market.

Yeah, I think what really stands out at Automation Anywhere is the IQ Bot. So as we all have plenty of documents documents and businesses. So the IQ Bot is a well-received component there which does the document extraction. So covers all the document extraction use cases with all the machine learning and data processing power. And so yeah, that when that came in, that really, yeah, was really well received as a feature. And yeah, others on the wave didn't have that capability at that point. So. So they're still pushing forward with that a lot.

Yes, yes. So the next one we can look at is NICE. That's the fourth one on our list. I would say between them and Automation Anywhere, probably a very similar market presence. NICE probably a tiny bit in the lead in terms of their position in the market. But in terms of their current offering, not as strong as Automation Anywhere, but still focus for NICE is AI-infused automation. You know, they've got quite a big portfolio of customers, around 700 or so across the world. NICE is traditionally a platform that's dedicated to contact centre automation. It's of course not limited to this. You know, they've included a lot of AI-based features within SiteTech product now, like real-time speech analytics, inventory checks, next best offer recommendations for, you know, contact centers agent. So at a whole, I think from a customer experience perspective, probably a bit aligned to the contact center But I do see application beyond that, using their platform. So again, very strong. I would say their focus is really on sort of text-to-voice analytics and processing, and rightly so in the leadership sort of area of the Forrester Wave.

All right, okay, yeah, so two more to go in our leaders section. So Kryon, so Kryon is very strong when it comes to process, business process discovery. So yeah, Kryon process, Kryon is really focusing on process discovery, leveraging AI again. So that seems to be the big theme for most of the vendors anyway, so for mining and generating visualization. So that helps business people to identify sort of the best automation for the business. And yeah, Kryon is a great fit for companies that look really out for, yeah, to tackle RPA from a business process optimization angle. Combined with that focus on mainly really business people and citizen developers, we have as a theme as well with lots of the low-code applications out there.

Yeah, I think with Kryon, their sort of vision is really to lead with business process discovery. And they're all about sort of accelerating this time to production from months to a few days. And the enabler for this is really increased sort of bot resilience and automation analytics. And they focus on full cycle automation. So in this span sort of task management, process mining, they're looking at process discovery and continuous automation improvement. So I think that they tackle the actual process side a lot. They use AI for mining and for visualization generations. And they present all of those visualizations to business people to identify what's the best fit for automations. And again, it's multidisciplined because if you have those sort of metrics around processes, it could be used for training, it could be used for the best path for a user to complete a process. So very strong as well. They've got good integration with ABBYY. Microsoft Cognitive Services, other text analytics as well for processing. So in all, you know, they're very strong, very focused on the business people, citizens, developers, like you mentioned, Sascha. So, you know, I would say the last one in our leader section, but certainly also a strong player.

Yes, so WorkFusion is the next one, isn't it? We have— is very, very strong in the banking and insurance industry. Yeah, so, and that, yeah, they target really all scenarios and use cases in retail banking and any kind of insurance you work, you any kind of insurance. And yeah, it's very— yeah, can deal with very complex and data-driven use cases. So this is why it's very, very embedded within banks and insurances. It's very strong as well in the EMEA region and in APAC. Yeah, and recently started to look more outside of banking insurance, also covering healthcare.

Yeah, I think with, with WorkFusion, like you said, I think their background is, um, financial sector, um, specifically banks, um, and, you know, very, very strong, strong contender there, especially specifically for more data-driven use cases for RPA. Um, you know, they, uh they integrate with other sort of platforms, very deep integration, object-level integration with, with, you know, the likes of Bloomberg Systems, LexisNexis, Oracle, of course, SAP, Reuters. So, so they've got a lot of pre-packaged bots that's also available for reuse, which, which is really appealing as well, especially in the banking and finance industry. Tons of connectors to all of these platforms. Of course, a lot of reference data, so you don't have to start from scratch. You know, they would have all of these things fully loaded, ready to be deployed, or ready to be adopted and changed and deployed. You know, so very good. I would say that you mentioned strong in healthcare, but also kind of branching out now into the likes of healthcare as well. And again, I think the strong point here is, you know, the pre-packaged components is a sort of a differentiator for them.

Yeah, and bank-grade security features, and especially when it comes to sensitive and regulated data. I think this is why they are as well the sort of the the key player there in this industries.

Yes, that's right. So with Edgeverve, you know, it is quite an attractive RPA vendor for firms that seeks, you know, the RPA platform and also the consulting into one place. You know, their product AssistEdge is an end-to-end automation platform that of course, with inside that is your discovery automation and your orchestration capabilities. They tend to focus on large organizations. So, you know, your sort of global 2,000 companies, but a lot of mid-sized businesses are also now starting to get involved with them. Very good partner network as well with them. You know, I think, One attractive feature of them is they have got specific use cases. Again, you know, in contract, contact center automation, legal contract management testing. So, you know, very, very experienced, large client base, comes with, you know, lots of useful tools to be able to scale your RPA. Do convenient version updates, data migration. I think with EdgeVerve, we don't really see a lot of AI capabilities in there yet. It's possibly one of the reasons why they're sort of just in the space they are, with inside strong performers. But I think with them, again, with the use cases, the experience, that probably brings them closer to that leadership area of the wave.

Yeah, a bit of a surprise is the next one, the next movement here in the wave. Blue Prism is not a leader anymore in this Forrester Wave, dropped down to strong performer. But nevertheless, Blue Prism offers really, really a stable and very, very strong compliance and secure RPA platform. So it's very, very popular with large enterprises. Yeah, Blue Prism has been in industry for years, more than 15 years already. And I think over the last couple of years, they concentrated a lot on building this connected RPA offering and some of the other RPA vendors, yeah, like UiPath, they're a bit stronger now in some other core capabilities. But Blue Prism has a big R&D investment. So they doubled that R&D investment in 2020. They doubled it. Yeah, so that's, so there's lots of stuff to come out in the next couple of years to see what, how they envisage RPA. So they moved more into the intelligent automation space anyways, not just pure, pure RPA, especially with the connected RPA offering. So they started to build up this digital exchange over the years and Yeah, so that, that, that's quite attractive. So they have now over 1,800 pre-built automations in this digital exchange available for business to use. So this, yeah, very low-code approach makes them still very attractive, but it feels, yeah, to be honest, a bit older than some of the strong performance we see. And yeah, really looking forward what they, what they, what they are doing within the R&D space. Otherwise, yeah. They cover everything what you would expect, OCR capabilities, machine learning. Yeah, very strong, strong vendor still, but they have to catch up with the big innovation in the strong performance area.

Yeah, I think the good thing there is, like you touched on, that they are investing heavily in R&D. I think the attractive thing about Blue Prism is the stability. You know, the platform has been around for, you know, a decade and a half. It's extremely secure. You know, you look at every sort of compliance standard under the sun.

Yes, absolutely.

You know, PCI, HIPAA, SOX, you know, it's already in there. So if data security is something of a concern, especially in financial institutes, government institutes, you know, this is a very, very good way secure that data. And, you know, for both unattended and attended automations, of course, you know, integration with a lot of things, ABBYY, FortressIQ, you know, process mining tools. So a bit disappointing that they've been rated in a strong performer. I would personally say they probably still one of the leaders just based on experience. But perhaps, you know, 2022, when some of that 2020 R&D comes to the surface, you know, hopefully it is— it will sort of put them back in a strong position again.

Yeah, indeed. Yeah. Now, now the big, the big boy SAP, it's also a strong performer. They moved up now from contender to strong performer. SAP, they do all sorts of ERP stuff you can imagine for big enterprises. So it was anyway a surprise that they haven't been too strong in this field. But yeah, SAP is stable and is moving slow, but good to see them here in the strong performers section with their Intelligent RPA product, which really enabled some end-to-end RPA processing on the whole of the SAP platform and really making integrations with SAP and non-SAP solutions possible. And yeah, so was their offering, it complements really their business and industry applications they have available.

Yeah, I think we we would probably look at them as somebody that would, you know, be a strong performer anyway. I think that, you know, within InsightSAP, there's naturally going to be, you know, a customer base that they could tap into. Of course, there's a lot of experience in the partner network as well. You know, SAP also comes equipped with with pre-built automations. And I guess a lot of these things would be SAP-centric, but a lot of the bigger enterprises that uses SAP for Enterprise Resource Management, it's just an easy add-on. It's convenient. So very good integration as well with other technologies like ABBYY. So that's of course for intelligent document management. So, you know, not a big surprise that they're in this space. And, you know, I think they probably with their experience will, you know, stay here for quite a long time. So the last performance in the strong performance section, we'll cluster these together because from, you know, from our opinion, we've covered the leaders and obviously the strong performance. So We'll group together Highland Datamatics and Cyclone Robotics. And so then the low end of the strong performers, and the only remaining one is then Cofax. So Cofax is, uh, you know, last on the, uh, from a, from a leadership perspective, um, still quite a big presence within the market. I suspect that, um, you know, Cofax in terms of innovation probably have got a lot to catch up on. But that being said, you know, still a strong performer in terms of, you know, customer base, you know, the market presence as well.

Yeah, Covex, I think one of the big downsides of Covex, it is not really offered as a SaaS platform yet. So this is where the others are definitely already at and That's probably something I'll come up with over, over the next couple of years. But at the current stage, yeah, I think, yeah, they do not deserve any, any, any place higher, I guess, than this. And yeah, this brings us to the end of the review of the Forrester Wave Robotic Process Automation Q1 2021 with some really interesting changes. We hope this overview helps you a bit in your vendor selection process. In our opinion, when selecting an RPA platform vendor, Look out for consistency, stability, a large set of capabilities, security, scalability, and a strong partner network to support you on your automation journey. We are looking forward to your feedback on this episode, and thank you very much for listening. See you soon. Unfortunately, that's it again with this episode of the Process and 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.