A continuous cycle of insights to automation is the big trend in SaaS, but what are the pitfalls to following the crowd? Technology Magazine finds out

The partnership between ServiceNow and Celonis underlines a market trend plotted by acquisitions such as ProcessGold by UiPath, Signavio by SAP, myInvenio by IBM, and Lana Labs by Appian, as well as partnerships like ABBYY Timeline and Blue Prism. But what do these moves tell us about the trend, according to the leading research and advisory company, Forrester, of ‘closing the loop from insights to integration’?

Speaking on the partnership, Forrester asks if competitors to ServiceNow in the automation platform market will shy away from partnering with Celonis based on the depth of the relationship, and questions if the partnership is “a precursor to an acquisition”, like many before it?

Issues with closing the loop

According to Forrester, “organisations run the risk of tying process optimisation to automation and, even more concerning, to a particular vendor’s automation solution.”

Rob Koplowitz, VP Principal Analyst at Forrester, says that their data indicates that 76% of process optimisation efforts are in service of driving some form of end-to-end automation. As Koplowitz states, “including relevant stakeholders like customer experience professionals, governance, risk and compliance pros, etc. could provide critical insight as to when automation is not the right approach.”