The News: Automation Anywhere announced a suite of new benchmarking services and a new customer benchmarking database initiative that is designed to assist companies with assessing and maximizing the business value of process automation deployments. According to Automation Anywhere, these offerings will help companies see what “best of breed” automation in their industry looks like and will help guide them toward the highest value automation priorities faster than they could have determined on their own. You can read the press release describing the available services at Automation Anywhere’s web site.
Automation Anywhere Launches New Benchmarking Services
Analyst Take: Automation Anywhere announced in mid-January a set of new AI benchmarking services, along with a customer benchmarking database initiative. The two announcements are focused on helping companies with the assessment of their process automation deployments, helping them focus on the highest value automation priorities quickly and efficiently.
The new services include:
- Return on Automation Value Assessment: An industry-specific discussion of automation trends and use cases and a complementary, customized analysis that includes a benchmark-driven analysis of value potential.
- Process Benchmarking Diagnostic: Identification of key performance gaps and related automation priorities.
- Process Transformation Roadmap: An in-depth consultative study of business processes and detailed recommendations to optimize the automation journey.
Additionally, Automation Anywhere announced the development of a new proprietary customer benchmarking database leveraging AI and millions of anonymized automation runs being executed by the company’s customer base, as a foundation to support these new service offerings. This benchmarking database captures key data and benchmarks to help customers compare their current business process performance with successful intelligent automation industry use cases. The database incorporates data captured from Automation Anywhere customers around the globe that execute more than 150 million automation runs each year.
The Need for Benchmarks and ROI Calculations
Automation and generative AI are quickly becoming more than just buzzwords within enterprises. Fearful of missing out or being left behind, organizations are investigating these technologies, running pilot implementations and test cases across a variety of use cases and functions. But as I have noted in other research notes, it is fiscally irresponsible and challenging to simply deploy the latest and greatest technologies across all functions and then hope that there will be some sort of financial return. Even pilot programs—however limited—can have a financial and operational impact, particularly if the pilot is not well planned or implemented and the technology winds up not being suitable for the particular use case or scenario.
As such, Automation Anywhere’s assessment services may be welcome tools that should be used by operational, IT, and strategic planners within enterprises. Rather than simply trying to guess whether a particular automated workflow is providing a return, these services appear to be focused on the actual value delivered, which can be used to assess the best path forward for optimizing processes and workflows with an eye on maximizing ROI.
The real value will be derived from not only looking at internal performance data (investment versus return) but being able to compare specific internal workflow performance against the performance of a huge database with millions of (anonymized) automations. Comparing internal performance versus data captured from the millions of automation runs that are logged within Automation Anywhere’s database will help highlight which processes represent the best opportunity for maximizing ROI. In addition, recommendations from Automation Anywhere’s professional services teams that leverage this data will also carry more weight and help instill more confidence among Automation Anywhere’s customers that they are taking the correct, data-driven approach to automation.
Impact on Automation Anywhere
In addition to the value provided to customers, the launch of these benchmarking services will help Automation Anywhere in terms of differentiating their offerings and solidifying their messaging and positioning to the market. This will be increasingly important as the shiny new objects (e.g., generative AI functions and features) become commonplace and table-stakes and vendors need to compete for business with other attributes.
Disclosure: The Futurum Group is a research and advisory firm that engages or has engaged in research, analysis, and advisory services with many technology companies, including those mentioned in this article. The author does not hold any equity positions with any company mentioned in this article.
Analysis and opinions expressed herein are specific to the analyst individually and data and other information that might have been provided for validation, not those of The Futurum Group as a whole.
Other Insights from The Futurum Group:
The Enterprise Application Market Outlook for 2024
Automation Anywhere Unveils Generative AI-Driven Automation Platform
Automation Anywhere Outlines Generative AI Guardrail Strategy
Author Information
Keith Kirkpatrick is Research Director, Enterprise Software & Digital Workflows for The Futurum Group. Keith has over 25 years of experience in research, marketing, and consulting-based fields.
He has authored in-depth reports and market forecast studies covering artificial intelligence, biometrics, data analytics, robotics, high performance computing, and quantum computing, with a specific focus on the use of these technologies within large enterprise organizations and SMBs. He has also established strong working relationships with the international technology vendor community and is a frequent speaker at industry conferences and events.
In his career as a financial and technology journalist he has written for national and trade publications, including BusinessWeek, CNBC.com, Investment Dealers’ Digest, The Red Herring, The Communications of the ACM, and Mobile Computing & Communications, among others.
He is a member of the Association of Independent Information Professionals (AIIP).
Keith holds dual Bachelor of Arts degrees in Magazine Journalism and Sociology from Syracuse University.
