The News: ServiceNow announced it has signed an agreement to acquire task mining company UltimateSuite to enhance the Now Platform’s ability to handle process mining and drive intelligent automation. Task mining technology is used to capture user interaction data, which can be analyzed to assess how work is completed, identify process bottlenecks, and drive stronger operational efficiencies across the organization. The terms of the acquisition were not announced, but the acquisition is expected to close in the first quarter (Q1) of 2024. You can read the full press release on the ServiceNow website.
ServiceNow to Acquire Task Mining Company UltimateSuite
Analyst Take: ServiceNow announced that it had signed an agreement to acquire UltimateSuite, a provider of task mining technology that can be used to provide insights to streamline repetitive work and identify automation opportunities. UltimateSuite was founded in 2020 by Robert Samanek and is headquartered in Prague, Czech Republic. The company has received industry recognition from Accenture’s Start‑Up Accelerator and was nominated to the Microsoft Founders Hub for demonstrating the innovative potential of its technology.
Leveraging Task Mining to Drive Continuous Improvement Across Workflows and Identify Opportunities for Automation
Task mining is focused on capturing user interaction data, providing visibility into how work is completed while surfacing insights that can be used to boost productivity, identify workflow bottlenecks and opportunities for automation, and improve employee experiences. Task mining can be used to inform a number of KPIs on a granular level, which can then be applied to entire workflows, processes, and organizational transformation plans. For example, task mining can be used to monitor KPIs at a granular level, including logging and monitoring keystrokes, mouse clicks, scrolls, and data entries that incorporate timestamps and detailed screenshots. Platforms such as UltimateSuite can then provide smart recommendations for optimizing tasks and identifying value-added tasks.
These KPIs can then be leveraged in continuous improvement programs. Task mining can also be used to identify opportunities for deploying robotic process automation, with the data being used to inform ROI calculations.
Creating a Powerful Automation and AI-Enabled Platform
The acquisition of UltimateSuite follows acquisitions of G2K and Element AI, which ServiceNow indicates is part of the company’s commitment to bringing impactful automation and AI‑powered solutions to its customers.
The integration of UltimateSuite’s technology should provide users with more visibility into the way work is done, and perhaps most importantly, help organizations uncover specific bottlenecks within workflows at a granular level. In particular, being able to log and monitor keystrokes, dwell time, application switching, and other granular actions, is key to understanding where there may be points of friction occurring within a workflow. Combining this data with screenshots during a specific task or workflow can provide even more insights, letting organizations better understand whether a bottleneck is due to an application’s UI design, a lack of data accessibility, friction due to authentication challenges, or other factors, is key to analyzing the best way to remedy the situation, either through the use of automation and AI or by redesigning the manual workflow.
Addressing Productivity and Employee Experience Simultaneously
As organizations continue to focus on productivity and efficiency, they are also trying to improve employee experiences by reducing the tedious and frustrating aspects of work. Utilizing task mining can help organizations achieve both goals by not only focusing on big-picture workflow optimization but also enabling them to drill down on granular processes that, taken on their own, may not significantly impact productivity but could be a previously undetected source of frustration for individual workers.
The acquisition of UltimateSuite and the inclusion of the technology into ServiceNow’s platform should deliver benefits to its users. The key issue with any technology that directly surveils worker activity will be whether and how the company chooses to disclose that the technology is being utilized. Workers may intuitively assume that such monitoring is occurring already (particularly if the employee is onsite, using the company’s equipment), but disclosure is almost always a better path to take to ensure employees are aware that their actions are being monitored.
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.
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Author Information
Keith Kirkpatrick is VP & 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.
