00:00:00] Sascha Cutura: [00:00:00] Hello. And welcome to another episode of the process and automation podcast with the automation guys.   In today’s episode, we thought it would be really good to do a news round up of the market for intelligent automation. Hyperautomation is moving so fast and, um, so is everyone. Yeah. Probably focusing, on some, some key technologies, key vendors, um, we thought it will be really good to give everyone sort of news Roundup.

[00:00:45] Arno van Rooyen: [00:00:45] What has happened over the last month? Uh, also, um, because there’s lots of activity in the market, isn’t it? Ana? Yeah, of course. And I think we spoke about this earlier in our clubhouse sessions, sachets that there’s a lot of [00:01:00] automation, startups out there. And, you know, they, they are gaining musher, um, venture capitalist funding to obviously accelerate their product development and expand the go-to market strategies.

[00:01:15] And obviously also try to penetrate. The market deeper. Um, um, you know, this week we, obviously, we looked at, uh, robot court. We’ve talked about robocall, which is of course, uh, open source software stack for, for robotic process automation. And, uh, you know, they’ve raised a cool $21 million and that early stage, um, around, uh, funding to, to make automation a lot more accessible.

[00:01:45] Uh, we have spoken about this, this, uh, open source, um, in the last couple of weeks and it it’s a one to keep an eye on, uh, because of course, with, with opensource, um, the price point of the licenses, uh, [00:02:00] that that’s obviously affected. So it makes it a lot more accessible, right? To a lot more people, three, a threat to the Microsoft offering.

[00:02:10] We always talk about that are easily accessible. Microsoft. Maybe. Yeah. Maybe it is. Yeah, we will see, we see. And we will obviously report on this. If we can see Robocop is, uh, gaining even more momentum. Uh, and, uh, there will be lots of comparisons coming up in the market as well. I’m very sure about that.

[00:02:30] Uh, and maybe they will enter some of these quadrants. You might be following already the forest star or the Gartner, um, uh, the HFS research, um, all those kinds of. Um, yeah, but Robocop is, is definitely a big one. Um, and I haven’t had it on my, on my personal sort of radar, uh, either. So, um, th this is why it’s really interesting and, um, to see that, that there’s so much activity out there.

[00:02:57] And the next one we talk about as [00:03:00] well, a lot about workflow and case management solutions and, uh, low-code and no-code solutions in general. Anyway, and the next one I didn’t have on my radar at all. Is Tom keen. And then they raised a staggering 50 million to expand their no-code workflow automation platform.

[00:03:21] And. Yeah. And I think everyone who is currently as a vendor and as a, uh, as a company looking at low-code and no-code, um, I guess, um, w was those new startups coming along? They, they, they find gaps in the market, usually, which, um, uh, an address topics, which are not currently covered maybe, but other products in the market.

[00:03:43] So it’s definitely worth a look at. And, um, yeah, so I checked out. A pure, no code workflow automation platform. Um, you know, it is, uh, it is a sort of a peer star. [00:04:00] Um, the, the product itself looks pretty good. They promised no more code. Um, no more apps. Um, just straight to the point that they’ve got quite a big solution gallery eight, they focus on, on, you know, quite a good solutions for all four verticals.

[00:04:20] Um, so sales operations, for example, they look at, um, sort of opportunity monitoring lead qualification. Uh, pipeline cleanup, um, you know, sales meeting, scheduling, um, territory, assignment, uh, renewals coordination. So, so, so it’s, so it’s all of these modules that’s of course just integrated with Salesforce as well.

[00:04:45] Uh, slack. So, so it’s all very sort of robust. Pluggable components plugs into too. Obviously I’m a Google as well. You Google mail. Um, and then of course they’ve got [00:05:00] solutions for customer operations. Um, you know, triaged support renewals coordinator, um, unified communications, email to chat notifications.

[00:05:12] So there’s tons of modules in here, which looks like it’s, it’s easy to plug into your workflow process. Um, you know, of course, for other solutions, they also have, um, options in legal operations, financial operations, it HR business operations. So it’s a very interesting offering. Um, it looks pretty robust.

[00:05:35] Um, the pricing I’m unaware of it at this particular point in time, but I suspect if you, if you raise 50 million us dollars, you’re doing something right. And I think, um, like I say, with the, with these new no-code workflow automation vendors, and also. The RPA vendors, the open source ones, maybe they’ll have their own quadrants soon.

[00:05:59] Right. [00:06:00] Differentiate them from the, I guess the mainstream mainstream ones. It wasn’t every, every one of those, uh, applications. We look at the, the more modern one. So those are the new upcoming ones. So they all seem to have a strong emphasis as well on connecting into. Sort of the existing apps in, in, in a company which are used very often select like, like slack Ms.

[00:06:23] Teams, so everywhere when it comes to productivity and, um, uh, sort of make that sort of, uh, sort of a standard. Yeah. So in some tools, more the enterprise tools, we, we, we are working. Which are a half, half a sort of a history 20 years back. Um, and then they’re catching up. Obviously it was lots of the modern elements and, but still to have the existing customer base, they have to sort of look at legacy stuff as well.

[00:06:52] So they have a different, um, uh, um, uh, the different things to consider. Um, sometimes they are not as fast as these [00:07:00] new, um, Uh, the new startups, so they can concentrate on the latest stuff without any baggage, um, which makes them really fast and very agile. Um, some of the companies you see on a quarter and they have very mature at a very, very strong, they have a huge partner network and you can rely on them heavily to get all soft done.

[00:07:20] They have seen everything, uh, all sorts of problems, but sometimes they’re not, not the most innovative when you compare it. Yes to, to, to these new companies coming up here. Um, this is why, while you see these big investments here, and when we see a lot of investments are actually on the no-code side, we recovered low-code for a couple of years now it gets super popular.

[00:07:44] Um, but no code seems to be really the next big thing. And everyone seems to bet on it. Yeah, that’s true. And I think the interesting thing with these guys, it looks like they are moving away from per [00:08:00] user license. They are more about, um, you know, the number of modules you have in your apps and the number of integrations.

[00:08:09] Um, and also the number of environments you’ve got. I don’t want to buy very wide adoption. Isn’t that throughout the business. Yes, exactly. Caring about that kind of stuff. Exactly. So I think that they, they are, you know, in, in the game to actually make it quite accessible and not have a, I guess, per user license.

[00:08:28] It’s, it’s more on the actual modules that, you know, you, you, you are consuming. Um, and, um, yeah, I think it’s definitely some someone to, to look out for. I later on, we’ll talk about bubble as well. It’s like published also a new one on the market, which is also, uh, a no code provider. Also raised a bit of cash or when I say a bit, I think it’s a hundred million.

[00:08:52] Yeah. But we’ll, we’ll have a, um, bubble as well. Um, so, so there’s a few other sort of, [00:09:00] um, newsworthy points. Obviously there’s, uh, avid exchange that acquired fast by, um, and you know, that is all to do with, um, you know, automated payment technologies, um, that’s sort of services, um, middle market companies across America.

[00:09:19] Um, so you know, that that’s an interesting acquisition. As well, bringing their sort of value aptitude to about 7 billion us dollars, uh, at the minute. So I think that possibly what we’re seeing is, is as, as kind of, I guess, history repeating where, you know, some of the bigger players are, are sort of, um, acquiring some of these innovative sort of smaller, smaller companies to, to bolster their offer.

[00:09:48] Yeah. That’s what, every, every couple of years, uh, it feels like the, the cycles get, get shorter way where we see a bigger consolidation. Um, but, uh, [00:10:00] yeah, it’s, it’s much faster anyway in the market. Um, and, uh, yeah, similar, like, uh, The the big, big acquisition from zoom, um, zoom, uh, oppositely had tremendous success, um, during the, the COVID pandemic.

[00:10:15] Um, um, every, everyone is using zoom. These days, most meetings have, have moved over to zoom. So Hammons teams and, um, They haven’t done really lots of acquisitions, but they now, now announced a huge deal, um, was the contact center market, which is more the enterprise focus, um, and where, where they had in any way.

[00:10:36] Zoom had huge amount of, uh, of growth in the enterprise model. And they acquired five, nine, um, you know, which, uh, which really helps them to, to break into the contact center market and customer contact centers nowadays. Yeah. So previously it was all telephone and we probably see more and more of that kind of stuff, uh, um, [00:11:00] video based.

[00:11:01] Um, and, uh, yeah, this is. Probably makes sense to, to break into this enterprise market for zoom, uh, yeah. Or huge acquisition and one of the big ones, definitely the bigger ones this year. Yeah, of course the, just in the us alone, um, you know, the contact center market is worth around 24 billion us dollars, so it’s big business.

[00:11:24] Um, so it will be interesting to see how many more. Uh, businesses, zoom acquires to, to strengthen their foot all in the mind. Um, now the interesting one year is just people joining forces. So IBM of course, um, they are behind, uh, IBM Watson and they are joining forces with a company called, uh, planetRE. Um, and monitor is if I pronounce this correct.

[00:11:52] Um, like all about, um, making real time decisions based on. Data with inside your business. So if [00:12:00] data is fracking documented and locked in silos, um, you know, they, they are the people that actually, um, provides capabilities to, um, you know, unlock and liberate that data and, um, you know, integrate that into their operational processes.

[00:12:18] Um, and you know, it’s, it’s all to do with, with decision-making, you know, um, ha you know, how do we, uh, ask or how do, how do we, how do we get answers to very complicated questions very quickly by, by sort of looking at our data and pushing that, um, in, in front of people who needs it. Um, so of course, with this partnership, um, Uh, you know, uh, IBM Watson we’ll, we’ll, we’ll be in the new offering as well.

[00:12:49] Um, so that’s certainly a very interesting one to look out for as well. What, what, what that, uh, you know, uh, that sort of partnership will bring, [00:13:00] especially for, for, um, you know, for automation, for people using IBM Watson.

[00:13:08] The big one, um, um, in the market, uh, uncork and, uh, redox partner to streamline no-code healthcare applications. So we, we, we talked about this, um, startup, uh, no code vendors. So uncle uncork is one of those, um, which I wasn’t aware a couple of months ago. And, um, they, they completely, uh, as well, no code and, um, Uh, redox, um, uh, in, in the healthcare space.

[00:13:37] So it really makes sense, um, um, to, to connect the both sides of, uh, um, the technical, the technical expertise and the, the industry expertise to really get that market going. And, um, I think in general, we need to solve a lot of problems. Isn’t it? So, and lots of business problems and no code, uh, not just in healthcare, it’s important in every [00:14:00] industry.

[00:14:00] Um, local. Can be, can be the answer to all these software development challenges out there. And, um, yeah, so there’s a big one, um, from, from uncork and redox to enable customers to really create applications and offer more seamless healthcare applications. Yeah. And then, yeah. Yeah. So, um, sort of in other news as well, um, it seems like, um, Payables automation is, is, is, uh, a topic of discussion.

[00:14:37] Um, now with the pandemic, um, and the onset of, of COVID 19, it seems like that a lot of people, um, obviously were working from home and, you know, we’ve, we’ve talked about accounts payable, automation for very long time. Um, but the automated version of accounts payable just in the U S [00:15:00] alone is. Worth $1.2 billion.

[00:15:04] Um, and you know, that that’s expected, expected to, to sort of reach three to three and a half billion dollars by 2026. So, so there’s a lot of opportunities with insights, um, counts, payable. It looks like where, um, you know, automation. Is a key strategic priority for, for, for businesses to increase, um, efficiency and productivity, as well as their profitability.

[00:15:30] And, um, you know, I think one of the things that is, uh, a catalyst for this as, as, as this really, um, I guess the rise of smarter sort of automation solutions, you know, that that’s, that that’s easy. Available easily accessible. You know, we talked about, um, uh, you know, the robotic process automation and the low-code automation, uh, the traditional vendors, obviously [00:16:00] there’s a lot of startups coming into the market.

[00:16:01] There’s a lot of commoditized, AI where, um, if you’re dealing with accounts payable and you have to turn, um, invoices into structured data to, to, um, pass them, you know, down the automation line, um, All of these sort of, uh, new, innovative sort of technologies enables this, uh, AP automation market to, to, to really grow.

[00:16:28] And I think there’s, there’s, there’s definitely, um, uh, you know, uh, all of the automation, like I said, is a key catalyst, um, uh, for it. Um, of course, um, there’s also a strong driver to, um, to ensure that, uh, you know, uh, data is, is, is accurate. And, um, you know, invoice processing costs are reduced, uh, for example, um, also we, um, we see that there’s, [00:17:00] uh, a growing demand for sort of real time, mobile management of approval, um, you know, um, access for, to, to these invoices, because of course, with, with the remote workforce, Um, it’s important that, um, it’s, it’s, um, you know, the people that needs to approve invoices, um, need needs to have that capability on their mobile phone.

[00:17:23] Um, sort of, of course, with, you know, all of the, um, the mobile technologies out there to automation in the back, you know, that that’s certainly a sort of a key catalyst that I, that I see is also driving, uh, accounts payable, automation. Um, and of course, fraud, fraud detection. There’s a, there’s a lot of things that you could plug into models to, to highlight any fraud.

[00:17:48] Um, you know, there there’s a surge of demand for payment integrations. So all of these kind of, if these, these, these, these, these things are catalyst. Um, and I think [00:18:00] for accounts payable, it seems like it, it is such an obvious place to start in a business. When you look at automation, right? Yeah, I guess, um, some of that, uh, why it becomes more?

[00:18:12] Yeah. A topic again, fields like accounts payable, processes, workflow, and improvement has been around for so many times for such a long time. And we have worked in so many different projects. So what, but it seems like now in industries, more than, than ever, because we handle COVID pandemic some of the manufacturing and some of the healthcare, um, uh, industries and sectors.

[00:18:41] They, they immediately had this. Crazy, um, uh, growth, uh, and was grows, obviously comes, um, in this whole supply chain comes, uh, you need to foster auto approval, faster processes to get, get 3d stuff done. So in healthcare, if you can’t get your masks [00:19:00] ordered within the next 30 minutes, you might have a problem.

[00:19:03] So if there are some weird approval steps and manual steps in, in, in, in, in, uh, in, in the process, You can’t work like that. So this is, this is the same as it was manufacturing. Suddenly we had, everyone is at home. Uh, everyone had to get everything delivered. So the whole, the whole manufacturing and supply chain and all that stuff related to it, um, completely, uh, transformed, uh, was in, within a couple of weeks.

[00:19:29] And, and, and was that. It’s the last to follow processes and you still have to put an order through, you still have to pay an invoice. Um, but, but these processes need to be accelerated and it can only be achieved if it’s high you high volume. Anyway, that if that, um, that capability goes into companies for extracting data, uh, unstructured data to structured data to automate, then all the backend systems.

[00:19:57] Connect really seamless into ERP systems. [00:20:00] So all that stuff, uh, um, uh, became suddenly super important. And now we are here, um, with all the technology, it can help. It has helped, uh, AI suddenly went into this, uh, into this space and yet it’s huge, huge. Opportunities still. Um, and it’s interesting to see it.

[00:20:23] It’s never, never, never topic, um, accounts payable, which seems to go away. Yeah. And it’s, it’s, it’s very, very topical at the minute. Um, I think like you said, it feels like accounts payable has been yeah. Around for tens of years, you know, since automation was invented, everybody wanted to automate invoice processing.

[00:20:46] But, but I guess what you’re saying, um, Sasha is that there are some critical capabilities at ease transforming that, you know, accounts payable, automation, value chain, you know, including [00:21:00] a document intelligence where, you know, we, we could now improve our visibility. Um, and flexibility to read any financial document in any format across multiple languages and, um, and also, um, you know, have really good workflows, either simple or complex approval and execution workflows.

[00:21:22] Um, you know, with, with that, that drives, these is, um, intelligent decision-making. Um, uh, of course, you know, electronic invoices, that’s nothing new, but you know, it’s easy to build, um, you know, E in invoicing and portals for customers to go and download the invoices and what to set up notifications. So the invoices gets delivered to, to, uh, inbox or to their portal.

[00:21:48] Um, of course there’s really good ERP and cloud platform integration with, with, um, with the automation tool. Um, so, you know, there’s pre-built connectors. [00:22:00] Um, and, um, you know, so these are all sort of, um, key drivers that, that makes it, I guess, the modern approach to AP, um, you know, really exciting and, and, and sort of just get to that, that, that sort of place where.

[00:22:17] Um, you know, it, it, it, it does kind of get, get to a point where it’s true sort of intelligent automation where it sort of lights off and automation, the invoice comes in, we can process it. So of course, we’ve, we’ve got AI and machine learning and that that’s, you know, a necessary feature for what I’ve just explained.

[00:22:38] Um, definitely, uh, definitely something that’s, that’s sort of newsworthy in touch again.

[00:22:46] Yeah, absolutely. And it’s probably something we, we have a couple of episodes on, in the future as well, a similar, like we had on HR automation and yeah. Very very certain actually we will talk about, uh, AP [00:23:00] automation, one detail. Um, yeah. And if you have questions on, on that topic, specifically, reach out to Arno myself.

[00:23:07] Um, and we can, uh, yeah, we can discuss any questions you might have on this one or join our next, uh, uh, clubhouse session, um, where we, where we, um, discuss all sorts of questions, uh, around the topic of AI and, uh, process and automation, not just AI. Sorry. Um, yeah. There’s more and more news. Isn’t it on? Um, more, more, more development you mentioned probable already.

[00:23:33] Yeah. Yeah. So bubble is a no-code startup and they just raised 10 million years dollars. No, sorry. A hundred. Yes. Um, so the numbers are staggering. Um, so I think it was by insight partners. Uh, another private equity firm. Um, so they’ve announced they’re gonna spend the money in sort of boot camps for students and make it accessible.

[00:23:59] So students [00:24:00] can start building, um, uh, mobile applications. Um, and you know, the idea is that it is, uh, again, a sort of, uh, a no-code, um, platform you can build, um, Pretty much any type of app in it, sort of a web or mobile responsive, um, and you know, plugging some automation behind it. Of course, what you see in there is, um, the usual you’ve got, um, sort of workflows, um, data, um, you know, uh, your forms designer.

[00:24:42] So you can, you can customize your UX, um, pretty significantly. Um, you can manage your data, um, and, and, um, you know, to accounts and, and, and who use the platform. Uh, to, you know, we talk about roles and responsibilities who can log in, you [00:25:00] know, that sort of thing. Um, and you know, it’s, it’s, it’s, it’s pretty good too.

[00:25:05] It supports things like, I don’t know, you could, you can drag and drop, obviously form controls, video link, or video. Um, maps, you could overlay that with some data, um, you know, you can have some sort of dynamic content with inside your apps, so, you know, fairly robust, um, it’s all cloud based as well. And, you know, it’s, it’s, it’s, it’s again, one of those, those sort of funky startups that, um, you know, just, just.

[00:25:36] Um, another sort of angle for somebody to, to, to look at, um, you know, it’s free for, for one person. Um, if you want to subscribe to it. Um, and you know, again, it’s, um, very, very, very good price point, pretty easy to use. So [00:26:00] I think the. The big advantage they have is they picked a very unique, um, uh, target market.

[00:26:09] So they, we would discuss on this topic a couple of times on innovation and ideation within the business. Um, how can a business come, just experiment with, uh, uh, was a low-code or no-code platform to, to solve small or medium or big, big company problems. Um, and just playing around was ideas and putting stuff together in sort of a couple of days or weeks instead of like months, like, uh, like we have was previous technologies and there was bubble.

[00:26:39] They, they also address the, the startup market. So they, they, they, they, they basically say here, Mr. Entrepreneur, You have to start out by deer. That’s great, but you have just a business background. Um, you, you’re not a coder. Um, what are you doing? Um, do, do you find, can you find a coder who helps you on your [00:27:00] startup or your just validating your idea, validating your innovation.

[00:27:06] So they, they, they go to them. Do you have a coder now then, uh, get started here and build something maybe the next Airbnb or the next next Twitter. So this is sort of their promise so that that the entrepreneur can build these really powerful web applications. It was actually needing a coder and that’s super attractive, um, from that, from in, in that market.

[00:27:29] And I guess, but that still applies to two businesses, normal enterprises anyway, because, uh, there’s even a, there’s even a, um, uh, sort of a. Uh, movement, uh, that within companies, uh, some, some people should think like entrepreneurs and come up with good business ideas to take things forward. Um, yeah. And this, this will be the application for them.

[00:27:56] Yeah, exactly. This is a perfect place also to prototype ideas [00:28:00] and, um, to quickly spin up, um, like you say, if, if you, if you’re an entrepreneur and you’ve got an idea and you want to test the market out, uh, you know, even if it’s. Something that’s functional, but just visually appealing. It’s a very, very, very good place to, to start to create that user journey and to explain how that would look like.

[00:28:23] Um, and of course, you know, they’ve, they’ve got a marketplace as well. Um, and so, you know, there’s, there’s out of box loads of templates you could download and plug into your solution straight away, you know, from project management, um, you know, dashboard. Um, you know, his mobile phone, um, vacation design templates you could bring in.

[00:28:46] Um, so, you know, uh, a lot of, a lot of, a lot of plugins as well, of course, you know, with box Figma, Google maps, Facebook MailChimp, um, you know, uh, obviously seamless [00:29:00] signing with, with Google, for example. Um, so you know, a lot of, a lot of sort of integrations. Capabilities as well. Um, and you know, uh, a lot of plugins, API APIs, API connectors, and then also there’s a marketplace, um, where there’s an ecosystem of, you know, consultancies and agencies that you could either get some professional services from, or you could download their templates and, uh, you know, have a plane and.

[00:29:31] See if, if that’s the sort of thing that that will solve your problem, this is all kind of just stitching together. These no code apps now in a very rapid fashion. And of course, with, with somebody like bubble, they, um, you know, they want to empower the masses. They want to get everybody on it. Um, and like they say, they want to teach students and anybody learning, uh, Uh, uh, I’m sort of one for learning or desire for learning to, to [00:30:00] use.

[00:30:01] Uh, this, this, this is the right, uh, this is the right thinking. Um, so it was the future with tomorrow’s problems we can only solve with was the right tech talent, um, which, uh, trying to, to make today. Um, so, and this is, this is really needed. So when, when you look at the digital transformation forecasts and the intelligent automation, automation in general, it is sort of like, it looks a little bit like the COVID, uh, uh, exponential curve.

[00:30:28] Uh, hockey sticks like, um, uh, um, uh, over the next couple of years, five to 10 years, you will see. So now you think we are fast. Now it will be much faster. And we don’t currently, we don’t have that talent. We don’t have enough coders. We don’t have enough people with the right mindset, um, digital solutions and students.

[00:30:49] It’s definitely the right place to, to start with, to, to really get the developers, the tech talent of tomorrow, uh, enabled on those really good technologies. Well, we’ve seen it [00:31:00] firsthand in our company because we’ve got a, uh, a student work experience program. And, um, we had a, uh, a 17 year old student that’s currently doing, um, the sort of final year at, um, secondary school.

[00:31:16] Um, we provided him five days of training on a low-code platform. And we gave him an assignment to build a, um, automated insurance claims management system. Um, not comprehensive, but you know, meaningful where insurance claim can be logged, can be processed through, through sort of various teams, various people.

[00:31:39] Um, it’s all workflow driven. It’s all, uh, low-code forms and no-code form. And it was incredible to see, um, this, the, the sort of enthusiasm, um, you know, once, um, you know, this individual, what lo and no-code is all about how we push the [00:32:00] boundaries and we will, we were stunned by what he can achieve within five days.

[00:32:06] And you know, that, that, that, that’s sort of what you’re talking about. This sort of this new generation. Um, you know, sort of coders that is not necessarily people that’s going to, um, right. Um, you know, C plus plus in, in, in a basement somewhere with pizza and drinking Coke and never seeing the sunlight, you know, it is sort of progressive thinking, people that understand.

[00:32:31] You know what good software feels like, and let’s, you know, let let’s, let’s give those, those, those, those rapid development tools for them to express themselves rather than, you know, sort of going down this path where, um, results is only seen in a, in a very long period of time, because you have to code everything by hand.

[00:32:54] Um, so I think that just kind of backs that point up and I think it is a valid thing. [00:33:00] That, um, in the future, I think that we will probably see when the kind of the new enthusiastic generation comes in. Uh, people sort of used to the way of working in where everything is, instant everything’s fast, everything is sort of just, um, uh, you know, accessible.

[00:33:19] Um, so that mindset will sort of come into the software as well and the way the software. Yeah. And at the end of the day, it really matters that we can solve problems. Isn’t it solve business problems and solve them fast because. When things happen, uh, we can’t wait for months and this is, this is where we are.

[00:33:41] All these solutions are, are really good. So we get really fast results. Uh, it doesn’t need to show, we need to understand what sort of behind sometimes the black box of these platforms need to understand it for. Data privacy reasons and compliance and that kind of stuff. But generally, um, [00:34:00] uh, what matters is that we solve that problem.

[00:34:02] Uh, so 12 months ago, 18 months ago, we had the problem. We had to immediately switch working from home remote. So you can’t wait for solutions for four months. You need something now. Um, and it doesn’t really. And it doesn’t need to be perfect. Sometimes it just needs to work 80% better, better, fast than a hundred percent and never, huh?

[00:34:23] Yes. Yeah. And it’s true. And I think it, I think it just opens up the market more for solutions. I mean, it’s interesting. You touched on the point about people are just interested in solving problems and yeah, of course there’s always going to be, you know, objective C plus plus developers out there. That’s their interest.

[00:34:40] That’s what they interested in and they want to optimize to algorithms algorithms that does a specific thing. And I think what we’re talking about here is just kind of broadening the scope for people to get involved, where you would have otherwise might’ve lost that talent. Um, because that particular person is not really interested in [00:35:00] coding, but what they are interested in is creating solutions without really doing the coding.

[00:35:03] And this is such a good. Uh, you know, uh, platform to do that, you know, this, this, this paradigm of low in sugar. Um, so just moving it on slightly on the news. Um, so recently also blue prism, which is of course a RPA vendor. Um, they’ve partnered with ultra Ultrix Ultrix is, uh, of course, um, company that, um, provides a platform that you could, um, automate, um, sort of data flows with insight Excel.

[00:35:38] Um, so if you’ve got any spreadsheet processing heavy-duty spreadsheet processing inside your business, um, Ultrix um, is a, is a very, very strong platform that you could, um, basically extract transform and load data from, from various spreadsheets in a industrial, [00:36:00] um, scale. Um, you know, throughout your business.

[00:36:04] Um, so you know, this, this, this partnership, um, uh, blue prism says will obviously enable their customers to water faster and also to, to provide more reliable, reliable, critical data and insights. Um, of course, you know, not all of us wants to work with inside spreadsheets every day, but I think that is the reality of the world we’re working.

[00:36:27] You know, spreadsheets is probably never going to go away. Um, and of course, what they do is they provide a solution for processing of data, uh, very eloquently actually. And, uh, like I say, on a sort of industrial scale, and it will be interesting to see how this partnership develops with them and blue prism and, um, you know, how, how the product of that partnership with allow sort of for more RPA.

[00:36:57] To be solutions to be built on top of [00:37:00] what is essentially Excel data sources. Right?

[00:37:07] Uh, the next big one we have on the list, uh, Nintex launched AI based capabilities and integrations was in the Nintex workflow cloud. And, uh, that, that allows users to manage. And automate and optimize processes more effectively and workflows more effectively. So, um, yeah, Nintex is really pushing, pushing a lot on now.

[00:37:31] Isn’t it? Yeah. I think Nintex is also recognizing that, you know, um, to, to be in this space, um, you obviously need to enhance your AI capabilities. Um, this might be a sort of direct. I guess, um, feature parity that they want to achieve with the likes of Microsoft power automate, for example, um, I would expect that, uh, the AI [00:38:00] capabilities will be, um, you know, uh, sort of commoditized modules.

[00:38:05] Um, you know, the same thing that sort of Microsoft will have in terms of, um, you know, pattern recognition, extraction of unstructured data. Of course, Nintex already got very powerful, uh, document generation capabilities. Um, so, so I think this, this was this interesting thing to, um, to see how, how the Nintex AI capabilities, um, developed.

[00:38:30] Um, Nintex also has got a very, very, um, what they call it, process first approach to automation. Um, of course they’ve spoken in our previous podcasts about, um, you know, process mapping and ideation discussions. And Nintex has got a very, very eloquent tool called a Promap that you could map out processes.

[00:38:54] And, you know, I wouldn’t, wouldn’t be surprised if, if, if the AI sort of capabilities of Nintex [00:39:00] would sort of penetrate deeper into that space as well, even touching slightly on, on process mining. Um, now whether or not I will also acquire a process mining company. Um, is, is up for discussion, but sort of looking at Nintex track record for, I guess, the last sort of five or six years and the acquisitions they’ve made more recently, the acquisition of K2.

[00:39:23] Um, they definitely in the market for, for acquiring or growth for growth by acquisition. So perhaps, you know, we’ll, we’ll see more of that in the future as well. Right. We, um, we are nearly finished isn’t it was our, was our news, uh, plenty of news, obviously, um, to, to go through and there’s, there has been good movement, uh, over the last couple of weeks.

[00:39:48] Um, so on the intelligent automation, um, and, uh, space, um, and intent into intelligent document processing space, uh, you probably heard of, uh, about [00:40:00] Episoft. So this is a, um, So that they have a new, a new update as well. So, um, to, to, to really, um, element, uh, eliminate, um, document automation, challenges, um, it was in businesses.

[00:40:15] So, so they, they get even more stuff done, um, uh, than they had in the previous version. So for everyone who is a big fan of AFTRA soft, uh, which has lots of APIs available, um, to extract data. Um, so yeah, that’s, that’s the. That’s the big update from them. So check it out. Yeah. Yeah. So yeah, very, very, uh, broad news updates.

[00:40:40] Um, so hopefully we’ve covered, um, a broad range of, of sort of, uh, uh, new stories in, in, in this first round. And we obviously look forward to, to providing, um, in a future round ups as well in the intelligent automation. Uh, space. Um, I think, [00:41:00] uh, it is, it’s going to be a exciting sort of end of summer autumn when, uh, some of the networking events, uh, starts to, to rekindle and start to kick off again, lots to talk about, obviously, lots, lots to cover, um, and a lot of players to, to, to, to have a look at and keep your eye eyes.

[00:41:20] Um, of course, you know, we’ll provide updates on, on, on, on the movers and shakers and, and, and what’s news, um, you know, regularly on the, on the podcast as well. And, um, yeah, hopefully that will be, uh, a good sort of addition to everybody listening to a podcast. Um, and, you know, thanks for all our loyalty listeners.

[00:41:40] Um, we, uh, we had some tremendous, uh, say responses from everybody, a lot of submissions on topics and one was to, to do a newsletter. So, uh, we will, uh, we’ll keep it going. We’ll, uh, ensure that we, uh, try and touch all of the, um, you know, the, the talking points [00:42:00] in automation and, you know, keep, keep the suggestions, um, rolling in it’s much.

[00:42:04] Appreciate.

[00:42:11] that’s it again, was this episode of the process in automation podcast. If you liked this episode, please give us a five-star rating and don’t forget to subscribe to this podcast. So you don’t miss any upcoming episode. We hope you’ll tune in next. And until then let’s automate it.