More and more enterprises are adopting process orchestration as a way to apply intelligent automation for increased efficiency. In his piece Five Need-to-Know Automation Trends for Your 2023 Investment Planning, ISG Partner Wayne Butterfield notes that process orchestration is moving into the mainstream. Process orchestration aligns the interplay of people, platforms and systems in a business process, thereby maximizing the value of an automation investment.
Process orchestration comes in many forms and flavors. Broadly, they can be classified as:
Business process modeling (BPM) players: Established players in the BPM space like Appian, Pega and Bizagi use business process modeling notation for process modeling. BPMN was designed as a technical modeling language for process specialists. While using BPMN provides great flexibility in modeling, its technical complexity requires a longer development cycle and skilled talent to deploy and maintain.
Orchestrators from robotic process automation (RPA) stables: RPA companies (AA, UiPath, etc.) have realized they don’t automate processes but rather tasks and are now looking to expand their stacks. Many RPA platforms have come up with offerings to manage the workflow between their digital bots and human workers. This overlaps with “human in the loop” or attended automation offerings. These solutions are designed to keep the bots in mind; RPA orchestrators are not standalone. They lack the capability to manage complex human-centric processes and try to further lock companies into their technology.
Low-code / no-code process orchestration: This category has been gaining interest as businesses have started looking for orchestration solutions that are delivered rapidly and can support citizen-led development and maintenance. These platforms do not use BPMN and instead use a library of common building blocks that are practical and easy to apply. Enate, KissFlow and Tonkean are some examples of low-code/no-code process orchestrators.
Key benefits of low-code process orchestration:
- Rapid deployment: Moving away from the granularity and complexity of BPMN accelerates implementation times. While traditional BPM platforms take months to deploy, a low-code platform takes mere weeks. End-to-end processes can be translated using the readymade building blocks, including user access provisioning for human workers and integration of bots and other intelligent automation platforms. Needless to say, this also shortens the time-to-value realization of the overall project.
- Citizen development: Low-code platforms have a less-steep learning curve. Their intuitive design makes it possible for the process owner to acquire the administrative skills of the platform for the business unit. This removes the dependency on the IT team and streamlines the management of business process orchestration.
- Democratic change management: The modular nature and flexibility of these platforms allow business teams to manage change at the business-unit level. This flexibility may differ from one platform to another, but since low-code options are built for bottom-up implementation, they are less rigid and do not require domain-wide bureaucratic approval.
- Operations focused: Operations management capability is built into the architecture of these platforms and does not need to be configured from scratch or bought as an additional solution upgrade. The standard dashboard drives team performance, identifies automation opportunities and optimizes digital resource usage.
- Flexibility: Platforms designed around the concept of a composable architecture will have modular capabilities that allow for greater flexibility in integrating with applications either directly or through the use of middleware. A process orchestration platform will be able to integrate with existing automations and absorb future automations that are developed based on the insight it generates. This helps future-proof business operations.
The low-code orchestration platform from Enate offers superior SLA management capability and highly flexible operations management capabilities. Once a business process is identified as a candidate, orchestration can be deployed within four to six weeks; this greatly shortens the time to value. The per-user subscription-based pricing model makes it easy for businesses to plan their budgets; its pro-citizen developer nature makes it easy to manage and maintain. Enate users save on average between 12% and 22% of their operational spend by orchestrating their operations.
ISG helps companies understand and navigate the rapidly changing automation market and prepare their work, so they get the most out of their automation investments. Contact us to find out how we can help.
About the author
Birad Bhatt
Birad Bhatt is a Consulting Manager with ISG’s automation practice. He works on deploying RPA and process orchestration solutions for clients and writes about his views/insights on a regular basis.
