Process automation in 2022: Five trends

Dig­i­tal trans­for­ma­tion has been dri­ven by com­pa­nies at an unprece­dent­ed pace in recent years — part­ly due to the pan­dem­ic, but large­ly due to chang­ing cus­tomer expec­ta­tions and mar­ket demands. For many, process automa­tion is one of the first game chang­ers. Because when it comes to orga­ni­za­tion­al change, it offers a num­ber of advan­tages. Com­pa­nies that auto­mate high­ly man­u­al process­es quick­ly and vis­i­bly ben­e­fit from greater effi­cien­cy and speed as well as a low­er error rate and workload.

Thus, process automa­tion is a cen­tral aspect of the dig­i­tal trans­for­ma­tion — and it will be impos­si­ble to imag­ine life with­out it. In this con­text, five trends are emerg­ing for the experts at Webcon:

Trend 1: The triumph of low-code/no-code tools.

Low-code or no-code devel­op­ment envi­ron­ments are designed to make it pos­si­ble for so-called cit­i­zen devel­op­ers — employ­ees with­out pro­gram­ming skills — to pro­gram small automa­tions for every­day work them­selves. Such tools are pop­u­lar with many users because they offer com­pa­nies advan­tages such as scal­a­bil­i­ty, secu­ri­ty or sim­ple appli­ca­tion deploy­ment. Giv­en the high demand for new appli­ca­tions in com­pa­nies and the simul­ta­ne­ous per­sis­tent short­age of IT spe­cial­ists, the use of such tools will con­tin­ue to grow strong­ly in 2022 — but not where many expect it.

Trend 2: Citizen-assisted development on the rise

For more than a decade, com­pa­nies have expect­ed cit­i­zen devel­op­ers, often referred to as pow­er users, to step in instead of IT pro­fes­sion­als — but this is hap­pen­ing with lim­it­ed suc­cess. That’s because pow­er users focus on solv­ing their own prob­lems dur­ing appli­ca­tion devel­op­ment. This results in appli­ca­tions that can­not be scaled to the entire com­pa­ny and are not designed for long-term growth. Cit­i­zen devel­op­ment projects are thus becom­ing passé: Cit­i­zen-assist­ed devel­op­ment is tak­ing their place.

The two trends men­tioned above — the accep­tance of low-code/no-code tools by pro­fes­sion­als and the decline of cit­i­zen-devel­op­ment projects — should be viewed in con­junc­tion. The result will be the Cit­i­zen-assist­ed Devel­op­ment approach: a method in which Cit­i­zen Devel­op­ers and Pro­fes­sion­al Devel­op­ers use the same tools to work hand-in-hand using rapid pro­to­typ­ing to dig­i­tize busi­ness processes.

“This allows com­pa­nies to devel­op appli­ca­tions that are tai­lored pre­cise­ly to their own needs — and to do so much faster and more pur­pose­ful­ly than in Cit­i­zen Devel­op­ment projects.”

- Philipp Erd­könig, Part­ner Account Manager

Trend 3: A damper on Robotic Process Automation

Robot­ic Process Automa­tion (RPA), or robot­ic process automa­tion in the true sense of the word, does­n’t exist. What RPA ven­dors are real­ly sell­ing is the automa­tion of indi­vid­ual tasks — not the automa­tion of a broad­er process. That’s not to say this tech­nol­o­gy won’t con­tin­ue to be very suc­cess­ful; but com­pa­nies will find they’re ask­ing too much of it. In the com­ing year, we will instead see more of a com­bi­na­tion of RPA and dig­i­tal process automation.

More often, we will see, for exam­ple, RPAs automat­ing data cap­ture or retrieval into or from lega­cy IT sys­tems or oth­er infor­ma­tion sources that have no inter­faces. This data is then fur­ther processed as part of a dig­i­tized and thus trans­par­ent and effi­cient busi­ness process.

Trend 4: Content management as part of process automation 

Many com­pa­nies will also rethink the area of con­tent man­age­ment. For too long, users have been under the mis­ap­pre­hen­sion that it is enough to make con­tent share­able and acces­si­ble by cen­tral­iz­ing and orga­niz­ing it. How­ev­er, this will not achieve true real-time col­lab­o­ra­tion or true dig­i­tal trans­for­ma­tion. Rather, con­tent should be used as part of a larg­er process man­age­ment and automa­tion ini­tia­tive. In addi­tion to per­mis­sion man­age­ment and ver­sion­ing of doc­u­ments, they should also be made avail­able in the con­text of busi­ness process­es, or cre­at­ed and edit­ed accord­ing­ly in the course of a process — because doc­u­ments and oth­er types of con­tent such as spread­sheets, tech­ni­cal draw­ings, etc. are an impor­tant part of almost all process­es in a company.

Trend 5: The waterfall model remains

In the water­fall mod­el, soft­ware devel­op­ment is sup­posed to occur in a series of sequen­tial steps, each com­plet­ed. How­ev­er, this method­ol­o­gy is now anti­quat­ed — espe­cial­ly in light of today’s agile devel­op­ment method­olo­gies. These focus more on the con­tin­u­ous deliv­ery of soft­ware in brisk iter­a­tions, lead­ing to faster results. Some com­pa­nies are already embrac­ing this type of devel­op­ment in many places.

“How­ev­er, as long as com­pa­nies hire exter­nal con­sul­tants and agree on projects at fixed prices, with fixed dura­tions, the water­fall mod­el will unfor­tu­nate­ly con­tin­ue to be used in the fore­see­able future — which will have a neg­a­tive impact on process automa­tion. After all, process­es are con­stant­ly evolv­ing. So it’s bet­ter to imple­ment and con­tin­u­ous­ly refine a process automa­tion solu­tion than to treat it as a one-off project that won’t be touched after com­ple­tion,” adds Erdkönig.

“Depend­ing on the indus­try, com­pa­nies will adapt trends at dif­fer­ent speeds. But one thing is clear: 2022 is all about process automa­tion — no orga­ni­za­tion will be with­out it. This is the only way they will remain viable in the long term in dis­rup­tive times like these,” con­cludes Erdkönig.