Global events – a thirst for remote access and a labor shortage among them – have intensified the desire for maximum automation. Executives worldwide say that since the start of the pandemic, the adoption of digitization and automation technologies has accelerated (1). Those events also exposed weaknesses in legacy systems, further igniting change and advancement.

Hyperautomation and cloud solutions continue to spur the need for even more nimble AI. Low-code/no-code solutions are coming to be seen as essential for future AI and ML tools. On the horizon is the maturing of integration platform as a service (iPaaS) – and bold new worlds of harnessing “the unknown” for intelligent document processing (IDP).

How much progress has been made? And, what will this year bring? Here are the five big trends to watch.

Trend # 1: AI is Still Huge and On the Rise

The AI software market encompasses applications that leverage AI, from machine learning (ML) to deep learning. AI represents a broad range of methodologies that teach a computer to perform tasks as an “intelligent” person would do them. With applications across endless sectors and industries, “worldwide artificial intelligence (AI) software revenue is forecast to total $62.5 billion in 2022, an increase of 21.3% from 2021, according to a new forecast from Gartner, Inc. (2).”

Demand for AI technologies and associated market growth is closely tied to organizational AI maturity levels. “Enterprises continue to demonstrate a strong interest in AI, with 48% of CIOs in the 2022 Gartner CIO and Technology Executive Survey responding that they have already deployed or plan to deploy AI and machine learning technologies within the next 12 months (3).”

One avenue of development and implementation: The notion of “citizen technologists” (e.g., citizen data scientists and citizen integrators) as well as the evolution of the citizen developers who can now leverage AI using low-code/no-code tools, without requiring in-depth technical or AI expertise. The promise: low-code/no-code tools make the technology more accessible and democratizes AI. 

This stands to be what observers say will be an evolutionary year for AI as the technology becomes more accessible, easier to build and deploy. 

Trend # 2: The Forecast – Mostly Cloudy

Recent events worldwide have fueled cloud growth, lending strength to such market drivers as platform technologies, customer experience (CX) and digital supply chain. Workforce shortages continue to create more demand for automated solutions and cloud platforms to make up for the loss of labor. The lingering global pandemic continues to expose issues with legacy on-premises ERP and accelerate interest in new cloud counterparts of ERP.

Expect an ongoing rise in adoption of hybrid and multi-cloud services in 2022, with the expectation from companies that they can integrate their data across these environments, as well as manage cloud spending and performance. Confidence in the security of public cloud is also on the rise. Cloud has proven itself during times of uncertainty with its resiliency, scalability, flexibility and speed. Hybrid, multi-cloud and edge environments are growing and setting the stage for new distributed cloud models and wireless communications advances could push cloud adoption higher, especially in such areas as mobile banking, healthcare and governments.

Gartner has forecasted that global end-user spending on worldwide public cloud services will hit $482 billion this year. “Additionally, by 2026, Gartner predicts public cloud spending will exceed 45% of all enterprise IT spending, up from less than 17% in 2021(4)”. Vendors are ready to accelerate market appeal and adoption by adding hyperautomation capabilities in the form of low-code/no-code toolkits, as well as to create packaged integrations with commonly used applications to reduce implementation costs and ongoing maintenance overhead.

Trend # 3: Hit the Hyperdrive into Hyperautomation

Hyperautomation looks to automate everything that can be automated – an approach that organizations continue to strive for to help companies pinpoint, vet and automate as many business and IT processes as possible. Hyperautomation involves the orchestrated use of multiple technologies, tools or platforms, including:

  • Artificial intelligence (AI)
  • Machine learning
  • Intelligent document processing (IDP)
  • Event-driven software architecture
  • Robotic process automation (RPA)
  • Integration platform as a service (iPaaS)
  • Business process management (BPM) and intelligent business process management suites (iBPMS)
  • Low-code/no-code tools
  • Packaged software
  • Other types of decision, process and task automation tools

The global hyperautomation market is expected to continue significant growth in part due to increasing demand for RPA technology. But research suggests that the next step is to fully integrate RPA with AI and machine learning tools to achieve hyperautomation and reduce the need for human intervention. This should help hyperautomation reach its estimated market target of $46.4 billion by 2031.

Expect the continued growth of hyperautomation initiatives to increase the need for high-performing fusion teams, multidisciplinary groups that blend technology or analytics and business domain expertise, and share accountability for business and technology outcomes. 

Trend # 4: Enterprise Automation and Integration: Enter iPaaS

Cloud-based integration platforms and hybrid on-premises/cloud models of this service aim to overcome the challenges with custom integration work, complex coding and server-based challenges. As the importance emerges of low-code/no-code applications that provide great benefit without requiring that deep-technical expertise to achieve results, the time is getting increasingly right for integration platform as a service (iPaaS).

iPaaS solutions are low-code/no-code cloud tools that connect systems in a modern, scalable way to easily flow data from various systems, such as IDP, into business applications and workflows across the enterprise to achieve seamless end-to-end automation. iPaaS provides interoperability at scale which is essential to hyperautomation. 

Enterprise automation has evolved to combine powerful tools. Combining IDP and iPaaS, for instance, allows the business to use one capture system for the whole enterprise. Data can be shared and repurposed between multiple departments and then sent to business intelligence (BI) systems or ECM/Content Services for long-term document and data management.

The iPaaS software market is anticipated to rise at a considerable rate during the forecast period, 2022 to 2029. This year, in 2022, the market is growing on course and, with the rising adoption of strategies by key players, the market is expected to rise over the projected horizon (5). Analysts project the iPaaS market size is expected to continue its growth from $3.3 billion last year to almost $14 billion by 2026 (6).

Trend # 5: IDP Has Potential to Skyrocket

Intelligent Document Processing (IDP) is the process of automatically transforming documents from unstructured or semi-structured formats into structured data that can be digested by any application. Significant value comes from eliminating manual data entry, significant time and cost savings and improved data accuracy. IDP forms one of the building blocks to enable hyperautomation, since all automation projects require data in a structured format. This foundation and the critical need for actionable data will set the stage for IDP to become a breakout, core technology.

Overall adoption of IDP is expected to hit 55%-65% annually through 2022, with an under-penetrated unstructured IDP segment growing at a faster rate than semi-structured (7). Through this year, look for IDP vendors to continue to focus on achieving the elusive 100% straight-through-processing (STP) rate with innovative AI models, helping to propel the global IDP market size from about $800,000,000 last year to $3.7 billion in 2026 (8).

The IDP market has also focused in the last few years on the “known” – known document types, expected data and predictable document flow. There is immense value in having a solution that can use technology to tackle the unknown – that which is using computer vision technology to quickly understand any document type, often referred to as a universal document. Leaders in the IDP industry are working toward being able to process this well using advanced and adaptive AI.

Summary

Everyday comfort with advanced technology is combining with powerful tools to collect and present unprecedented amounts of data to change the very fabric of decision-making in business – and elsewhere. There are always bumps in the road but automation’s evolution will continue to gather speed much faster and broader than anticipated. Hold on and don’t let go! 

Download the full report here. 

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Footnotes:

(1) “What 800 executives envision for the postpandemic workforce,” McKinsey Global Institute, 2020.

(2) “Gartner Forecasts Worldwide Artificial Intelligence Software Market to Reach $62 Billion in 2022,” Gartner Press Release, November 2021.

(3) Ibid.

(4) “Gartner Says Four Trends Are Shaping the Future of Public Cloud,” Gartner Press Release, August 2021.

(5) “iPaaS Software Professional Market 2022 Global Share, Growth, Size, Opportunities, Trends, Regional Overview, Leading Companies, And Key Country Forecast to 2029,” Precision Reports, 2022.

(6) “Integration as a Platform Service Market with COVID-19 Analysis, by Service Type, Deployment Model, Organization Size, Vertical and Region – Global Forecast to 2026,” ReportLinker, 2021.

(7) “Intelligent Document Processing (IDP) for Unstructured Documents Going Beyond Templates and Rules,” Everest Group, 2021.

(8) “Intelligent Document Processing Market by Component (Solutions, Services), Deployment Mode (Cloud, On-Premises), Organization Size, Technology, Vertical (BFSI, Government, Healthcare and Life Sciences), and Region – Global Forecast to 2026,” Intelligent Document Processing Market, 2021.