Craig Le Clair

Private equity firm Vista Equity Partners  announced it’s intention to acquire robotic process automation (RPA) software company Blue Prism. Subject to shareholder approval, it plans to merge Blue Prism into TIBCO Software, which it already owns. Forrester’s automation team took a look at this potential merger and had the following thoughts. Our consensus is “thumbs-up.” A […]

ServiceNow just announced that it plans to purchase Intellibot and add to its integration and process capabilities. As we predicted in 2020 (graphic below) the major low-code and cloud vendors are starting to move into the robotic process automation (RPA) market. The 2022 snapshot shows cloud low-code vendors such as ServiceNow and specialized domain-focused cloud […]

In less than a year automation moved from a long-term goal to a short-term necessity. Find out what Forrester predicts for the automation market in 2021.

If robotic process automation was not on your company’s roadmap before COVID-19, it likely is now to reduce costs, conduct remote business, and improve resiliency.

Vice President and Principal Analyst Craig Le Clair reviews the three key benefits Microsoft will gain from its acquisition of robotic process automation provider Softomotive.

Appian will acquire native robotic process automation (RPA) capability with the purchase of Jidoka, which will be rebranded “Appian RPA.” It will be an additionally priced feature of the Appian Cloud platform. For 5K a month, enterprises can build as many robots as they need. Relatively small, with 25 employees, Jidoka clients are mostly unattended […]

UiPath has reduced its workforce by several hundred employees.[i] The business has grown at an incredible pace, as have several other providers such as Automation Anywhere. Overall, there is nothing we see that indicates a flattening or slowing of robotic process automation (RPA’s) growth. The layoffs have more to do with the challenges of scaling […]

In the quest to launch invisible robots into the enterprise, some organizations are realizing the Center of Excellence model doesn't cut it. Find out what they're doing instead.

I thought it was about time to post something on the recently published Forrester book, Invisible Robots in the Quiet of the Night. As you might expect, it is full of data from Forrester and others. But it’s also rich with stories of people whom automation has affected both positively and negatively — the machinist, […]

Automation And The Future Of Work Enters The Political Dialogue Andrew Yang is a long shot to make the next round of debates but deserves credit for bringing the conversation about automation and the future of work to the debate stage. To be fair, the impact of AI and automation on work is a difficult […]

Andrew Yang is a long shot to make the next round of debates but deserves credit for bringing the conversation about automation and the future of work to the debate stage. To be fair, the impact of automation on work is a difficult conversation. Conservatives speak to the unemployed at factory gates, coal mines, and […]

Forrester predicted in late 2018 that automation would become the tip of the digital transformation spear in 2019, impacting everything from infrastructure to customers to business models. Now that we’re four months in, we’ve evaluated whether our five specific predictions are on track. We first predicted that 40% of enterprises will have automation centers and […]

IBM and Automation Anywhere  (AA’s) today announced a collaboration (note-not a formal partnership yet) to integrate (AA’s) Robotic Process Automation (RPA) platform, used to create software bots to handle repetitive, task-based work, with IBM’s portfolio of digital process automation software, that includes IBM Business Process Manager and Operational Decision Manager. For AA, the partnership is a validation of […]

The search for “quick” solutions to fragmented business applications has pushed RPA investment. I've taken over 200 inquiries on RPA in the past six months and attended Blue Prism, Automation Anywhere, NICE, and other vendor conferences and spoken to their customers. About half the enterprises I have talked with are just starting out either in vendor review […]

In the past several months, I’ve given 10 talks on robotic process automation (RPA), its relationship to AI, and its future effect on jobs. These talks were mostly at tech conferences where the audience is a mix of corporate and government technology and business leaders. The industries represented are diverse, as is the process focus […]

  AI is a hot topic in financial services. And its easy to see why. Increasing margins on transactions, decimated by compliance costs and low interest rates, reaching new market segments, and automating routine tasks, makes AI innovation attractive. And in one sense, FinServ has always been about algorithmic innovation. There is no higher potential […]

Bouncing among cognitive sessions and weaving though the crowds, it’s not clear what hurts the most, my feet or my brain.  How much of this are we to believe? What is actually deployable, affordable, and usable by mere humans, and when?  The cognitive exuberance at World of Watson (WOW) was certainly exhausting and even by […]