Global enterprise software giant SAP has agreed to acquire Signavio—a German firm specializing in process intelligence. SAP said the acquisition will be used to bolster a new business transformation solution that moves more systems to the cloud as a way to make businesses more resilient. Signavio’s process management technology is a cloud-native offering.
RPA and other intelligent automation-related technologies were in extremely high demand in 2020 as businesses increasingly turned to automation to become more efficient in a challenging economic environment.
“In today’s dynamic world, companies of all sizes need the ability to rapidly adapt their business processes to fast-changing market conditions,” said Luka Mucic, SAP’s CFO. “I cannot overstress the importance for companies to be able to design, benchmark, improve and transform business processes across the enterprise to support new capabilities and business models.”
Process intelligence—also known as process mining—has become an increasingly important adjunct to process automation. Only with detailed knowledge of its processes can organizations prioritize which they will automate and manage their automation programs as they attempt to scale them. According to Scott Opitz, CMO of ABBYY, another firm in the process intelligence space, SAP’s move to acquire Signavio signals a measure of maturation in the market.
“I think the transaction is very interesting as it highlights a recognition that first-generation process mining tools were not enough,” Opitz tells RPA Today. “The real value requires a broader process intelligence suite of capabilities that promote a deeper understanding of their critical business processes to direct their transformation investments and ensure operational compliance.”