As organizations continue to evolve their automation strategies, insights from the 2024 ETR Observatory for Process Automation Feedback Panel offer valuable perspective on what’s driving adoption and ROI across the enterprise. The discussion—featuring IT leaders from financial services, higher education, and other sectors—explored how major platforms like UiPath, Microsoft Power Automate, Automation Anywhere, and MuleSoft are shaping automation strategies through integration ease, low-code accessibility, and AI-driven intelligence.
This replay sets the stage for the upcoming 2025 ETR Observatory for Process Automation, which will provide the latest data and practitioner insights on the tools, vendors, and technologies redefining enterprise automation. The summary of the 2025 report will be available to everyone on December 4, with the full version released to ETR clients the same day.
This ETR Insights panel discussion is between leading IT executives who explore automation within the enterprise and insights from ETR’s most recent Observatory for Process Automation report. Across sectors, organizations are leveraging tools like UiPath, Microsoft Power Automate, and Automation Anywhere to streamline high-volume tasks, enhance operational efficiency, and improve customer engagement, as seamless integration within existing tech stacks—particularly Microsoft—and the increasing availability of low-code/no-code options are driving adoption. Salesforce MuleSoft RPA and SAP Build Process Automation are strong competitors, though panelists struggle with complex licensing structures, steep learning curves, and technical talent that can be difficult and expensive to recruit. Automation ROI is measured in labor savings, error reduction, operational risk mitigation, as well as customer retention, and employee satisfaction. Read on to learn how generative AI will enhance business process mapping, foster more intelligent workflows, and how organizations are using automation to address skilled labor shortages.
Vendors Mentioned: Appian / Automation Anywhere / Camunda / Celonis / Google / IBM / Infosys / Microsoft (Power Automate) / n8n / Nice / Nintex / Pegasystems / Pipefy / Salesforce (MuleSoft RPA) / SAP (Build Process Automation) / SS&C Blue Prism / Tonkean / Tungsten Automation (formerly Kofax) / UiPath / WorkFusion
The CIO of a financial services enterprise relies on UiPath for repetitive, high-volume tasks, such as customer address changes. “We’re also starting to ramp up on Automation Anywhere,” but as a Microsoft shop, “we’re looking at Microsoft Power Automate pretty closely because of its really exceptional integration with the Microsoft platform.” A Chief Software Architect in higher education, however, has pivoted away from Power Automate to MuleSoft, part of an overall shift to GCP as their relationship with Microsoft soured. They seek to automate a variety of routine computational needs. “We have had so much trouble recruiting people, that we wanted to see if lower level [automation] could do what a skilled labor force would have done.”
Another financial services CIO is looking for durable automation to drive operations. “Claims digitization, for example, claims processing and everything related to that.” Automation within license provisioning, pre-authorization, predictive call routing, and overall reporting all drive profitability. “We choose ones which touch our customers in a way that customer engagement is improved, operational efficiency is increased, and the use of new technologies puts us in a more attractive and more competitive position in the market.” Lastly, a Senior Director of IT Architecture uses UiPath, Appian, Automation Anywhere, Power Automate, and MuleSoft to address back-office tasks such as customer onboarding, account opening, and payment processing; as available, their business users appreciate friendly, low-code/no-code options. “Other ones have more really technical deep insights, when I need to go in and connect, for example, my legacy mainframe systems. It's depending on what is the type of technology and who is the person that is going to be taking care of that automation.”
Some panelists expressed surprise at Microsoft’s dominant rankings in ETR survey data, attributing it primarily to their pervasiveness and recent investments in AI and data integration capabilities. “Historically the automation capabilities that Microsoft used to offer, they were not so strong, though they have been doing a lot of investment and diversifying in the other type of tooling.” Still, it is unclear why Microsoft would be the first choice to connect and move data between different systems. “It's a huge surprise for me saying that it’s even on top of what UiPath or Appian or Automation Anywhere is offering. Automation Anywhere always has been more the traditional legacy that can give you connection between systems, or in iPaaS, that's where MuleSoft or Boomi has been going.” SAP, similarly, owes its ranking to being a necessity within specific industries that rely on its ERP solutions; panelists believe its adoption has been more about enhancing existing platforms than providing a versatile automation solution.
One executive is surprised to see Nintex classified within ETR data as a “Pursuing” vendor. “The product is very, very mature, it's just that they're very expensive. I’m surprised to see that they are not on the upper level of the pie.” Celonis is traditionally a dominant force in process mining, though its partnership with UiPath raises questions about its strategic direction, and whether they are attempting to reposition themselves. “It also looks like Blue Prism, maybe four five years ago in the forefront, they seem to be now in the left bottom [vector]. It seems like they are looked at more as legacy.”
Balance of usage versus spending is a key to analyzing the relative efficiency of automation tools. Power Automate boasts overall higher usage, and benefits from bundled licensing within Office 365 and E5, though this bundling often obscures its true cost. “The Microsoft salesperson will come and say, ‘Just turn it on. We’ll talk with you about dollars later.’ Even if you turn it on midway, you don't see the hit on your dollars until the renewal comes.” Lower ranked in ETR survey data, MuleSoft and SAP require substantial investments, not just in complex licensing models and in a steep learning curve, but also in managing their implementation and operation. “The MuleSoft product is great, but we found out painfully that the engineers are not. They are very expensive to recruit, so that's something to think about.”
ETR Data: Planned usage and planned increased spending from the ETR Observatory for Process Automation study, plotted against one another. Generally speaking, those vendors notably above the diagonal 1-to-1 usage-to-spend line are seeing more planned usage relative to planned spend, which suggests opportunity for those vendors to capitalize on high usage in organizations. Those notably below the line indicate vendors where respondents are spending much more than they are using a given tool, signaling possible risks to these vendors as customers pay for capabilities that they are not maximizing.
One CIO understands the appeal of Power Automate within the Microsoft Power Platform as accessible to “citizen developers,” and the vast array of external applications, databases, and services it can connect to. “There are templates and pre-built connections that Microsoft offers in abundance, and it makes it easy to get started and quickly implement the automation.” This is skewed, however, by the fact that a majority of platforms and tech stacks are Microsoft-based. “You get that sort of natural affinity there. Just an asterisk next to that, because I don't think that's entirely a fair comparison.” Broadly, Power Automate, Automation Anywhere, and UiPath are much easier to learn. “Those are the three that I look at and say, hey, I can learn that in an afternoon and be effective. I’m not going to be an expert, but I can be effective very, very quickly.”
ETR Data: In ETR’s Observatory study for Process Automation tools,end users ranked the most important features associated with process automation with integration into an existing stack and ease of implementation far outweighing other options. Various KPIs help to evaluate ROI on automation, notably time savings, error reductions, and customer satisfaction metrics. A simple comparison of costs before and after automation offers a baseline, but other factors distort analyses. “For our cases, it's not just use case, it's how much compute we use. Because we are in a research area, we have terabytes of data that run through complex computing every single day. Figuring out return on investment for me has been next to impossible.” Automation reduces labor hours and accelerates processes, though business impact metrics like customer retention often resist straightforward quantification. “For example, more attraction marketing campaigns that we have to do. Errors that we don't need to go in and fix and rework from that perspective. That's how we calculate the ROI, and that's the other dimension that's tricky.”
Additional KPIs include cycle time reductions, improved quality, operational risk reduction, and employee satisfaction. “You look at the payback period ultimately in terms of the times to recover costs, and the automation rate as well in terms of the percentage of processes automated.” One CIO in finance encourages executives to consider automation spend relative to gearing ratio, the proportion of a company’s financing that comes from borrowing versus shareholder equity. “If you're purely looking for cost savings, you can look at potentially staff reduction. But a lot of where we focus, just because of our business strategy over the past couple of years with RPA, is how do we change our gearing ratios so we can grow without having to add more staff.”
Tools like Pegasystems, while robust, are inherently complex, and any sales effort that requires stakeholders to unpack intricate value chains can deter engagement. “People don't have time to get into the nitty-gritty of the complex explanations which some of those vendors provide, though they might have excellent capabilities.” Tools that simplify both usage and onboarding gain traction more quickly.
In sum our panel broadly views RPA at a crossroads, as generative AI is reshaping expectations within automation. Most panelists believe AI will complement rather than replace RPA tools, and improve process mining, business process mapping, and workflow optimization, ultimately fostering more “intelligent automation.” “I don't see an AI tool, even in the agentic piece, replacing these process automation tools. It is going to be augmenting and enhancing their capabilities, collaborating more with these low-code/no-code, and reducing the expertise [needed].”