From the information age to the digital age, the ultimate goal of an enterprise is to use advanced digital technology to complete digital transformation and upgrading, and this is by no means "finished" by moving business, processes, data, forms, etc. online.
In this context, Gartner proposed "super automation" in 2019, and more and more companies around the world began to recognize this service form. Domestic manufacturers have also heard the news, based on their respective products, and gradually extended upstream and downstream to achieve super automation. According to Gartner's forecast, by 2024, by combining hyper-automation technology with redesigned operating processes, enterprises will reduce operating costs by 30%.
After nearly three years of development, what is the actual development of super automation in China? Where are Party A's customers and service providers in the realization of hyperautomation? What are the current challenges? What new trends will emerge in super automation in the next 3-5 years?
In this regard, we interviewed Zhang Xin, COO of Jingkun Technology, Ge Dingjia, CTO, Fei Binjie, founder of Entropy Technology, Fu Kai, VP of Jiuke Information, Tu Zhiyong, founder of Power Chain Technology, and Fang Qi, COO of Shuhuantong. Starting from their respective segments, several interviewees deconstructed the current situation and pain points of the domestic super automation industry, and tried to answer the above questions.
01
Status: In 2023, hyperautomation is still in the stage of partial application.
According to Gartner's definition in "Top Ten Strategic Technology Trends in 2020", hyperautomation is a collection of various technologies, mainly including: RPA ( Robotic process automation), low-code development, process mining, task mining, business process management (BPM), intelligent BPM suite (iBPMS), integration platform (iPaaS), AI technology (OCR, NLP) and many other innovative technologies. These tools and technologies are divided into three categories: task automation, process automation, and enhanced components.
According to Gartner, the need for hyperautomation is creating a huge software market that will reach $860 billion by 2025; by 2026, the software market that supports hyperautomation will reach nearly $1.04 trillion, with a compound annual growth rate of 11.9%. So far, what is the application and development stage of super automation in China? In terms of general business scenarios, super automation is widely used in finance, office, human resources, IT and other aspects. In terms of special business scenarios, super automation has explored different innovative application modes in special scenarios such as finance, manufacturing, government affairs, and telecommunications. According to the relevant report released by Hongji, the application share of business process automation in the global scope is as high as 65% in general scenarios such as financial accounting and IT operation and maintenance. The first echelon of industry application share includes finance, manufacturing, government affairs and other industries, telecom , logistics, retail, electricity and other industries are also increasing demand. At the same time, most respondents believe that as of the first half of 2023, the development speed of super automation in China is relatively slow, and it is still in the partial application stage. "Super-automation is similar to the self-driving industry. A car that wants to achieve self-driving requires not only mature self-driving technology, but also high-precision maps and road infrastructure. Similarly, companies that want to achieve super-automation also need There is a certain amount of infrastructure construction, including the specification of data, the specification of the original software system, the construction of data pipelines, etc. Since the current super-automated infrastructure is not perfect, the development is relatively slow, and some applications are basically partial Yes." said Tu Zhiyong, the founder of PowerChain Technology.
Source/Photo courtesy of Power Chain Technology
In the opinion of Fei Binjie, the founder of Entropy Technology: "The investment in super automation in the entire capital market is slightly lower than the expectations of the previous two years, but the development of the entire industry is relatively stable. Entropy Technology mainly focuses on the financial management industry. This industry has gradually landed and is advancing steadily. For example, in scenarios such as middle and back-end regulatory reports, most financial institutions have used RPA for data reporting. Entropy Jane Technology is doing front-end business, such as asset management institutions, etc. are conducting investment research In investment scenarios, RPA products are used to collect data from all parties to assist in investment decision-making." However, other interviewees also have a more optimistic view. "The development of super automation this year is accelerated compared to the previous two years. The reason is that from the perspective of the large state-owned enterprises served by Jiuke Information, under the current economic situation, the investment in digitalization of these enterprises is the highest among all domestic enterprises. It is mainly due to two opportunities. First, under the encouragement of strategies such as manufacturing upgrading and new infrastructure construction, more traditional enterprises have begun to adopt super-automated technology to reduce costs and increase efficiency, and improve the quality of services and products. The second is the development of Xinchuang, which has derived a lot of demand for super automation, which has brought a new incremental market to the domestic software industry." said Fu Kai, VP of Jiuke Information. Fang Qi, COO of Shuhuantong, said: "In China, hyper-automation is still in its early stage, but it is experiencing rapid development. At present, various fields are developing their own automation solutions, such as RPA, which mainly focuses on task-level automation. Automation, such as office automation and iPaaS, they focus on automation between systems. We can see that the boundaries and maturity of the entire automation field are still improving, and there is still a distance from the stage of super automation.” Specifically, super automation The domestic development stage is mainly interpreted from two aspects. First, the hyper-automation on the manufacturer side is in the stage of moving from assembly to intelligence. Hyper-automation will go through three stages—assemblable, intelligent, and innovative. Optimists believe that China is currently in the stage of moving from assembly to intelligence.
"I think it is the beginning of assembling or entering intelligence, but it is far from being truly intelligent. In the past six months, the outbreak of AIGC has made humans realize that AI can penetrate every industry, and the concept of super automation was integrated when it was born. With the concept of AI, there are already some applications using simple AI tools, but this is still only the initial stage; on the other hand, the concept of assembly is also accelerating. The basis for judging that the assembly stage has been completed is from Party A to Party B to the ecology, in the construction When it comes to digital capabilities, they first realize whether they can meet business demands by assembling and maximally connecting and reusing existing systems instead of customizing and developing systems from the bottom up to build wheels. Today, there are still a large number of Customers and technical service companies are solving the problem of business digitalization by reinventing the wheel with a pile of heads, so there is still a long way to go for super automation." Zhang Xin, COO of Jingkun Technology, explained.
"Assuming that hyper-automation enters the intelligent stage, a sign is that any business process (not all business processes, just a simple business process) within the enterprise can run, repair, and improve itself, and can do it without manual labor in its own logic. Intervention can maintain the complete automation of business processes." Ge Dingjia, CTO of Jingkun Technology, added.
Fei Binjie, the founder of Entropy Jane Technology, is similar to the above point of view. He believes: "Now the super automation industry is moving from assembly to intelligence, because the positioning of AI in super automation has undergone a fundamental change. Around 2018, AI in The process is a component, an auxiliary positioning, and a building block for engineers to build tools and processes. With the launch of the GPT model this year, AI has gradually become an operating system-level positioning in the entire super automation, allowing AI will decide how to assemble the process, and you can freely choose which tools to use to assemble the workflow."
However, conservatives believe that it is still in the stage of assembly.
Tu Zhiyong, the founder of PowerChain Technology, believes that at present, even the stage of assembly has not been fully realized, especially for non-native digital enterprises and traditional enterprises. When they promote super-automation, the entire IT system construction has a lot of historical burden. Including monolithic architecture, SOA architecture, microservice architecture, assembleable architecture, etc. When there are software of various architectures in the enterprise, in order to be able to be assembled, products of different architectures must be able to provide standardized interfaces (APIs) externally, and manage the entire API life cycle. Assembly is the only way to do assembly-style innovation in the future, but there are not many companies that have reached this level.
"At present, the development paths of major state-owned enterprises in super automation have different directions, and the progress is not the same. Most of the enterprises are in the stage of assembly or incomplete completion, and a small number of them have already transformed into intelligence. Why is the first The stage has not been fully passed? Because there are different organizations and departments in each central enterprise, and the use of super automation is completely different. For example, the financial field has generally passed the first stage and is moving towards the intelligent stage, while the non-financial field is still doing The first stage." Fu Kai, VP of Jiuke Information, said.
Second, the hyper-automation of Party A's client is in the middle stage of task automation and process automation. To achieve super automation is not achieved overnight, it needs to go through three stages from shallow to deep: first, task automation, which is the first step towards automation, to solve single "point" problems - to solve the problem of human operation automation, such as automatic Running batch programs and automated operation and maintenance tools, etc., can use these tools to automate the execution of various pre-built tasks; the second is process automation, through the control platform, data platform, AI skill platform, etc., to solve the problem of the "line" of the enterprise. The third is super-automation. After completing the automation of business processes from "point" to "line", the enterprise will move to the stage of digital business operation oriented to "face", realizing agile and efficient business development and reconstruction of the library department. The 5 interviewees have basically the same views, and believe that the promotion of super-automation by Party A’s customers is currently in the state of moving from the first stage to the second stage. "After the "point" solution of task automation is implemented, Party A's customers can see obvious improvement effects. It is a non-intrusive solution. Usually, the enterprise can be regarded as a black box, and the manufacturer can find several baseband transformations from this black box. Tasks, as long as point-to-point targeted problem solving is enough, this stage is easy to achieve. But when it comes to process automation, the enterprise cannot be treated as a black box. Experts must open the box to see how the gears inside are structured. For example, how to make decisions between departments and how to transfer business. At this time, Party B must have business experts to communicate with customers on business processes. Party A must have an open mind and a high degree of cooperation from the business department. But often encounter obstacles at this time , because the interests of multiple departments will be involved in the process of business process automation, and Party A needs to have a long-term stable, top-down digital driving force within Party A." said Fei Binjie, founder of Entropy Technology. Shuhuantong COO Fang Qi believes that Party A's customers should comprehensively judge according to the scale and speed of business development in the stage of super automation. "Divide hyper-automation into five stages, the first stage is the automation of a single task, the second stage is the automation based on the combination of multiple workflows, and the third stage is the cross-system and cross-application workflow and process automation, the fourth stage is to combine AI capabilities to automate decision-making, and the fifth stage is to fully realize super-automation. The early business volume and workflow of small enterprises are relatively simple, so most of them are currently in the second stage; The middle and high-end customers need to realize the fourth stage. The domestic digital transformation has been developed for many years, and the internal information construction of medium and large enterprises has been relatively mature, but many automated systems have formed isolated islands before. At present, it is necessary to integrate all these islands into a complete end-to-end automation. "Fang Qi said.
02
Technology: 3 technologies are gradually maturing, and small heads are starting to lead
Super automation is a collection of multiple technologies, so who is the most mature in each subdivided technology field? According to interviews and collations, there are three main mature technology applications in the super automation collection: one is RPA+iPaaS. In a sense, the essence of hyperautomation is a robot in the form of software. RPA+iPaaS is the execution system of the robot—the hand, which can help the robot complete execution actions, for example, it can instruct the software robot to complete the activation button, click, Data migration and other actions In 2015, the UK began to conduct RPA pilot projects in the national taxation field. With the success of the pilot project, RPA has been further extended to various fields of government agencies. With the strong development momentum of foreign RPA, this year, some foreign-funded enterprises in China began to introduce overseas RPA products into the country. It was also in this year that the RPA track ushered in a capital boom, reaching its peak in 2020, and financing events throughout the year From 22. At present, the domestic RPA market can be divided into five categories according to company genes: one is pure RPA companies, such as Yingdao RPA, Cyclone Hongji, Yunkuo Technology, Jiuke Information, Huiliu Technology, and the other is software with rich to B experience Veteran players in the industry, such as Yisaiqi. The third is the incubation of large companies. Alibaba Cloud, Ping An Technology, Xingye Digital Finance, UFIDA, and Kingdee International have successively launched RPA products. Fourth, other industries have entered into RPA, such as Inossem, Laiye Technology, and Abbots Technology. The fifth is foreign RPA manufacturers, UiPath, Automation Anywhere, Blue Prism, etc.
Zhang Xin, COO of Jingkun Technology, said: "Super automation has always been around, and RPA is the most mature and popular technology field in the branch field. Now the market is no stranger to this concept, and even RPA is now equated with RPA in China. for hyperautomation.”
"Many manufacturers are now starting to do low-code and iPaaS. Although there is still a little gap compared with foreign countries, they are relatively mature." Fu Kai, VP of Jiuke Information, said.
"Frankly speaking, whether it is RPA, iPaaS, or BPM, AI, in fact, there is still no way to completely form super-automation, and continuous technological breakthroughs and social development may be needed. In the future, there may be more AIGC plus a certain technology , it may become a very important milestone in the next super-automation. Personally, I think it must be the fastest growing, because what everyone is ultimately pursuing today must be to achieve super-automation, or even full-scale automation.” Fang Qi, COO of Shuhuantong Said.
The second is low-code/no-code. At present, this technology has entered the stage of common practice and implementation from concept. At present, it has empowered different roles such as human resources, finance, R&D, and CEO to improve daily office efficiency.
For example, Li Xingxing, R&D director of PPIO, recently shared the three core code-free digital application scenarios of technology companies from the perspective of managers at the Qingliu code-free explorer conference: supplier management and supplier reconciliation settlement system, equipment inspection processing system, The production and research project management system saves a lot of development resources for enterprises with the help of light flow.
Starting from 2018, low-code/no-code has gradually gained more voices in the domestic market. By 2021, low-code/no-code has developed rapidly, and leading companies have emerged. At present, domestic low-code players include three categories. One is emerging low-code service providers, such as Qingliu and Partner Cloud. The second is the low-code development platforms of Internet giants, such as Huawei's AppCube, Ali's Yidao, and Tencent Cloud's LowCode. The third is the entry of traditional software giants into low-code development platforms.
Fei Binjie, founder of Entropy Jane Technology, believes: “Low-code development has a certain threshold. The drag-and-drop function is easy to develop. If you want to make a low-code data processing tool, the bottom layer depends on whether it can support the development of stream processing and batch processing, and whether it can support the integrated construction of lakes and warehouses. For example, Entropy Technology Focus In the financial management industry, when dealing with lost data and accessing real-time market data, whether it can use low-code to collect data and analyze real-time data is the key to testing the capabilities of the platform.”
The third is business process management (BPM), which is a heavyweight enterprise management tool that incorporates modern management ideas and technologies. BPM has three characteristics: it is process-centric and can integrate OA, ERP, CRM and other systems and data, breaking the island of enterprise information; it is more flexible and is a system platform born to adapt to process changes. Enterprises can use low-code through API interfaces It is more suitable for medium and large enterprises, and it is common in industries that value process informatization such as manufacturing, retail, logistics and transportation. Such enterprises have mature information architecture and professional IT development departments. .
"BPM has the highest application maturity in China. The underlying technology of this product is low in difficulty. It can be developed only by having a higher level of cognition and abstract understanding of the internal business processes of the enterprise." Fei Bin, founder of Entropy Technology Jay said.
In addition, respondents believe that task mining is the most immature aspect of hyper-automation.
Fu Kai, VP of Jiuke Information, said: "In the process of productizing task mining technology, no particularly stable and mature business model has been found in the industry so far. This field still needs more time to find suitable positioning and commercial value. Now It is an auxiliary position."
03
Path: Players from all walks of life start to advance, platform products or tool products?
With the gradual application and maturity of technologies in various subdivisions, players in various vertical fields have different choices on the road to becoming a hyperautomation manufacturer after basically completing the relevant technology and product layout.
Hyper-automation is similar to the development of the entire software industry. Manufacturers will have two paths. One is to gradually expand the boundaries after entering a certain product, and the company will move towards platform-based products. "China is more suitable to be a platform-based company, so Jiuke Information is the first path. This is related to our target customers. Based on the current situation, large domestic state-owned enterprises obviously have more stable investment in digitalization. They We are usually asked to provide a complete solution. If Jiuke Information only focuses on a certain direction, when the digital construction of the enterprise is at different stages, it will adopt different vendors, and we will be in a relatively passive state. So Jiuke Through the independent research and development of multi-directional products and cooperative ecological methods, Kexin provides an overall solution for the digital transformation of central state-owned enterprises." Fu Kai, VP of Jiuke Information, introduced. Based on the cloud-native architecture, Jiuke Information is the first in the industry to launch an enterprise-level super-automation platform that integrates the fourth-generation intelligent RPA platform bit-Worker, process mining platform bit-Miner, and low-code development platform bit-Builder. And use AI and big data technology to meet various challenges of large central and state-owned enterprise customers in application intelligence and digital transformation. The second is to always focus on one direction. The company focuses on making tool products and does not expand the border, but cooperates with upstream and downstream partners. Fei Binjie, founder of Entropy Jane Technology, said: "We take the second path. Which path to choose depends on two aspects, one depends on the entrepreneur's vision, and the other depends on the overall situation of the capital market .If the capital market is in a state of constant enthusiasm, it can pay more attention to the company's market size, influence, and market competition pattern instead of paying urgent attention to profitability for a considerable period of time (3 to 5 years), then the first path You can try, otherwise the company should first solve a vertical problem to form a positive financial return, and only after it has its own position can it be qualified to expand its territory and do bigger things.”
Tu Zhiyong, the founder of Power Chain Technology, believes that even the giants cannot do well in every field, and more manufacturers focus on one direction to achieve the ultimate, so the company is currently choosing the second path. As the mainstream iPaaS platform in China, PowerChain Technology supports integrated development and testing when the background business is running normally, which can improve the efficiency of the entire operation. At the same time, it authorizes API supervision, monitors the integration interface in real time, and provides abnormal process alarms. In addition to integration capabilities, Power Chain Technology can also realize enterprise integration management, help enterprises manage internal API service resources, realize the management of the entire life cycle from testing to online, clearly understand API call records, and perform unified maintenance through configuration capture data manage. In the future, after the entire infrastructure is built, it will cooperate with low-code, RPA, BPM and other manufacturers in terms of applications.
"We are now focusing on the iPaaS direction and doing cross-system automated data pipelines. I think hyper-automation will eventually be realized as a hyper-automation solution, which is difficult to appear in a product form. There are two main problems. One is from social trends. Look, I think from the domestic situation, it is not easy for super automation to have a multi-specialty giant. The future must be a highly collaborative world, where multiple leaders who each focus on their own fields collaborate with each other; the second is product Technical issues, super-automation involves many technologies, which means that it is very difficult to integrate these technologies. If the seamless integration cannot be achieved, Party A’s experience and use efficiency will be greatly reduced. It would be far-fetched to mention super-automation "Shuhuantong COO Fang Qi said.
Interestingly, Jingkun Technology’s answer is different from that of the above-mentioned companies. Its COO Zhang Xin introduced: “The first two paths were provided by predecessors, and there are successful previous models for reference. But the biggest difference between China’s B-end market and Europe and the United States The reason is that domestic decision makers and users are two groups. First, decision makers are not entirely from the technical group. Second, the problems that decision makers have to solve are not only technology, but also macro business decisions. In this context, We choose to take the third path—deeply cultivate the business direction, and combine the first and second on this basis to identify the industry groups and user demands that we need to target, and try to use platform, breadth, and more standardized Products to meet the needs of industry users."
"In the process of actually promoting the project, we use the method of 'point, line, surface' to solve it. If the manufacturer only has product tools to solve the 'point', it can only passively wait for the customer's IT department to choose, and then go to the business department It will take a lot of time and cost to jointly develop scenarios, and for Party A's customers, the business stickiness is very small. We are doing "surface" - based on the super-automated integration capabilities, to provide digital transformation for industry users The overall solution." Ge Dingjia, CTO of Jingkun Technology, added, "Actual customers don't care about the underlying technical capabilities of the service provider at all, but what business problems the product can solve." Of course, no matter which path you choose, the In the process of promoting super automation, we will face many challenges, which are mainly divided into the following aspects. Zhang Xin, COO of Jingkun Technology, believes that the core challenge is that the current super-automation supply side is still at the stage of individual empowerment and grassroots empowerment, and has not risen to the stage where it has a fundamental impact on the overall situation and the organization. "From the perspective of Party A and Party B, the core challenge is the same, that is, the Chinese market is severely lacking of business personnel who understand technology, especially among domestic Party A customers. This brings both opportunities and challenges to Party B. The challenge is that Party B In the process of super-automation landing, we will do a lot of work. If a group of people in Party A can make good use of Party B’s products, Party B’s manufacturer only needs to iterate the product to the extreme, only need to manage the community well, and form a certain plan on it , you can do a good job of scale. But the reality is that Party B’s manufacturer must have a relatively heavy implementation team or partner to achieve customer success. This process consumes a lot of funds and takes up a lot of personnel.” Entropy Jane Technology founder Fei Binjie said. Fu Kai, VP of Jiuke Information, said: "Party A's biggest challenge is whether the strategic layer can form an effective automation strategy? This is an important prerequisite for determining whether central state-owned enterprises can deepen automation. Once there is no top-level strategic design, It will lead to the inability to form an effective automation governance system within the enterprise, unable to fully mobilize and manage the personnel and resources of all parties in the enterprise that can support the implementation of automation, and unable to coordinate all forces in the enterprise for promotion and replication. "Shu Huan Tong COO Fangqi believes: "For Party A, the core challenge is the phenomenon of automation islands in the process of adopting automation technology. Most Party A have already realized the second stage (automation of multiple workflows), such as through OA Solve office automation, solve the automation of sales flow through CRM, but after solving the automation of these workflows, the automation of one workflow after another cannot be coordinated, just like the problem of traditional data islands, then I Today we need to integrate all these isolated islands into a complete end-to-end automation. For Party B, the challenge is that first, breakthroughs are needed in product technology, such as how to improve product stability, applicability and efficiency. Second, the current hyper-automation is limited by the degree of market openness and the degree of openness and standardization of APIs of various systems. After the relevant social mechanisms and regulations are gradually improved and matured, Party B's products will become better and better. "
04Trends
: Digitization enters the deep water area, three trends of super automation
At present, the domestic digital development has entered the "deep water area", and the demand for cross-business, cross-system, and cross-platform services has shown an order of magnitude growth. In order to meet the complex needs of enterprises, the interviewees analyzed that there will be three trends in future hyper-automation:
First, among the various subsets of hyper-automation, the fastest growing market in the future will be AI technology, especially the large-scale industry model. In the field of RPA alone, dozens of manufacturers at home and abroad have introduced generative AI; in the field of low-code/no-code, generative AI technology has also become a necessity; in the field of process mining, ultra-automated manufacturer Pega launched a deep integration ChatGPT Pega Process Mining, a brand-new process mining product with advanced functions; established BPM, BPA and other manufacturers, such as servicenow, Mulesoft, etc., quickly introduced GPT. Zhang Xin, COO of Jingkun Technology, said: "The integration of data analysis capabilities and generative AI capabilities has greatly improved the dimension and richness of super-automated problem-solving, so these two are the areas we are most optimistic about. Especially AIGC's The business logic of each software may be upgraded." "In the past, AI was only used as a component in the super-automated process, but now AI has obviously become an operating system level existence in the process, which is equivalent to the 'brain' The "brain" that can give orders in the future is definitely more important than the gadgets that solve the problem. So I think AI technology is the most critical field with the largest space for super automation in the future. Among them, the more promising direction in the field of AI is the so-called large domain model , It will become a more deterministic opportunity within the next six months to one year. And the general large model will quickly converge within one year." Said Fei Binjie, founder of Entropy Jane Technology. "In the past, the AI mentioned by super automation was (OCR, NLP) capabilities. In the future, it will be more based on the capabilities of AIGC. AIGC has capabilities such as text understanding and image recognition. At present, we have realized the dialogue between users and robots. The next trend is that users directly Tell the robot the workflow you want to automate, and the robot will automatically process the workflow according to the rules every day or even every hour, and become a real enterprise assistant role." Said Fang Qi, COO of Shuhuantong.
However, Tu Zhiyong, the founder of Power Chain Technology, and Fu Kai, VP of Jiuke Information, have different ideas about which segment of the market will grow faster in the future of super automation. "To achieve hyper-automation, it must be a matter of multiple software, multiple systems, and multiple technologies working together. There is no way to complete interface standardization, so I think iPaaS is an essential infrastructure in this field. Many There is still a gap in the integrated management of large enterprises, and the future market growth rate will be very fast.” said Tu Zhiyong, founder of PowerChain Technology. Fu Kai, VP of Jiuke Information, believes that it is process mining, mainly because process mining has some technical reserves, and its development speed is not slow. Second, the main battlefield for the application of super automation in the future will be from first-tier central cities to second- and third-tier cities, from large enterprises to small and medium-sized enterprises, and from benchmark business scenarios to other business fields.
Tu Zhiyong, founder of Power Chain Technology, said that most things will experience this development trend, and it may take 5 to 10 years or even longer for super automation to achieve full popularity.
Fu Kai, VP of Jiuke Information, believes that this trend has already been formed. Some small and medium-sized enterprises may use certain technologies in super automation more deeply than large enterprises, especially in the field of e-commerce, where most of the labor has been replaced by RPA. For example, automatic delivery, inventory check, automatic order replenishment, etc.
However, Fei Binjie, founder of Entropy Jane Technology, believes that super-automation is possible in certain scenarios, but not in most scenarios. What is a specific scene? For example, the very natural interaction method of OpenAI can be promoted to small and medium-sized enterprises. These enterprises are characterized by limited budgets and are highly sensitive to the value and price of services. This efficiency increase or the improvement of business efficiency, and the product should not have an excessively high usage threshold.
Jingkun Technology COO Zhang Xin believes that super automation will not move from the first line to the second line, from large enterprises to small and medium-sized enterprises. Judging from the distribution of product sales in China for many years, cities such as Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou and Shenzhen undoubtedly occupy the leading sales market in the software field. In the ToB market, large customers and leading customers constitute the main business sources of enterprise information. Although small and medium-sized enterprises can accept super-automation, their ability to pay is slightly weaker. These are objective statistics reflected by economic indicators and historical data.
The third is that in order to create greater value in super automation, various technologies must gradually deepen their integration in the process of continuous innovation and iteration. In the future, various technology stacks will be integrated and merged.
The supporting cases are that in 2023 Snowflake acquired Neeva, a generative AI company, and Databricks acquired Okera, an AI-centric data governance platform. In addition, in the past few years, Celonis acquired the iPaaS company Integromat, and Salesforce integrated its old iPaaS product MuleSoft with the acquired RPA company Servicetrace and re-launched the market.
"There have always been mergers and acquisitions in the world, and domestic integration will definitely take place in the future, but it remains to be seen if it does not happen in the form of mergers and acquisitions. On the one hand, domestic start-ups are basically at a similar stage, and it is difficult for a super giant to come out to acquire Other companies have not yet reached the stage where they need to increase their market and revenue through mergers and acquisitions.” said Zhang Xin, COO of Jingkun Technology.
"There are not many mergers and acquisitions in the To B field, but with the development of technology and the increasing transparency of business information, there should be more mergers and acquisitions in the next 3 to 5 years." said Tu Zhiyong, founder of PowerChain Technology .
"In the future, it will be a trend to do cross-industry mergers and acquisitions, absorb independent product lines, and absorb customers. Suppose you acquire a company and absorb its technology stack into your own products, then the workload of reconstruction and transformation is no less than redevelopment of a product. Yes. Therefore, if an organization wants to do super-automation of the whole industry, a better way is to focus on one industry to do it thoroughly. After forming positive feedback, it adopts the merger method to form a standardized cross-industry service method. Because the service The automation solutions for the financial industry and the consumer industry have only 20% difference in basic components, and 80% are duplicated. However, the prerequisite for mergers and acquisitions is that the company is profitable. The plan is very mature, and the customer reputation is also very good, and the merger and acquisition at this time is a benign merger and acquisition." Said Fei Binjie, founder of Entropy Technology. "Our product positioning is a tool product, focusing on providing excellent iPaaS solutions. In order to make our iPaaS more competitive in the market, with higher product advantages and maturity, we may expand the capabilities of some RPA and aPaaS .Super automation is not the presentation of a single technology, but the deep integration of multiple technologies. This deep integration can be achieved through mergers and acquisitions, or through market ecological cooperation and in-depth strategic cooperation.” Said Fang Qi, COO of Shuhuantong. With the gradual landing and application of various technical concepts and the new opportunities brought by AI technology, in the process of enterprises promoting super automation in the future, manufacturers with more solid foundations and stronger technological innovation capabilities will win the choice of more customers And trust, the era of full realization of super automation may be coming soon!