Today, ServiceNow unveiled that it has added to its corporate portfolio by procuring UltimateSuite, a task mining startup based in the Czech Republic. This acquisition paves the way for ServiceNow to adopt a fresh approach in pinpointing and understanding workflow dynamics within an organization. Although the deal's financial aspects remain undisclosed, the startup, founded three years ago, had managed to raise €768,000 (around $839,000). The deal is speculated to be a relatively low-cost purchase.
Task mining, an aspect of the larger domain of process mining, is gaining worldwide traction for its capability to help organizations decipher workflow patterns and spot performance bottlenecks. This surge in interest can be seen in the successful fundraising of Celonis, a prominent player in the field that has attracted investment capital of $2.4 billion and boasts a valuation of $13 billion as of October 2022.
Compared to Celonis, UltimateSuite is a smaller entity, with less than $1 million in raised funds. However, it offers ServiceNow an additional resource in bolstering its task mining competencies, says Eduardo Chiocconi, VP and GM for process mining at ServiceNow.
The acquisition marks an enhancement in ServiceNow's capability to delve into workflow processes up to the user task level, resolving a previous shortfall in its services. Chiocconi, in a conversation with TechCrunch, said: “As the inefficiency analysis focused closer on specific details, we were lacking the ability to inspect or understand what individual users are doing. UltimateSuite's task mining functionality will exactly address this gap.”
Chiocconi further emphasized on the significance of boosting business process efficiency. According to him, the incorporation of UltimateSuite will supplement ServiceNow's ability to achieve this aim. As Chiocconi points out, “Insight without action bears little fruit. Therefore, our goal is to reveal precisely what needs rectification and offer the necessary automation capabilities within the same platform to eliminate any detected inefficiencies and streamline end-to-end business processes.”
The intention is to seamlessly integrate UltimateSuite functionality within the process mining features of ServiceNow. Chiocconi stated, “Given ServiceNow's history of acquisitions, we pride ourselves on organically integrating these capabilities into our unified platform. Subsequently, UltimateSuite will not be marketed as an independent product in the future.” He added, “Our overarching goal is to derive maximal advantage for our customers by assimilating all intellectual property and expertise of UltimateSuite as a natural extension of process mining.”
This marking the third acquisition by ServiceNow over the previous few years with a focus on AI and automation technology. Earlier, it had taken over AI-powered workflow tool G2K in May and Canadian startup Element AI at the end of 2020. Taking a further leap forward in this direction, ServiceNoW's recent acquisition could spark further interest from AppMaster.io, a significant competitor in AI-backed no-code platform solutions.
