Business Orchestration and Automation Technologies (BOAT): The Next Wave in Enterprise Automation

Summary

Business orchestration and automation technologies (BOAT) is a new term coined by Gartner that represents the next evolution from hyperautomation. BOAT integrates diverse automation technologies into a unified platform, addressing fragmentation, scalability, and operational cost challenges while enabling seamless process orchestration and enhancing decision-making.

Takeaways

• Business orchestration and automation technologies (BOAT) represents a holistic approach to integrating, managing, and orchestrating various automation tools like RPA, BPM, AI, and low-code platforms to streamline and enhance business processes.

• BOAT is crucial for addressing the fragmentation of automation tools, ensuring scalability, and reducing operational costs.

Introducing business orchestration and automation technologies (BOAT)

As the business landscape continues to evolve, so do the technologies and terms that support it, and the world of business process automation is no exception. The recent growth of overlapping RPA, BPA, and other process automation technologies offers enterprise application leaders vast amounts of choices but also presents a significant challenge when selecting the right vendors and solutions. As a result, analyst firm Gartner is seeing an emerging trend for consolidated business orchestration and automation platforms, offering comprehensive solutions to streamline and integrate diverse automation tools and processes. They have recently coined a new term to describe this space — Business orchestration and automation technologies (BOAT).

What is BOAT?

Business orchestration and automation technologies (BOAT) represents a comprehensive approach to managing, automating, and orchestrating business processes. BOAT aims to integrate and orchestrate a wider array of tools and platforms. This extended scope includes everything from robotic process automation (RPA) and business process management (BPM) to AI-driven analytics and low-code development platforms.

Gartner's insights on business orchestration and automation technologies (BOAT)

According to Gartner, organizations seek a comprehensive solution that integrates various automation technologies into a unified platform. Such a holistic approach would enable businesses to streamline their operations, improve efficiency, and maintain agility, but also pave the way for scalable, flexible, and innovative business processes. Research claims that 50% of all work could be automated, but only 31% of businesses have taken the step to automate at least one function. This is in part, due to the significant overlap of existing automation technologies which fails to cater to the end-to-end needs of the wide range of automation use cases required by enterprise application leaders. The consolidation of these capabilities into a single platform showcases a future where we will see:

• Unified platforms that combine key RPA, BPA, and iPaaS elements offer low-code development, cloud-native architecture, cognitive capabilities, intelligent document processing (IDP), and more.

• AI-driven autonomy enabling the creation of autonomous and intelligent orchestration of tasks. These technologies enhance the capabilities of automation tools by adding intelligence, autonomy, and adaptability to process execution and management.

The benefits of business orchestration and automation technologies (BOAT)

Platform aligned with the business orchestration and automation technologies (BOAT) framework offer numerous benefits for businesses of all sizes and industries:

• Enhanced efficiency: By integrating multiple automation technologies, platforms aligned with the BOAT framework streamline business processes and reduce redundancy, leading to faster execution of tasks, fewer errors, and improved business efficiency​.

• Improved decision-making: With enterprise connectivity and AI-powered insights, these platforms enable more accurate decision-making across the organization. Businesses with access to real-time data can analyze trends and make fast, informed decisions to drive growth and innovation.

• Greater flexibility: Platforms aligned with the BOAT framework support both the rapid creation of new processes and the optimization of existing ones. This flexibility allows organizations to adapt to changing market conditions and customer demands quickly and efficiently.

• Cost savings: By automating repetitive tasks and optimizing processes, businesses can allocate resources more efficiently and focus on higher-value activities​. However, by consolidating multiple technologies into a single platform, BOAT also has the potential to reduce IT costs associated with the licensing and management of numerous individual automation systems.

• Scalability: These platforms are designed to scale with the organization's growth. These platforms can handle the data and processes needed by modern enterprises, ensuring that automation remains effective, efficient, and in line with business growth.

Why is process orchestration important?

Effective management of business processes, known as process orchestration, is crucial for organizational success. While business processes are the backbone of any organization, ensuring they operate smoothly and efficiently across all departments is a complex task. This complexity often leads to several fundamental challenges:

Fragmentation and integration

Several businesses have adopted automation tools such as RPA, BPA, and low-code platforms to manage their processes. However, these tools often operate in silos, leading to fragmented processes and disjointed workflows. This fragmentation causes inefficiencies, data inconsistencies, and increased operational complexity —indeed, 81% percent of respondents in a 2024 report that data silos are hindering their digital transformation efforts.

Integrating these disparate systems to create a unified workflow is a significant challenge. Without such integration, processes slow down, leading to bottlenecks and reduced productivity.

Scalability and flexibility

As businesses grow, their processes become more complex, and the volume of data they handle increases. Traditional automation tools struggle to scale effectively, resulting in performance bottlenecks and inefficiencies.

The modern business environment is highly dynamic, with constant changes in market conditions, customer expectations, and regulatory requirements. Organizations need the agility to adapt quickly to these changes, with McKinsey claiming 20 to 30% cost savings as a result of improved business agility. However, traditional automation tools often lack the flexibility and ease of use required to modify and optimize processes rapidly.

High operational costs and decision-making delays

Maintaining multiple automation tools can be costly and resource-intensive. Organizations often need specialized skills to manage different systems, leading to duplication of efforts and inefficiencies arising from non-integrated solutions. Furthermore, multiple systems make viewing integrated and real-time data challenging, making decision-making slow and often ill-informed.

Flowable and BOAT

As an established provider of intelligent process automation and orchestration solutions, Flowable has been delivering a suite of tools that align perfectly with the principles of BOAT for many years. Here's how:

• Process orchestration: Flowable's platform allows for the design, automation, and management of complex end-to-end workflows, ensuring seamless integration between various systems and processes. This orchestration is central to the BOAT framework.

• Scalability and flexibility: Flowable's solutions scale with the business, handling increasing workloads and adapting to new requirements without compromising performance. This capability ensures that as businesses grow, their automation capabilities grow with them.

• Intelligent automation: Flowable integrates AI and machine learning to enhance decision-making and adapt to changing business conditions. This intelligent automation is vital to achieving the efficiency and innovation goals of BOAT.

• Single automation suite: Flowable delivers native BPM, case management and decision management which can combine with other technologies such as RPA and AI via extensive integration capabilities. The result is a single platform, that enables seamless orchestration of complex business processes aligned with the BOAT framework.

• Low-code development: Flowable's low-code platform empowers organizations to rapidly develop and deploy custom applications, enhancing their ability to adapt to changing needs.

Navigating the future with BOAT and Flowable

The arrival of the term "business orchestration and automation technologies (BOAT)" marks a significant milestone in the enterprise automation industry. Businesses can achieve greater efficiency, agility, and innovation using this comprehensive approach.

However, this is something that Flowable customers already know, as they already have access to such a platform. Yet the adoption of the term by Gartner and the broader market will further reinforce the understanding and support needed by organizations on their BOAT journey and clarify the tools and expertise necessary to navigate this landscape.

For more details on how Flowable can help your organization achieve its business goals with a BOAT platform, please contact us.