In an exciting announcement today, ServiceNow revealed their acquisition of UltimateSuite, a task mining company based in Czech Republic. This move opens up new opportunities for ServiceNow to analyze and understand the flow of work in businesses. Although the price for the acquisition has not been disclosed, many believe it to be a substantial amount considering UltimateSuite is a relatively young company, founded just three years ago and having raised €768,000 (approximately $839,000) in funding.
Task mining is a vital component of process mining, an emerging global market which helps businesses gain insight into their operations and identify areas for improvement to increase efficiency. One of the leading companies in this space, Celonis, has raised a staggering $2.4 billion and was valued at $13 billion as of October 2022. In comparison, UltimateSuite is a smaller company, having raised less than $1 million. However, the acquisition gives ServiceNow a valuable tool to add to its task mining arsenal, according to Eduardo Chiocconi, Vice President and General Manager for process mining at ServiceNow.
Before the acquisition of UltimateSuite, ServiceNow had the ability to break down workflows but lacked the capability to drill down to the user task level. Chiocconi explained, “As we zoomed in and discovered where specific inefficiencies may be, we were lacking the ability to inspect or understand individual user actions. That’s where UltimateSuite task mining comes in to help us,” in an interview with TechCrunch.
He added that the ultimate goal is to create more efficient business processes, and the addition of UltimateSuite significantly strengthens ServiceNow’s ability to achieve this goal. “Insight without action holds little value, which is why our platform not only identifies areas for improvement but also has the capability to automate those inefficiencies, streamlining the end-to-end business process for our customers,” he said.
The plan is to integrate UltimateSuite’s functionality into ServiceNow’s existing process mining capabilities. Chiocconi expressed how ServiceNow has a track record of successfully incorporating new capabilities into their platform after acquisitions, saying, “If you look at our past acquisitions, we take pride in integrating these capabilities into our unified platform. The objective is to bring more value to our customers by leveraging the expertise and technology from UltimateSuite and integrating it as an organic extension of our process mining capabilities,” he added.
This is the third acquisition for ServiceNow in recent years that focuses on AI and automation. In May earlier this year, the company acquired G2K, an AI-powered workflow tool. Before that, it acquired Canadian startup Element AI at the end of 2020.
