HFS Research SaaS XXV 2022 report: Process mining, discovery top emerging technology investment

"Process mining and discovery" was the top emerging technology investment for enterprises followed by artificial intelligence, cybersecurity and process automation, according to HFS Research's SaaS XXV 2022 report.

The report's top emerging technology investment categories were based on a sample of 600 executives across Global 2000 enterprises. HFS' findings about process mining echo previous research on the topic. Enterprises have been focusing on process excellence and automation to execute better amid supply chain disruptions, inflation and sustainability concerns.

HFS Research said:

What HFS calls process intelligence—process mining and discovery—is a SaaS category that has exploded in significance. Process mining and discovery is the highest ranked of all investments made in emerging technologies among the Global 2000 enterprise respondents in our H2 HFS Pulse Survey, conducted in the second half of 2021 and published in 2022.

We see this as a sign that enterprises are getting more serious about not just fixing and automating processes but finding better ways of getting work done.

The findings were revealed in HFS Research's SaaS XXV 2022 report, which ranks software-as-a-service vendors on their impact on business value creation. Celonis was No. 13 overall on the list.

Among the top 25 SaaS vendors, Microsoft took the No. 1 ranking followed by Salesforce, Amazon Web Services, Adobe, Google and SAP. 

HFS' report is based on interviews with more than 1,000 business and technology decision makers, 248 service provider professionals and 80 SaaS vendors. HFS' rankings are based on the Net Promoter Score system, surveys, impact on the business and whether the vendors were mission critical and research from the firm's team of analysts.

As for the weighting of the HFS rankings, business value creation was 50% of the ranking with partner engagement at 30%. Alignment with HFS's OneOffice methodology and customer investment intentions were 10% each. 

According to HFS, respondents are seeing the following trends:

• In the last five years, cloud computing and SaaS have enabled automation to replace outsourcing tasks in call centers, project tracking and workflow management. 

• Adoption of SaaS-based tools is growing, and workflow automation, analytics and artificial intelligence are creating a virtual workforce.

• Business value creation is what drives long-term SaaS customer satisfaction.

• 58% of 600 executives at Global 2000 enterprises said service providers play a big role in SaaS software selection.  

Larry Dignan

Editor in Chief (former)

Larry Dignan is the former Editor in Chief of Celonis Media. Before joining Celonis, he was Editor in Chief of ZDNet and has covered the technology industry and transformation trends for more than two decades, publishing articles in WallStreetWeek.com, Inter@ctive Week, The New York Times, and Financial Planning magazine.