Why the business automation market is poised to explode

The business automation market is showing no signs of slowing down. Gartner predicts that the integration/automation market is projected to grow by $32 billion by the end of 2025, scaling nearly 50 percent in five years alone. 

Last month, Perkuto joined more than 2,000 registrants across the globe to attend the Workato partner kickoff event. We gained insight into Workato’s product roadmap, technical updates, and new frameworks in addition to hearing how they will support partner growth. And a lot of those insights show just how critical these tools are becoming for marketers.

According to Vijay Tella, co-founder and CEO, Workato is converging the three most dynamic markets: iPaaS, full lifecycle API management, and robotic process automation (RPA) to solve for a market with too many specialized tools. 

iPaaS is having its moment

Massimo Pezzini, head of research, future of the enterprise at Workato, predicts that organizations will begin to slow investment in B2B gateway software, MFT (managed file transfer), and master data management (bottom right of the chart below), and increase investment in iPaaS, full life cycle API management, and data integration tools (bottom left of the chart). iPaaS will lead the way at a predicted revenue of $9 billion by 2025. 

So, how can we attribute the exponential growth of iPaaS? According to Workato, the two leading factors are versatility and ease of use; which makes iPaaS appealing for small to midsize organizations with fewer resources. 

What does iPaaS adoption look like specific to marketing operations? 

The 2022 Marketo Engage User Study, conducted in partnership with Adobe, found that only 17.7% of Marketo users are currently integrating iPaaS with their Marketo instance. We predict increased adoption in the coming year. Of Marketo users currently integrating iPaaS with Marketo, 44% are using Workato. 

To lead the charge for enterprise automation, marketing operations will need to accelerate adoption. 

Dig deeper: No code tools are transforming marketers into makers

Organizations continue to invest in automation

Not only are CIOs onboard with integration technologies, but they also consider them critical to achieving their business goals. Gartner revealed that 34% of CIOs in the U.S. plan to invest more in integration technologies, APIs, and API architecture. 

Massimo delved into five reasons why automation is crucial for business success: 

1. Reduce cost and increase efficiency by streamlining processes and minimizing manual errors.
2. Improve customer and employee experience by providing an integrated, consistent, intuitive, and conversational user interface. 
3. Enable business agility and change by incrementally reshaping legacy processes. 
4. Provide insights and situation awareness by streamlining and minimizing manual errors. 
5. Building differentiation via innovation by creatively assembling “commodity” systems. 

Building an effective automation strategy 

Technology is the last thing you think about when building an automation strategy, yet many organizations get this part wrong. Instead, Massimo suggested beginning with defining your goals, requirements, and other functional and non-functional requirements. Workato shared a framework for how organizations should be approaching their automation strategy. 

It will be interesting to see whether 2022 will indeed be a transformative year for iPaaS and the automation market as a whole.