The Ants are different, even compelling, but can they drive a genuine integrated automation proposition for an industry that really needs one?

2019 was a high-octane year for AntWorks – and it laid critical groundwork for 2020. The firm generated a lot of goodwill with its “hip to be square” culture and extravert use of marketing, the color orange, and various ant analogies. A specific focus on engaging with analysts has got them into conversations where some of its competitors, such as Nice, Kryon and Softomotive have struggled.  They have eyed the massive marketing hype generated by UiPath and Automation Anywhere, tried to hop onto the broad industry automation narrative, while successfully not being seen as “yet another RPA”.  While this has been a smart play, it has also created the headache of trying to explain to the industry that its compelling data ingestion solution adds the most value when it is combined with RPA. The 2020 HFS Top 10 of RPA software products saw AntWorks attain the second-placed ranking for innovation and embedded intelligence.

Can the colony create a whole new integrated automation direction for an industry that really needs some direction?

“We see ourselves as different” was the declaration made at AntWorks’ second annual analyst retreat- Antenna 2020 –  in the tropical confines of Turks & Caicos (T&C) in the Caribbean. As their executive team has been known to comment, they “don’t do anything by half measures”.

We saw this illustrated throughout 2019, as the firm staged ostentatious product launch parties around the globe and held court at numerous industry conferences touting its “seeing atumoaiotn differently”, pushing a story centered on integrated automation, fractal mathematics, and full-stack capabilities as differentiated reasons to consider them.

So as we rolled into T&C, we were looking forward to a debrief of 2019 results and a substantive preview of what to expect to 2020. Here’s what we think the most relevant take-aways are for enterprises or partners considering engaging with or expanding their relationship with the Ants.

Antworks’ progress so far:  Market visibility achieved and a compelling CMR + RPA capability

HFS regards AntWorks’ original analyst retreat, held in the Maldives in Q1 2019 as the firm’s coming out party. Fresh off a series A round of funding with SBI Investment Co in July 2018, AntWorks came out of the 2019 gate ready to up their profile and expand their enterprise footprint for their brand of intelligent automation. Arguably, its most visible accomplishment of 2019 was just that – visibility.

AntWorks thrust itself into the intelligent automation market through aggressive event participation (40+ major events in 2019), a massive social media push (quadruple growth in followers), collaborative thought leadership studies, mentions in analyst reports, and loads of global media coverage. If you have any interest in automation, it was hard to miss AntWorks in 2019.

But brand recognition only really matters if there is a strong product and delivery capability to back up the noise. HFS’ makes these observations about how AntWorks fared in 2019 beyond the glitz and glam.

• Hip to be Square. From a product standpoint, the firm launched its Square (yep, that’s the product version name) integrated automation full-stack update in May 2019. Square is a low code/no-code platform with two modular but integrated components- Cognitive Machine Reading (CMR) and QueenBot RPA. Given the native limitations of most RPA tools with unstructured data, AntWorks offers a compelling approach to data challenges. The firm, thus, wisely leads with its CMR capabilities and pulls through RPA. We see CMR combined with RPA as AntWorks’ core value to the market – an ability to deal with unstructured data and automate it.
• Partnering with client HFS spoke with various AntWorks clients throughout 2019 and at the T&C event, confirming strong satisfaction with its CMR functionality and full-stack when applicable. In addition, most clients unabashedly note that they view AntWorks as a true partner and appreciate high levels of trust. While its clients also validate its fractal-based speed to train algorithms claims, they also acknowledge that their own process complexity often slows down implementation and utilization.
• Client growth. It grew its client base 17% from 2018 – 2019. While this feels a bit anaemic at face value, its revenue growth during the same period of 261% helps underscore that while it added new logos (from 374 clients to 437), it all importantly grew its footprint within existing clients like Kotak Mahindra Bank that progressed from one use case to more than 10. Its sales efforts were arguably hampered by something very simple – a terrible website.
• Footprint and ecosystem. From the delivery standpoint, AntWorks made a ton of investment in 2019. It added almost 350 employees (from 240 to 581 today) across all roles. It also expanded its footprint from 12 locations to 19 with five more planned. Locations were added literally across the globe with the US, Europe, Middle East, and Asia all yielding gains. It also hired a Chief Partnership Officer to helps gets its ecosystem play on track. This is important for both implementation as well as technology partnerships.

Time for the Ants to show some industrial results in 2020

As HFS articulated in our now infamous blog “RPA is Dead…”, single purpose tools are not doing an effective job of helping enterprises deal with their years of process debt. In an ability to drive end-to-end workflows and support digital transformation, automation software vendors are partnering like mad to enable 3^rd party integrations while natively adding functionality in parallel – either building (Blue Prism Decipher) or buying (Appian buys Jidoka). AntWorks’ full stack approach legitimately offers an integrated modular approach to automation. Exhibit 1 outlines its updated product functionality for 2020. HFS took particular note of the cursive handwriting capability which has been the white whale of handwriting capture for ages. Additionally, its process discovery capability hits on a palpable need for enterprises who struggle to identify the right processes to automate. It will also help downstream to justify automation ROI.

Exhibit 1: AntWork’s 2020 full stack

Source: AntWorks 2020

But let us not forget that technology alone it not what’s holding enterprises back from scaling their automation programs. It’s people and process and the challenge of driving actual change and improving human experience (see “A New RPA Manifesto” for more on this). Thus the imperatives AntWorks needs to get right in 2020 beyond a compelling stack and two tons of marketing fun include:

1. Spotlight the business benefits of the integrated stack. You speak full stack and often show modular components – especially CMR. Help your clients and prospects understand the value of the integrated approach through customer examples and how your tools can help them modernize horribly broken business processes. This means increased focus on customer marketing to get examples of widescale eneterprise use of the solutions. Today’s public examples, while positive, are too sparse and lack depth or transformation heft.
2. Product marketing must complement brand marketing. Prospects often state they have heard of your brand but are not familiar with the features and functions of your product set. Even at the analyst event itself, HFS overheard some analysts (who should know better) expressing surprise at the CMR capability.
3. Invest in sales. AntWorks has put a huge emphasis on investing in marketing resources and tech resources in India, but less so on developing more “boots on the ground” to drive software sales.  This also includes supporting the current sales executives with more prospect events, local speaking engagements etc to drive new sales cycles and interest.
4. Emphasize the quality not the quantity. The number of customers and partners is not the whole story. Every RPA supplier worth its salt can boast a few thousand downloads of its product. Your ability to help your clients grow and scale incremental use cases is essential. Similar point for your partners – you can get better results with fewer close partners, than loads of press release partners where you drive no actual value or benefit.
5. Ensure integration with third party RPA tools. While AntWorks has RPA in its stack, many enterprises have made investments in other RPA tools. AntWorks should ensure this does not stop them from making strides with its CMR tech, while it continues to contemplate operationalizing bot cloning.
6. Go vertical. Horizontal uses cases in finance and accounting have been done to death. AntWorks has developed interesting use cases for industry-specific functions within insurance, mortgage, and other industries. Creating these as consumable offerings – sort of fully functional digital workers with specific jobs that draw from your integrated full stack, is a great and effective way to differentiate your value amidst a sea of general purpose tools and horizontal use cases.
7. As an Asia-based vendor, prioritize Asia. While country markets like Japan are automation trailblazers, there is a ton of opportunity throughout the rest of Asia. Oh, and most of your natural competitors are either US or Europe-based with the majority of their customers and revenue stemming from North America or Europe. The global footprint is essential but you can still lead from your core geographic strength.
8. Fix the website! Make it easy for customers to gain information and give your sales team a fighting chance to manage leads. And make all the learning content you’ve developed much, much more accessible.