Enterprise technology providers speed up the workflow buzzword machine

Workflow is becoming a buzzword for many software and cloud giants in 2021, because collaboration, mixed work, automation, and task management all conflict.

Based on records of earnings conference calls and analyst activity, it is clear that workflow is bubbling up as a technical term.

• ServiceNow established a master in providing workflow automation and promoted it, mentioning “workflow” 32 times in the most recent earnings call. ServiceNow CEO Bill McDermott pointed out that customers are buying workflow infrastructure for IT, customers, employees, and creators. In terms of its value, ServiceNow basically started the slow-moving workflow trend. At the 2013 analyst meeting, ServiceNow executives mentioned the workflow 35 times when explaining the case where the company can expand beyond IT service management.
• Salesforce discussed the term workflow in depth twice during its second quarter earnings conference call. Salesforce President and Chief Operating Officer Bret Taylor said: “IBM is one of my favorite examples of Slack-First Customer 360 companies. IBM has built their entire Customer 360 on Salesforce. More than 530,000 customers, 380,000 employees, and 50,000 Partners use “our platform.” All these employees work in Slack. They have connected their workflow to the sales cloud and service cloud, enabling them to connect and take action from anywhere. “
• Zoom executives discussed workflow tools and strategies four times during the Zoomtopia Analyst Day.
• Microsoft also talked twice about its role in enabling workflows during its recent earnings conference call.
• Atlassian also talked about automated workflows related to Jira. “The best thing we can do is deep integration in all these places. We believe this is the best for customers. Then our job is to automate workflows, coordinate data and do our best in all these different places. Can do this. Apps,” said Atlassian co-CEO Michael Cannon-Brookes.

If this atmosphere of workflow and messaging and collaboration applications sounds familiar, it’s because it is the next enterprise software battlefield. As work becomes mixed and automated, workflow engines running in collaboration applications (now mainly digital offices) will become critical. This vision is why Salesforce acquired Slack and integrated it before the Dreamforce meeting. This is why the latest Now Platform version of ServiceNow has a lot of automated workflow and integration with Microsoft Teams. This is why Zoomtopia’s Zoom spends a lot of time discussing workflow and how it integrates with video conferencing and collaboration.

How will this workflow war unfold? This is a crib of today’s landscape and how it will evolve.

ServiceNow-Microsoft and Salesforce-Slack.

If this is a professional wrestling match, ServiceNow-Microsoft and Salesforce-Slack will be the leading label team battles. I won’t let you use Photoshop to put ServiceNow Bill McDermott and Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff on wrestling gear, mainly because I did it a few years ago.

But I digress. Ultimately, ServiceNow-Microsoft and Salesforce-Slack are about automating work in collaboration. Consider introducing services into collaboration tools. What remains to be seen is whether ServiceNow and Salesforce directly conflict. ServiceNow focuses on more back-end processes, such as solving problems, answering questions, repairing broken things, and simplifying the approval process. Salesforce is more like a front-end workflow for Customer 360, CRM, customer service, and sales, and brings insights into tools such as Slack.

Collaborate into the workflow.

Zoom may be ahead of workflow and collaboration games, but at Zoomtopia, the company’s video-centric workflow approach is very convincing. Zoom is building industry-specific templates and introducing applications to its platform to meet employees.

Oded Gal, Zoom Chief Product Officer, said on Zoomtopia:

We released Zoom Apps less than 2 months ago. Zoom Apps is made up of more than 50 startup partners, and you can use these applications in today’s Zoom meeting. They are already some of the most popular of the more than 1,500 third-party integrations in the Zoom App Marketplace, including integrations with HubSpot, DocuSign, Google Suite, Microsoft Office, etc.

Gal cited DocuSign integration as a powerful workflow example.

You can see here that the workflow truly integrates the ability to sign documents while you are in a video conference.

Graeme Geddes, head of Zoom Phone, said on Zoomtopia:

We have seen a high level of customer interest and adoption of Zoom Rooms because it is at the core of their own return to the office strategy. In the past year, we have used the powerful features of Zoom Rooms to help our clients build new spaces and workflows to support new hybrid working methods. We have introduced many features, for example, if we go to the next slide, kiosk mode to support virtual receptionists; people counting and voice commands to support corporate safety standards and social distancing practices; and smart galleries.

As Zoom talks about workflow and integration with enterprise application players, rest assured that other video collaboration vendors will follow suit. In terms of its value, Cisco’s recent earnings conference call did not mention WebEx’s workflow.

The rest of the site and workflow are cleaned.

Once this workflow topic gets more attention, you can rest assured that other technology vendors will continue to follow up. We have seen the buzzword bingo before, so we are now ready for the headlines of “cloud-enabled blockchain quantum artificial intelligence and machine learning-driven workflow automation”.

ZDNET’s Monday morning opener

The opening game on Monday morning was our opening remarks in the technical field of the week. Since we operate a global website, this editorial will be published in Sydney, Australia at 8:00 AM Eastern Standard Time on Monday, which is 6:00 PM Eastern Time in the United States on Sunday. The report was written by a member of the ZDNet global editorial board, which is composed of our chief editors in Asia, Australia, Europe and North America.

Before the opening game on Monday morning: