SS&C Blue Prism Releases Scalable, Agile Next-Gen Hybrid Intelligent Process Automation Platform

⇨ SS&C Technologies Holdings, Inc. launched the SS&C Blue Prism Next Generation intelligent automation platform in mid-2024, designed for hybrid deployment that provides cloud benefits while ensuring industry security and compliance, especially for organizations in regulated sectors.

⇨ The importance of process automation is on the rise, with a recent SAPinsider report showing that the perception of automation as 'Extremely Important' increased from 40% in 2023 to 54% in 2024. The top priority for 76% of organizations is to automate repetitive tasks to boost workforce productivity.

⇨ SS&C Blue Prism Next Gen features include a user-friendly Design Studio for process design, a centralized Process Repository for improved version control, and secure execution of digital workers, enhancing operational efficiency while meeting compliance standards.

SAP partner SS&C Technologies Holdings, Inc. (Nasdaq: SSNC) announced in mid-2024 the first release of its new SS&C Blue Prism Next Generation intelligent automation platform. The platform is designed to deliver continuous new agile capabilities. In this first, hybrid-based release, Next Gen delivers all the benefits of cloud while satisfying the necessary industry security and compliance requirements for organizations, including those in highly regulated industries.

Intelligent process automation refers to a blend of advanced technologies—Robotic Process Automation (RPA), Artificial Intelligence (AI), Machine Learning (ML), and sometimes Natural Language Processing (NLP) or Optical Character Recognition (OCR)—to automate complex business processes. Unlike traditional automation, which handles only rule-based, repetitive tasks, intelligent process automation can analyze data, recognize patterns, and make decisions in real-time, leading to a more dynamic and adaptive automation system.

Recent SAPinsider research shows that companies are placing greater importance on process automation. The research report Process Productivity and Efficiency Through Process Automation and Intelligence 2024 uncovered that the perception of process automation as “Extremely Important” has notably increased, jumping from 40% in 2023 to 54% in 2024. This is in keeping with related research that shows companies striving for greater productivity, better expense control, fewer manual touchpoints, and improved profitability in an increasingly global marketplace.

The research also revealed a significant focus on enhancing workforce productivity and optimizing business processes. In 2024, the highest priority process automation strategy is to boost productivity by automating repetitive tasks, with 76% of respondents prioritizing this, up from 59% in 2023. This reflects a strong emphasis on using automation to enable employees to focus on higher-value activities.

The SS&C Blue Prism Next Generation platform unlocks the full potential of intelligent automation by offering organizations greater scale, agility, and access to the latest capabilities through burden-free infrastructure maintenance via the cloud. The platform’s cybersecurity and compliance features are also designed to give access to organizations with sensitive data or restricted systems access.

SAP customers can utilize a pre-built library of Blue Prism visual business objects (VBOs) of common SAP®️ transactions to support unique SAP®️ ERP operation needs or to accelerate ECC to S/4HANA®️ migration projects.

This first release features:

• Process design: Next Gen’s Design Studio allows users to create, edit and test processes locally with an easy-to-use drag-and-drop user interface; one that is familiar to existing Blue Prism developers, helping ensure a more seamless, effortless adoption of the Next Generation platform.

• Centralized storage: Customers can benefit from Next Gen’s Process Repository, which saves processes and objects using cloud-based storage. Users can use version control to track changes with minimal effort and deploy automations using a stage-gated submission and review process with a traceable audit trail to ensure a compliant release process.

• Secure execution: Self-hosted digital workers can be deployed on an organization’s network, so no sensitive data leaves its site.

• Cloud-based operations: Next Gen’s Control Center provides a single pane of glass across the entire operation, thereby simplifying worker management across all environments. The organization can start, stop, and schedule processes while monitoring the health of automations and digital workers.

“Although 87% of organizations have accelerated their investments in cloud-hosted automation services in the past year, many organizations still face a number of barriers,” said Colin Redbond, SVP Product Management, SS&C Blue Prism. “Next Gen’s hybrid deployment model addresses this issue head-on, equipping customers with the latest intelligent automation capabilities needed to create value for customers and employees. SS&C Blue Prism Next Gen enables organizations to reduce infrastructure overheads, quickly adapt to changing priorities, scale more effectively, and upgrade digital workers on demand while satisfying the necessary industry security and compliance requirements.”

More than 2,800 customers worldwide run their operations on SS&C Blue Prism, digitizing operations across financial services, insurance, health and pharma, banking, and more.

What this means for SAPinsiders

Share your experiences with intelligent process automation. SAPinsider will be publishing its next research report on Process Automation and Intelligence in July 2025. SAPinsiders have consistently indicated in research conducted recently that leveraging process automation and process Intelligence platforms will enable them to digitalize, discover, understand, and manage business process execution more effectively. While many of them may already have built a foundation in terms of process automation, Intelligent process automation capabilities will allow them to leverage advanced algorithms to model specific events across their processes, visualize these model to identify deviations, find process bottlenecks and perform root cause analyses of process failures. If you are interested in participating in this important research initiative, please email mark.vigoroso@wispubs.com.

Leverage Blue Prism’s AI and cognitive capabilities. Use Blue Prism’s AI capabilities, including Optical Character Recognition (OCR) and Natural Language Processing (NLP), to process unstructured data from documents, emails, or scanned invoices. This enables faster processing of incoming documents in SAP systems with higher accuracy. Blue Prism’s AI engine can analyze patterns in large data sets to support predictive analytics and decision-making. SAP customers in supply chain management, for example, can use this to anticipate demand fluctuations and adjust inventory levels accordingly.

Do process discovery and mining to uncover ripest automation targets. Blue Prism offers process discovery tools that can help SAP customers identify the most impactful automation opportunities by analyzing workflows and bottlenecks. This is useful in optimizing operations like production planning or logistics, where SAP data is essential. Process mining tools enable SAP customers to continuously monitor automated workflows, making adjustments and improvements over time for maximum efficiency and cost savings.