The twenty-sixth episode of the podcast that you know and love as "We Love Ugly Data!" is out; available in audio form everywhere you get your podcasts from and additionally in video form via YouTube (which we've embedded below). As usual it’s three topics in (just a touch over) 30 minutes, and the show notes are included just below the embedded video. We're back to Matt and Alan again this month, with a (lengthy) discussion on the latest edition of the Work Intelligence Market Analysis for 2025-2030, the importance of marking your own homework in public and the first round of our new repeating slot; Banned Words .

In this month’s episode:

Topic 1: New Work Intelligence Market Analysis

It's that time of the year again for the updated version of the Work Intelligence Market Analysis covering the years 2025-2030 - the third edition of the report - and Matt and Alan discuss some of the highlights from the report and also look back to the original 2022 analyst report from which it was born (and you can download for free and it's still very relevant). The chat is very process and task mining heavy, with a small mea culpa on perhaps overstating the growth in that part of that market, albeit one which the pair are still really bullish for the important of (which is now being recognised by software vendors trying to put AI agent to work). There's also a sneak on some of the market growth data, which leads us nicely into the next topic.

Topic 2: Marking our homework

Matt talks (via a staggering fact about his haircare routine) about how important it is for the Work Intelligence Market Analysis numbers to be defensible and that means showing the long-term effects of the sizing data (basically to show the over/under delta on the data). Alan has separately recorded a brief video with his feeling about analyst market numbers, in which he seems a little bit cross.

Topic 3: Banned words list

Finally, it's time for a new rolling segment (to replace our most recent one on analyst value, which we've just written up), with a new one; banned words. Here Matt and Alan choose a word (or phrase) they never want to see or hear every again in relation to technology and in return they nominate a cliché of their own they they like to use, but will give up in return. So this time, let's wave goodbye to "out of the box" and "seamlessly integrated".

Related Links for Series 4 Episode 4
Matt's blog post about Writer getting excited about processes analysis
The announcement blog for the Work Intelligence Market Analysis 2025-2030
The original Work Intelligence introduction report from 2022

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The twenty-fifth episode of the podcast that you know and love as "We Love Ugly Data!" is out; available in audio form everywhere you get your podcasts from and additionally in video form via YouTube (which we've embedded below). As usual it’s three topics in (just a touch over) 30 minutes, and the show notes are included just below the embedded video. This time, it's Matt and Dan are in the chairs for this IDP-focused edition, discussing; the newly launched "Intelligent Document Processing Market Analysis 2025-2028: IDP at the Crossroads" report, IDP and Agents and the final instalment of how analysts add value (and when they don't).

In this month’s episode:

Topic 1: New IDP Market Analysis

It's that time of the year again for the updated version of Dan's magnum opus, the "Intelligent Document Processing Market Analysis", covering the years 2025-2028 and coming with the intriguing subtitle "IDP at the Crossroads". Dan explains some of the headlines from the report: how revenue is still increasing, where this growth is the most notable among the sub-markets, and where the expectations amongst vendors lay for forward-looking financial performance.

Topic 2: IDP & Agents

As Matt mentions, if you don't talk about Agents on a software podcast the Police will call on you to ask why, it's time to talk about Agents from an IDP perspective. It's the number one trend within the report and Dan has some survey data from IDP vendors to share about their outlook for Agents within their product roadmaps (hint: it's an explosion of agents, but you're not surprised are you?). Matt also mentions that if you've not read the free report on Agents that we published in January, what on earth are you doing? Really?

Topic 3: Analyst Value (pt 3)

Finally, it's Dan's turn to contribute to the topic of when analysts add value and when they don't (adding to the contributions that Matt and Alan have made during the last couple of episodes. Dan plumps for "calling the baby ugly" and competitive analysis in the plus column, with lacking in of real world business experience & "TL;DR analysts" in the negative column. We could explain the ugly baby and TL;DR references to you here and now, but why not have a quick listen and let Dan explain their meaning himself?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XBjYCEkCDR4

Related Links for Series 4 Episode 2
Intelligent Document Processing Market Analysis 2025-2028: IDP at the Crossroads is available for Deep Analysis subscribers immediately, or if you're not and would like it as a one-off purchase, you can get it here.
"AI Agents: What They Are, How They Work, and Where Organizations Might Best Use Them" can be downloaded here for FREE (OK, a few personal details but no actual money).
Matt's blog post "Use process analysis to reflect who you are – another lesson from Work Intelligence".
More on the "More Cowbell" sketch that Dan refers to.

Support the show

The twenty-fourth episode of the podcast that you know and love as "We Love Ugly Data!" is out; available in audio form everywhere you get your podcasts from and additionally in video form via YouTube (which we've embedded below). We're back to our usual format this time, so it’s three topics in (just a touch over) 30 minutes, and the show notes are as usual included just below the embedded video. Matt and Alan are in the chairs for this edition, this time discussing; our latest MMI research on AI and automation (that we've conducted with support from Hyland), that Enterprise Search appears to be back (again) and another instalment of how analysts add value (and when they don't).

In this month’s episode:

Topic 1: New MMI available

As you know, we're not the greatest at telling people about the great work that we do, but that stops right now* with Matt and Alan discussing the "Deep Analysis Market Momentum Index™: Intelligent Automation, Artificial Intelligence, and Data" report that we've recently launched with support from Hyland. It's packed with fresh research data on a range of topics around AI, automation and data, but for this segment Matt has picked out just two of the data points to discuss; 1. it's not a shortage of workers that's driving AI (and intelligent automation) projects and 2) data; important, disparate and often incomplete. The results of what is and what is not driving enterprise AI and the state of enterprise data will astonish (if not surprise) those of you with a passing interest in the subject.

(* we can't guarantee that this will stop now, unfortunately)

Topic 2: Don’t call it a comeback (Enterprise Search)

Alan's written a blog post - "The Revival of Enterprise Search: Lessons from the Past in the Age of Agentic AI" - in no small part inspired by the revival of lots of the use cases around Enterprise Search (if not the name itself, because of its terrible reputation for being a bottomless money pit). Here he discusses how the underlying problems have never gone away - as pointed to in the aforementioned research data - and how those challenges, with the more recent appearance of LLMs, have driven new interest in the technology. Much like last month's discussion about Agents (and the very common deterministic tasks vs less common probabilistic ones), the pair point to a very similar and not unrelated split in search query intent (Matt calls this recover vs discover).

Topic 3: Analyst Value (pt 2)

Finally, Matt and Alan return to the topic that they started in the last podcast of what makes great value for customers with industry analysts and what doesn't. This time Alan talks about "telling the truth" and "invented numbers" while Matt adds "super specialisms" and declaring "X is dead".

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HJ9M8wxFTbA

Related Links for Series 4 Episode 2
You can download the Hyland sponsored "Deep Analysis Market Momentum Index™: Intelligent Automation, Artificial Intelligence, and Data" here, for FREE.
If you missed the previous MMI report "AI and Unstructured Data Management, conducted by Deep Analysis with support from AIIM and M-Files", you can also download that for FREE too!
If you'd like to hear Matt and Alan discussing that previous MMI report, then you'll want to go back September '24's podcast for that, which you can find right here.

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