A Buyer’s Guide to

End-to-End Process
Orchestration

June 2024 camunda.com

2 Contents

Contents

Introduction: Why is ­end-to-end process orchestration so

important?  3

Point solutions in the hyperautomation tech stack 4

Types of tools in a hyperautomation tech stack 4

Critical success factors for true end-to-end orchestration 6

Critical success factor #1: Align business and IT with BPMN
and DMN7
Critical success factor #2: Tame process complexity with
advanced workflow patterns 8
Critical success factor #3: Automate reliably, at scale with
a cloud-native flexible architecture 10

Conclusion: Using process orchestration to drive business

value11

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3 Introduction: Why is ­end-to-end process orchestration so important?

Introduction: Why is ­end-to- Automating with

end process orchestration so intelligence
important? According to Deloitte, 92% of
implementers and scalers are either
In the last five years, digital transformation has already implementing end-to-end
accelerated faster than anyone could have pre- automation as part of their intelligent
dicted. Teams have added new technology sys- automation strategy (44%) or are
tems and processes to their mix at an unprec- planning to implement it in the next
edented rate. In fact, software spending in this three years (48%).
time period outpaced the general inflation rate
by 4x. Among enterprises with 1000+ employ-
ees specifically, SaaS spending increased by
33% in just two years between 2020 and 2022.

Why does that matter in the context of

automation? Many organizations have invested Automation silos also indicate that you may not
in automation point solutions or technologies be thinking about automation strategically. If
that play a dedicated role within an automated you’re automating on a task-by-task or project-
process. Point solutions help to automate by-project basis, you ultimately may be missing
tasks, as all processes are made up of tasks. critical connections between your digital
While point solutions are great for automating transformation investments.
individual tasks, they cannot orchestrate
and execute a fully end-to-end process. For Many organizations have complex processes
example, an RPA bot may be used to control a that involve various systems. According to the
simple task, such as porting over information State of Process Orchestration Report 2024,
from scanned documents into a CRM. However, 60% of IT decision-makers and business
RPA is not effective for managing more complex leaders estimate that 26 or more systems are
automated processes. involved in their organization’s automation
implementation. These organizations often
Other organizations may have invested in contend with legacy systems, AI tools, other
orchestration-adjacent technology platforms automation tools, microservices, and tasks that
like RPA, iPaaS, or LCAP that have automation must be done by knowledge workers. Disparate
capabilities and are now making bold claims systems and human tasks need to be integrated
about orchestrating processes. However, these when automating their business processes.
technologies have limited capabilities for
advanced use cases, so they may only succeed Sometimes the processes themselves need to
with a subset of processes, leaving business- follow an advanced logic. For example, multiple
critical ones uncovered. steps might need to be executed in parallel,
or a process might require escalation after a
Both types of investments — point solutions and certain amount of time. Many teams may have
platforms — create automation silos. Silos, by technologies in place that cannot support
nature, are focused on a single task rather than complex processes, leading to unnecessary
an end-to-end process. As such, using siloed workarounds and technical debt. Or, they may
automation technology can lead to broken or not have complete visibility into their processes’
inefficient end-to-end processes, which stand performance at all.
in the way of reaching important internal and
external business goals for automation. For
example, a broken process might cause an in-
surance company’s customer to experience wait
times for claims processing that exceed indus-
try standards. As a result, the customer might
churn and seek coverage from a competitor.

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4 Point solutions in the hyperautomation tech stack

To address these challenges, you need to properly orchestrate

processes from end to end. The objective is to prevent automation
silos. A strategic orchestration approach helps your organization
achieve uninterrupted and frictionless automation, even when
dealing with the most intricate processes.

In this buyer’s guide, we’ll:

▪ Review the differences between local automation point

solutions, megavendors, automation platform providers, and
end-to-end process orchestration

▪ Discuss what to look for when selecting process orchestration

technology and why

▪ Cover key questions to ask in your vendor evaluation process

Point solutions in the hyperautomation

tech stack

Many organizations are pursuing hyperautomation, which

Gartner defines as “a business-driven, disciplined approach that
organizations use to rapidly identify, vet, and automate as many
business and IT processes as possible.” Hyperautomation is a
critical consideration for organizations looking to improve their
operations and stay competitive.

Using advanced technologies, organizations can automate many of

their manual processes and tasks, leading to improved efficiency,
cost savings, and better business outcomes. However, there’s one
important caveat: Hyperautomation involves the orchestrated use of
multiple technologies, tools, or platforms. In other words, process
orchestration is a vital step toward hyperautomation maturity.

Types of tools in a hyperautomation tech stack

To meet your hyperautomation goals, you will need a combination of

tools to form your tech stack. Most tools have basic built-in process
orchestration capabilities, yet these capabilities are not enough to
achieve end-to-end process orchestration and break down silos.
(We’ll cover more on that topic later.)

Here are some of the most common tools teams consider:

▪ Application integration tools: Tools such as Zapier, IFTTT,

Tray.io, and Make (formerly Integromat) can execute actions as
events happen — for example, inserting new data into Airtable
when a Trello card is completed. Some of these tools extend
beyond the boundary of task automation, also providing basic
process automation capabilities (e.g., Tray.io).

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5 Point solutions in the hyperautomation tech stack

▪ Integration platform as a service (iPaaS) tools: Cloud-based

platforms such as Mulesoft and Boomi allow integration on a
point-to-point basis. They provide pre-built connectors, data
mapping, and transformation capabilities combined with basic
workflow capabilities. However, they typically don’t consider the
end-to-end process.

▪ Technical task automation frameworks: Frameworks including

Apache Camel simplify developer involvement in certain
tasks, such as communication with the filesystem, messaging
middleware, and other interface technologies. Batch processing
also fits into this category. For example, teams may use batch
processing as a way to automate tasks that apply to every row
in a dataset.

▪ RPA: Robotic process automation is often confused with

process orchestration, especially as RPA vendors shift their
messaging to align with market trends. However, RPA is about
task automation, such as automating the execution of a single
task in an application that does not provide a proper API. As
such, RPA can be combined with process orchestration. The
orchestrator will coordinate the overall process and delegate to
RPA for specific tasks. This design also allows teams to evolve
solutions from manual work, to RPA-based automation, to true
API-led integration.

▪ LCAP: Low code application platforms, such as OutSystems

and Mendix, often contain workflow engines with limited
capabilities. While teams can use these technologies to create
applications, they often do not support advanced automation
use cases or BPMN process modeling frameworks. As such, your
development team may have to pursue complex workarounds.

▪ BPA: Traditional business process automation tools, such

as Appian and Pega, are often monolithic systems, which are
closed off to outside integrations and operate as black boxes.
They are often built on legacy technologies that are not cloud-
native, which limits growth. In addition, many use proprietary
languages and frameworks, which require specialty skills that
are difficult to recruit for and expensive to maintain — leading to
longer time to market.

▪ Megavendors: Larger “suites” such as ServiceNow, Salesforce,

and Microsoft claim they can do everything, and aim to lock
customers into their platform. Yet, they are often monoliths
that do not have sophisticated workflow engines. While
these vendors offer automation solutions, they may only
cover a percentage of use cases, leaving the most complex
and business-critical use cases uncovered. Developers often
need to implement extensive custom code to make advanced
automation use cases work within the platform.

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6 Critical success factors for true end-to-end orchestration

Using point solutions for end-to-end orchestration

Challenges Business Impacts

Broken end-to-end automation: Inefficient processes and slow

Isolated processes are not response times impact the
integrated with one another, and satisfaction of both customers
the end-to-end process is not and employees.
fully automated.

Lack of understanding: The end- Legacy infrastructure drives up

to-end process is not fully visible, maintenance costs and makes
making key metrics hard to track it more difficult to adapt to new
and improve. technologies.

Lack of flexibility: Changing the Additional personnel are required

end-to-end process is difficult for what should be an automated
because it requires changes to process, resulting in unnecessary
many different systems. expenses.

Many organizations may already have adopted a variety of point

solutions within the hyperautomation tech stack. Each of these
tools solves a unique task-based automation problem, such as
automating data entry with RPA, so the organization may experience
quick wins. Yet, these same teams experience a value trap over
time because their RPA bot architecture or other point solutions are
disjointed and task-based. Point solutions limit their ability to scale
and achieve the automation outcomes they desire, all the while
compounding technical debt.

Critical success factors for true end-to-end

orchestration

Given the many challenges of automation silos, how do you

know if your vendor is able to provide true, end-to-end process
orchestration? Without the right knowledge, you could end up with
yet another point solution or limited process coverage. Here are
the top three critical success factors for any process orchestration
technology, along with some qualifying questions you can ask during
your evaluation process.

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7 Critical success factors for true end-to-end orchestration

Critical success factor #1: Align business and IT with

BPMN and DMN

What it is: The BPMN and DMN standards help teams model and
execute business processes and automated decisions. These
standards provide a common language that aligns IT and business
professionals. BPMN flowcharts and DMN tables are easy to read,
directly executable by process orchestration platforms, and help all
stakeholders gain a shared understanding of how their processes
work from start to finish.

Why it’s important: Aligning on common standards allows teams

to collaborate and communicate more effectively. A mutual
understanding of BPMN can ensure that the automated process
being built meets business requirements. This alignment not only
reduces effort along the way (and in the future), but also helps the
process achieve the desired business goals.

Key questions to ask:

▪ Does your process orchestration solution have native support

for the BPMN and DMN modeling standards?

▪ How do you design and deploy process models and decision

tables in the same user interface?

▪ How do you share BPMN models and DMN tables with

other business stakeholders to improve visibility and foster
collaboration?

▪ Does your solution provide process-focused analytics and

intelligence? Showing analytics on the process model helps to
further foster a common understanding of the process amongst
stakeholders. The tool should provide actionable insights based
on real-time and historical process data and features that help
you optimize your processes.

▪ How do you test processes without the risk of testing in

production? For example, can you use automated regression
testing?

▪ How do you integrate with our existing CI/CD pipeline/process?

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8 Critical success factors for true end-to-end orchestration

Critical success factor #2: Tame process complexity

with advanced workflow patterns

What is it: Life is seldom a straight line, and the same is true of
processes. Most advanced workflow patterns involve reacting to
events or handling complex business process logic across multiple
endpoints. Some examples include:

▪ Compensation: Rolling back a business transaction in case of

problems, or restoring business consistency.

▪ Dynamic parallel execution: Dynamically coordinating multiple

process branches at the same time.

▪ Message correlation: Correlating events together in a sequence

(such as correlating a customer’s unique identifier with an order
number on a customer service call).

▪ Time-based escalation: Escalating processes that aren‘t

completed within a specific window of time.

Why it’s important: While basic workflow patterns might be

sufficient for local task automation or simple integration flows,
most processes are not that simple. You must be able to accurately
express all the things happening in your business processes for
proper end-to-end process orchestration. This requires workflow
patterns that go beyond basic control flow patterns (like sequences
or conditions).

If your orchestration tool does not provide those advanced workflow

patterns, your developers will need to implement time-consuming
workarounds — resulting in diminished process visibility, longer,
more expensive maintenance cycles, and a lapse in collaboration
between business and IT.

Many software products claim that they support end-to-end process

automation, whether they focus on RPA, iPaaS, or microservices
orchestration. However, the process logic they implement is
typically reduced to basic workflow patterns, such as steps in a
sequence or branches for if/then-based processes.

Key questions to ask:

▪ Does the process orchestration solution support advanced

workflow patterns?

▪ Does it support compensation, including compensation events

in BPMN?

▪ Does it support event / message correlation, including matching

incoming events or messages to waiting / persisted process
instances?

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9 Critical success factors for true end-to-end orchestration

Top drivers of process complexity

According to the State of Process Orchestration Report 2024, 51% of teams see an increase in
complexity due to processes spanning multiple systems, up from 45% in 2023.

Top drivers of process complexity include:

The number and nature of systems, The number of developers required

applications, or people involved to work on a project.
in the process. For systems and
applications, their own complexity The number of departments or
and ease of integration is especially people involved in discussing how a
important. process is implemented.

The number and complexity of The number of users that do oper-

activities involved in the process, ational work as part of the process
and the control structures required instances, e.g. via human tasks.
(e.g., the number of branching
points, errors, or exceptions that Compliance or regulatory
need to be handled, or the need requirements. For example, financial
for advanced constructs like event processes often need to comply
handling or compensation). with many legal requirements.
Auditors might not only ask about
The amount and nature of data how processes are implemented
handled in the process. This can in general, but also want to look at
range from simple text fields to audit logs to understand what has
complex documents. happened in certain situations.

▪ Can it support different types of endpoints in end-to-end

processes? The tool should be able to orchestrate every human
and automated task in a business process across components
such as systems, APIs, microservices, RPA bots, IoT devices,
and AI/ML tools. Look for out-of-the-box connectors to easily
implement different endpoints.

▪ How do you manage long-running business processes that run for

hours, days, or even weeks? Look for effective state persistence
(ideally, event-streamed state persistence to avoid database bot-
tlenecks), querying possibilities, and monitoring abilities.

▪ How do you modify the state of persisted process instances (for

example, moving to a different step, updating to a new version
of a process definition, triggering retries, canceling, suspending/
resuming, etc.)?

▪ How do you generate an audit or event log that allows following

the execution path of each process instance?

▪ How do you assign a task to a human, wait for them to complete

the task, and then continue with additional actions?

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10 Critical success factors for true end-to-end orchestration

Critical success factor #3: Automate reliably, at scale

with a cloud-native flexible architecture

What is it: To automate reliably and at scale, process orchestration

solutions need a flexible and scalable architecture. Teams should
prioritize not only cloud-native architectures but also systems
that take advantage of distributed architectures and event stream
processing to provide massive scale and resilience. An advanced
workflow engine with a distributed architecture is also ideal for
delivering high availability because the software doesn’t rely on a
single workflow node or a central database.

Why it’s important: It’s critical to have a platform that supports

whatever your business requires. A purely elastic workflow engine
will allow you to apply process orchestration to a wide variety
of processes, including core processes running huge loads (like
payments or trade processing).

Find a process orchestration solution that enables your team to

choose which parts to use and where, integrates seamlessly with
other IT tools, and offers on-premise, cloud, and hybrid deployment
options. It should be developer-friendly, be built to align with
modern cloud engineering practices, and support cloud-first
process automation initiatives that can scale horizontally.

Key questions to ask

▪ Does the process orchestration solution consist of flexible

components that can be composed into a solution that fits your
technical and business needs?

▪ Does the solution have an architecture that supports open API

integrations?

▪ Does the vendor offer built-in integrations or connectors for

popular tools and technologies? Do they provide an SDK so you
can extend built-in connectors and develop your own?

▪ How do you make changes or modify process instances without

interrupting the workflow?

▪ How do you upgrade your workflow engine without interrupting

running process instances?

▪ Are there proper developer support resources in place (e.g.

powerful SDKs; getting started guides; online communities; or
easy-to-find support on Google, Stack Overflow, or AI-powered
copilot utilities)?

▪ Are you locked into a low-code layer, or can your professional

software developers deploy custom code using their preferred
programming languages when needed?

▪ Does your tool deliver high availability through a distributed

architecture to support scaling and handling increasing load?
Do you support geo-redundancy?

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Conclusion: Using process orchestration to
drive business value

To wrap up, this eBook provides some important considerations

as you evaluate the performance of your hyperautomation tech
stack. It’s important to understand if your existing tools are holding
you back from making changes, gaining visibility into how well
your processes are working, and ultimately scaling your end-to-
end automation efforts. By adopting process orchestration, you’ll
see seamless orchestration across people, systems, and devices,
maximizing the value from existing investments and reducing
technical debt.

With the right solution, both business and IT stakeholders can

design, innovate, and execute together with better visibility so you
can see where, when, and how everything is happening. Perhaps
best of all, you’ll be able to move faster, anticipating and adapting to
customer needs.

With Camunda, enterprise organizations can drive lasting value,

transformative efficiencies, and unparalleled visibility through
end-to-end process orchestration. According to a new Forrester
TEI report, Camunda customers experience a reported savings of
$15 million in process quality improvements and over 20,000 hours
of development time.

Discover how Camunda can work in your business

Book a demo

About Camunda
Camunda enables organizations to orchestrate processes across people, systems, and
devices to continuously overcome complexity and increase efficiency. A common visual
language enables seamless collaboration between business and IT teams to design,
automate, and improve end-to-end processes with the required speed, scale, and resilience
to remain competitive. Hundreds of enterprises such as Atlassian, ING, and Vodafone
orchestrate business-critical processes with Camunda to accelerate digital transformation.
To learn more visit camunda.com.