S04E04 - Automating Work - Examining the Work Intelligence Market

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