The thirty-third 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). This month it's time to discuss the annual Deep Analysis Innovation Awards, so Matt is joined by both Alan and Dan to discuss this year's winners; Infrrd and LatticeFlow AI (but as ever, show notes are included just below the embedded video).

In this month’s episode:

Preamble: Why do we have Innovation Awards?

First up, Alan talks about why Deep Analysis has annual Innovations Awards and why they are different to many other awards that are out there. Firstly, you can't apply for them, and if you win one there's no fee to pay, fancy dinner to attend (and buy a table at) or winners speech to rehearse. Also there's no set number of winners each year either; the team discusses which briefings wowed them and meets the awards criteria; Does it solve a problem? Does it apply ingenuity? Does it add value? Does it show flexibility?

Winner: Infrrd

Dan introduces the first award winner, Infrrd. Having initially annoyed him with their marketing choices, he was won over with the number of patents that have been awarded for their research in document AI and their development team deserves recognition for that work. Additionally, Dan was impressed with a demo involving Autocad drawings and data extraction, retrieval and document understanding (and awarded them a mini award of their own in the Intelligent Document Processing Market Analysis 2025-2028 report for best demo). Finally Dan was also impressed with Infrrd's work on mortgage loan files; a notoriously difficult use case. Alan adds that IDP in general is featuring in virtually every briefing that Deep Analysis receives right now, as it is a vital part of how unstructured data is made available for AI and agentic technology to use and it could be said it's what is driving many of the predominant AI use cases and is fundamental to LLMs themselves.

Winner: LatticeFlow AI

Matt then talks about second 2025 award winner, LatticeFlow AI. One of the features of 2025's discourse has been that AI projects are not making it out of pilots and into production. One of the reasons that is happening is that often the hurdle that is compliance, risk etc are not baked into the development from the beginning. LatticeFlow AI is focused on ensuring that an organizations AI applications meet both internal (think GRC; governance, risk and compliance) and external (regulations, like ISO, EU AI Act etc), with a focus both on internal data quality as well as how well individual models are likely to work in conjunction with it. Alan adds that that it's another areas that underlines the increasing gap between demos and production realities; as soon as the word governance people tend to switch off, but it's a vital part of ensuring that organizations are insulated against inevitable legal challenges coming down the road for organizations that don't realise its importance.

Postamble: What are we looking for in 2026?

To wrap things up, the team nominate what they hope they'll be seeing in 2026 that will end up with them pitching briefings in for the nominations pot in 12 month's time.

Dan: Hoping to see better support for tabular information in IDP products; there's lots of start-ups working on the

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The thirty-second 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. It's Matt and Alan this month for a Salesforce-heavy episode, discussing their acquisition of Apromore, some of the thoughts from the pair sparked by the recent 2025 edition of the Dreamforce conference, and wrapping up some of the fall tech conference trends.

In this month’s episode:

Topic 1: That’s Apromore!

First up, Matt and Alan discuss Salesforce's recent acquisition of process analysis vendor Apromore, reminding themselves that Salesforce was an investor in the company (as well as there being a co-selling partnership). As is pointed out, our pair had both thought that there was a good fit for an acquisition (and had said so), but also got into the details of what using such a platform means practically (hint, it's not magic and needs process skills to operate if effectively, but it's a potentially huge on-ramp for Agentforce). They then go on to point to other business application ecosystems where similar investments have been made (and Matt acknowledges that he'd forgotten about SAP somehow when writing the analysis of the deal). Finally, there is some pointing at Deep Analysis's "Work Intelligence" research as a way of better understanding how all this might fit together.

Topic 2: Agents of Dreamforce

The big annual Salesforce Dreamforce conference took place recently, and whilst Matt watched from home in the UK, Alan was on the ground in San Francisco. They discuss how Salesforce is a bellwether vendor in the business application market, and whilst there was a host of product announcements, it was the changing messaging around Agentforce that got them most intrigued. Matt's product and adoption-focused blog post and Alan's one from the conference floor are discussed, with the general opinion being that it's much harder to deploy agents that were being made apparent 12 months ago, and the messaging is starting to reflect the steps required to get on track.

Topic 3: Fall Trends

Finally, Alan's got a couple of thematic trends to discuss from his travels at a bunch of business application conferences this fall/autumn and briefly discusses them; firstly, the underwhelming response from attendees to announcements and - if you ask them - the audience is hot for IDP.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xEd5UHaeNCs

Related Links for Series 4 Episode 10

Work Intelligence Market Analysis 2025-2030 - our full market analysis of the Work Intelligence marketplace, including process analysis.
Work Intelligence: Improving Processes by Balancing Human Intelligence and AI - our initial 2022 report on Work Intelligence as a concept, which you can download for free.
Salesforce acquires Apromore to give Agentforce a process analysis on-ramp - deal anal

Support the show

The thirty-first 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. Dan is back on with Matt this month for an IDP-heavy episode, discussing the latest Deep Analysis MMI Report on IDP, another batch of Vendor Analysis Reports, and an AI-generated incident involving pizza, a sofa, and a wheelchair.

In this month’s episode:

Topic 1: New MMI on IDP

There's a brand new MMI (Market Momentum Index) report out on IDP, which Deep Analysis has collaborated on with AIIM. As Dan was the lead analyst on this MMI, he talked Matt through just a small selection of the details about the market revealed in the study. These include how many customers are actively working on IDP projects, where those customers are storing documents ,and just how much paper is involved (and it's increasing in volume).

Topic 2: Vendor Research Updates

Dan and Matt discuss 4 more of the latest Vendor Analysis Reports that were recently published for subscribers. This time, as Dan is on the show, he talks about the new reports on Roots, Retarus, Affinda, as well as a big update on Hyperscience.

Topic 3: Dan Has Issues

Finally, Dan has been infuriated by AI invading his personal life during the summer, leading to it being recommended to him that he should order a sofa and a wheelchair to go with his pizza. Here is his therapy session with Matt discussing his issues about it all.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0Yeb5vYR9Dk

Related Links for Series 4 Episode 9

Market Momentum Index: Intelligent Document Processing (IDP) Survey 2025 can be downloaded from AIIM for free.
If you're new to IDP, Dan's annual IDP Market Report, "Intelligent Document Processing Market Analysis 2025-2028: IDP at the Crossroads," might also be of interest.
Matt wrote a blog post a couple of months back looking at data across all 4 of the MMI reports that we've published so far, which contains links to all of them (and some interesting stuff on AI adoption)
Here are the latest updated vendor profiles (or VVs as we still call them internally).
...and here's the link to the whole catalog on those profiles (that you have access to read if you're a subscriber).
"No Cure for the Summertime Blues"; Dan's blog post where he outlines some of his issues and more....

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