Gartner defines business process automation (BPA) tools as software that automates business processes by enabling orchestration and choreography of diverse sets of actors (humans, systems and bots) involved in the execution of the process. BPA tools provide an environment for developing and running applications that incorporate process models (and optionally other business, decision and data models) enabling digitization of business operations
Gartner defines custom software development (CSD) services as development of software in rapid increments and iteration of custom applications and software products specifically for an organization to satisfy its unique business needs. It usually entails business requirements gathering and coding the application from inception, or building it on a PaaS, or assembling it from existing web services or other reusable pieces of code. Services marketed as “software product engineering” or “digital product development” are likely to be good examples of the category Gartner defines as “custom software development services.”
Gartner defines manufacturing execution systems (MES) as a specialist class of production-oriented software that manages, monitors and synchronizes the execution of real-time physical processes involved in transforming raw materials into intermediate and/or finished goods. These systems coordinate this execution of work orders with production scheduling and enterprise-level systems like ERP and product life cycle management (PLM). MES applications also provide feedback on process performance, and support component and material-level traceability, genealogy and integration with process history, where required.