When I had created Accenture's Point of View (POV) on BPM (comparative study of BPM products or iBPM products as Gartner likes to calls it). We had predicted year on rise of 25% in adoption of BPM by the top 5 industry verticals and year on average productivity improvement of over 10% for enterprises that have implemented matured BPM tools (We had suggested that a mature BPM implementation alone could improve the enterprise productivity by 10%) . Back then Digital Transformation was not a buzz word and we see not just businesses but even governments are aggressively pushing for Digital Transformation. Feels great when I see that today people are well past discussing Need For BPM for Digital Transformation and discussion has moved over to the sensational Artificial Intelligence infused BPM'.
Artificial intelligence focuses on making already “intelligent” systems capable of simulating human-like decision-making and execution – enabling those systems to perform functions traditionally executed by skilled human professionals – but do so at a much higher level, because of the speed and power available on modern computing platforms. One needs to understand that for AI TO REALLY HAPPEN the AI software architecture would have to be be similar to our own central nervous system, which controls most of the things we do even though we don’t consciously think about it. So when ever AI matures instead of nerve signals, AI uses algorithms to simulate human behavior.
Frankly 'what we are implementing today does not have 'human like decision making' capability and that's why we cannot call it AI. AI is the future and huge investment in research are being done but existing systems do not have intelligence similar to humans because we do not have capability to produce software that has emotional and biochemical aspects of a human brain. What people at large refer to as AI (as of Jan 2018 ) is actually Machine Learning driven by big data & data mining and which gives insight to improve decision making but there is no Human Like Intelligence as claimed by some companies. Fact remains that the insight from big data aids better and smarter decision making as decision making has definitely improved as we have huge data and technology to process the data at a fast pace. As such we have been using data insights from historical data to make better business decisions for quite a few years now and if industry decides to call this data insight as AI then we can say AI & BPM are old friends.
So if someone tells you he is working on something revolutionary, integrating AI with BPM, you can tell him that AI-BPM is in production for quite sometime - actually for quite a few years (smile)! We did implement Smart Business Process that could be triggered by events from Complex Event Processing framework based on certain event types. We did implement Real Time Big data processing and integrated it with BPM to get insight from Data In Motion and make smarter decisions in real time. In short we have been doing AI driven BPM for years so don't get stoned by tall claims by some AI-BPM expert!
Point I want to make is that though AI-BPM is not new at the same time AI has been evolving at a fast pace along with ML and we need to continuously innovate and integrate ML with BPM to get better business insights. What we have already implemented for various industry is a Smart Next Best Action capability that aids a software system to take better decision in real time. Typically NBA is a custom software that uses intelligent insights extracted from big-data processing to aid enterprise decision making and we are using the word intelligent not because system is smart like humans but because it makes decisions based on millions of past records or transactions to recommend the most appropriate action - something which can almost act like a human not because of intelligence but because of Machine Learning.
Here are some random industry numbers about AI & BPM -
Artificial intelligence focuses on making already “intelligent” systems capable of simulating human-like decision-making and execution – enabling those systems to perform functions traditionally executed by skilled human professionals – but do so at a much higher level, because of the speed and power available on modern computing platforms. One needs to understand that for AI TO REALLY HAPPEN the AI software architecture would have to be be similar to our own central nervous system, which controls most of the things we do even though we don’t consciously think about it. So when ever AI matures instead of nerve signals, AI uses algorithms to simulate human behavior.
Frankly 'what we are implementing today does not have 'human like decision making' capability and that's why we cannot call it AI. AI is the future and huge investment in research are being done but existing systems do not have intelligence similar to humans because we do not have capability to produce software that has emotional and biochemical aspects of a human brain. What people at large refer to as AI (as of Jan 2018 ) is actually Machine Learning driven by big data & data mining and which gives insight to improve decision making but there is no Human Like Intelligence as claimed by some companies. Fact remains that the insight from big data aids better and smarter decision making as decision making has definitely improved as we have huge data and technology to process the data at a fast pace. As such we have been using data insights from historical data to make better business decisions for quite a few years now and if industry decides to call this data insight as AI then we can say AI & BPM are old friends.
So if someone tells you he is working on something revolutionary, integrating AI with BPM, you can tell him that AI-BPM is in production for quite sometime - actually for quite a few years (smile)! We did implement Smart Business Process that could be triggered by events from Complex Event Processing framework based on certain event types. We did implement Real Time Big data processing and integrated it with BPM to get insight from Data In Motion and make smarter decisions in real time. In short we have been doing AI driven BPM for years so don't get stoned by tall claims by some AI-BPM expert!
Point I want to make is that though AI-BPM is not new at the same time AI has been evolving at a fast pace along with ML and we need to continuously innovate and integrate ML with BPM to get better business insights. What we have already implemented for various industry is a Smart Next Best Action capability that aids a software system to take better decision in real time. Typically NBA is a custom software that uses intelligent insights extracted from big-data processing to aid enterprise decision making and we are using the word intelligent not because system is smart like humans but because it makes decisions based on millions of past records or transactions to recommend the most appropriate action - something which can almost act like a human not because of intelligence but because of Machine Learning.
Here are some random industry numbers about AI & BPM -
- As of today more than 50% of the businesses that are processing Big Data have implemented AI solutions and these businesses have reported more than 50% increase in new business insight from Big Data.
- AI has helped 50% of implementations to make better business decisions, 20% businesses claim to improved automated communication with help of AI and only 6% businesses claim to have reduced work force by implementing AI
- Most implemented area for AI is Predictive Analytics (eg Weather Data, Operational Maintenance etc )
- More than 80% of the implementors claim that AI has improved efficiency & created new jobs
- Almost all implementors acknowledge that Data Analytic technologies are more efficient when coupled with AI
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So the intellegence from insight from the huge data is helping make busniness more smart, more proactive, more predictive, more efficient, more productive and more customer friendly thus opening avenues for new products and expansion of business.
So how is AI or DI changing in the BPM?
- Intelligent Recommendations - Continuous machine-learning can provide relevant recommendation to customer as well as business
- Intelligent Marketing - AI can make recommendations to agents or directly to consumers using profile attributes & response behavior and keep learning in real-time, so that the next best offers are relevant to the customer and keep improving over time. Software can help marketing agent deliver the right recommendations to the right customer at the right time.
- Process Automation - Data-insight help reduce workflow inefficiencies, automate human tasks & processes, and reduce repetitive tasks.
- Preferential Treatment to Valued Customers - ML and predictive analytics can estimates a customer’s behavior and guide the agent to both satisfy the customer.
- Next Best Action - NBA helps agents guiding them about the next-best-action to take that will solve a specific problem and lead to higher customer satisfaction and also predicts the sales lead conversion and reduce customer churn
- Sales Prediction - Predictive Analytics helps predicts the likelihood of a lead to close and suggests next best action and strategies to the sales agent. Predictive engine can identify new sales oppurtunities that may not be outright visible to the team.
- Customer Retention - Predictive engine can predict customer churn and also suggest steps required to retain customer.
Game changing BPM & Data Intelligence/ Artificial Intelligence
What BPM can deliver today is not just efficient and smart process management but a real time business management. The BPM game is changed and BPM is now offering
1) Predictive Business - Analyze, Sense, Learn, Predict, Act
2) Proactive Recommendation leads to better customer service
3) Reduce Churn by predicting and addressing customer concerns
4) Better value to customer value delivered based on customer insight
5) Better Forecasting by 360 degree view of customer and business
6) Real time enterprise proactively addressing real time events
There are many BPM vendors and vendor analysis by Accenture, Gartner or Forrester can help you decide which BPM vendor has product and features that are right to deliver your solution. Pega, Appian are some of the leading BPM layers of 2018 but there are at least 19 BPM vendors to chose from and you can refer to How to select a BPM (Business Process Management) product? to know how to go about selecting the right BPM product
1) Predictive Business - Analyze, Sense, Learn, Predict, Act
2) Proactive Recommendation leads to better customer service
3) Reduce Churn by predicting and addressing customer concerns
4) Better value to customer value delivered based on customer insight
5) Better Forecasting by 360 degree view of customer and business
6) Real time enterprise proactively addressing real time events
There are many BPM vendors and vendor analysis by Accenture, Gartner or Forrester can help you decide which BPM vendor has product and features that are right to deliver your solution. Pega, Appian are some of the leading BPM layers of 2018 but there are at least 19 BPM vendors to chose from and you can refer to How to select a BPM (Business Process Management) product? to know how to go about selecting the right BPM product
