Rupal Karia, Country Leader UK&I at Celonis, highlights the role process intelligence plays in adopting safe and effective AI strategies.
As the world stands at a turning point in the adoption of artificial intelligence, business leaders are waking up to the important role that process intelligence can play.
More than a third of organisations are already using AI in at least one business function, according to the latest McKinsey global survey on the state of artificial intelligence, with 40% planning to boost their investment in the near future. Our own research shows that business leaders are already aware of the importance of process intelligence when it comes to implementing AI, but also that 72% fear shortcomings in process optimisation might hinder their progress.
Offering an end-to-end view of business processes, process intelligence is the perfect partner for AI. Business leaders rightly believe that AI can deliver advantages such as new insights and ways to engage consumers and that process intelligence enables rapid, effective adoption of AI.
Process intelligence supplies business leaders with useful insights into how processes interact across multiple departments and IT systems. Most already recognise the importance of process intelligence when it comes to emerging technology, with 70% pinpointing technology adoption as their reason for driving process optimisation.
The power of process intelligence lies in integrating AI into businesses more effectively and in dealing with some of the typical problems surrounding generative AI, from ‘hallucinations’ where AI systems make up facts to the timeliness of information or fears around data security. In many ways, process intelligence is a key enabler for adopting AI safely, securely, and effectively.
Seeing inside your business
Process mining is an important part of process intelligence, zooming in on the ‘event logs’ generated by processes in systems such as Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) software. It uncovers hidden value opportunities, acting almost like an X-ray of internal business processes. Process mining breaks down common barriers found in many businesses, such as siloed data and IT systems, which don’t work well with each other, as well as departments which fail to communicate.
By connecting these systems, business leaders can derive valuable insights into how things really work. Sitting on top of existing systems, process intelligence offers business leaders a vantage point from which they can see processes in their entirety, act rapidly on value opportunities that are unearthed, and root out inefficiencies. This can pave the way for the adoption of emerging technologies such as artificial intelligence, offering business-specific data that is a perfect foundation for AI systems.
The latest iteration of process mining, known as object-centric process mining (OPCM), allows business leaders to create a ‘digital twin’ of multiple business processes. This helps to improve business outcomes and drive efficiency even further. OPCM does this by offering a 3D view (think of it as an MRI scan, compared to an X-ray), which captures the interplay between different systems and different departments. OPCM captures how a sales order will also involve processes in order management, supply chain and production, for example. The ‘3D view’ provided by OPCM offers a perfect foundation for implementing AI effectively, and offers business leaders insights which can help find AI use cases that deliver genuine value.
Turning process intelligence into business value
Generative AI does not, and cannot, operate in a vacuum. The technology’s potential to generate business value is huge, but it only works effectively if it has the right inputs. Process intelligence not only offers business leaders a ready-made source of high-quality data, but it can also help to deal with some of the important problems associated with generative AI.
Chief among these potential issues is reliability. Hallucinations have the potential to cause reputational harm to organisations. Another key issue is the timeliness of information delivered by Large Language Models (LLMs). These large models can take months to train, and even when they are connected to real-time data, it can be difficult for business leaders to be certain they are using the latest information. Security is a very important concern when it comes to LLMs: if models are trained using customer data, it’s possible that this private data could ‘leak’ to other users of the same system.
How can process intelligence help here? Process mining and OPCM are useful sources of accurate and up-to-date data about a business’s processes. This can help AI become a driver of business transformation without distorting or leaking data. With generative AI, process intelligence can help to ‘ground’ a system’s responses in real business processes, with data updated in real time. Because process intelligence is built around event log data rather than sensitive or private customer data, it also helps to address privacy concerns.
Process intelligence also enables generative AI to speak the language of a specific business. This works as an enablement layer which enables business leaders to replace basic rules-based automation with more sophisticated systems, powered by generative AI. The grounded, up-to-date, anonymous information provided by process intelligence enables LLMs to produce accurate responses that business leaders can trust. This allows business leaders to more quickly turn insights into action.
A crucial advantage
With the commercial world moving beyond a fascination with generative AI to experimenting with and adopting the technology, business leaders must be alert to how useful process intelligence is when it comes to using AI in the real world. Process intelligence offers a trustworthy, real-time source of reliable data, which helps leaders to implement genuinely valuable AI use cases while addressing issues including security, reliability and timeliness.
Process intelligence makes AI more effective in almost every use case, and the technology offers a helping hand for businesses struggling to harness generative AI’s full potential. Process technology unlocks generative AI’s full power, enabling companies to take their next steps with confidence.
