The future of BPM Is found in Its foundations

The future of business process management (BPM) ironically lies in its past, say thought leaders who joined the All Access: Future of BPM webinar series. While artificial intelligence (AI) and other advanced technologies are impacting BPM and promising a revolution, many organizations are still in the early stages of adoption. The leaders in process excellence are insisting that the foundations for solid processes are built and tended to before jumping on any bandwagons. 

"From my perspective, I sometimes feel a bit like the old man yelling at the cloud, that, is trying to say, 'Hey, let's just slow it down a little bit with slapping AI onto everything.' My approach to things has been a bit more cautious when it comes to process management," said Fraser Damoff, head of the Lean Centre of Excellence at the Independent Electricity System Operator (IESO). "I generally think that a lot of organizations don't have the assessed level of maturity when it comes to process management. They look at new software or a new project, and they go, 'Let's add AI to it.' And no one has ever taken the time to actually map out the processes that we're asking AI to do. There's a lack of foundation in your house. You're starting to build your first and second floor without a four walls and your basement already set up."

Indeed, 37 percent of the audience members who responded to the opening session poll about their level of preparedness to adapt BPM at the pace that AI now requires said they were aware of the need, but struggling to keep up. Twenty-eight percent said they were somewhat prepared, and 21 percent were not prepared at all. 

Keeping humans in the loop

Jude Rouse, business process manager at MSC UK, shared her best practices for change management, bringing people along with you for the ride. She explained that she walks to people's desks and observes their processes, all the while explaining how appreciative she is of their work and expertise. 

"We started our journey about two and a half years ago, and so it was just before all of the AI has come in, and I feel one of the lessons that we've definitely learned was that we should have included our community, which is all of the people we work with earlier on," said Rouse. "I feel that's a journey that was really important. It's one that we're now fully embracing, especially with AI, because we want to make sure we're keeping the human element. I think with technology, it just steamrolls ahead."

In fact, Marianne Brown, senior project manager at Horizon Air Freight, suggested helping people face their challenges. 

"The fastest way to get buy-in is to anchor improvements to problems teams are already feeling, such as friction," said Brown. "Rework, handoffs, or decision delays, and involving them early in the process, to shape the solution."

Brown was joined by Sandra Abel, assistant vice president, operational excellence, at Space Coast Credit Union, who echoed thoughts about the importance of people in processes. 

"Change happens through people and not to people, so when they surface their problems early and without fear, it's a great sign of psychological safety," said Abel. "Teams kind of have more of a temperament for experimentation. They adjust, they pivot, they don't have to wait for the perfect answers. Leaders have to model this adaptability themselves, and when you see that, that's really when you know the magic's kind of starting to happen. We talked about feed loops already. They have to be built into the system and timely and actionable."

Preview of AI in PEX

Clearly, people are being cautious about applying AI to BPM. In fact, 57 percent of respondents in the audience said they think ethical or risk-based decisions should always involve human judgment. Also, more than half of the audience respondents said that in the next three to five years they expect humans to need a number of skills, including process design and improvement, data and AI literacy, change management and communication, critical thinking and judgment. So, the future of BPM may include more advanced technology and automation, but it will also elevate the human role. 

"These new tools do have to be checked, and we do have to validate them, and we have to continue to embrace the methodology to challenge them," said Joseph Zulanas, vice president Process Engineer 4 at Wells Fargo. "Critical thinking will never go out of style, and I think what happens is people get persuaded by this shiny thing, and they make so much of it, that they lack the understanding of the risk that's associated, that we have to challenge it."

Zulanas was joined by Sasan Sadr, former director, enterprise continuous improvement at Ulta Beauty, who shared a different perspective on the addition of AI to BPM.

"One hopeful area is that generative AI can, instead of trying to replace critical thinking, actually act as a nudge to the people to encourage them to do more critical thinking," he said. "And, I mean, that's something that, Is a possibility, because there certainly is a gap."

Human-AI collaboration is the next frontier. Puneet Thakkar, finance process and systems transformation lead at Google, shared his Agentic-SDLC framework. 

"The agentic SDLC, or the ASDLC, is a continuous feedback loop," he said. "It fundamentally reimagines software development as a continuous autonomous loop, right?"

While agentic AI offers many possibilities, people are still risk averse. But 43 percent said they are exploring adopting ASDLC. 

SAP Signavio sent Lukas N.P. Egger, VP of product strategy and innovation at SAP Signavio
and Seth Lippincott, product marketing senior consultant at SAP LeanIX to discuss Agentic AI. 

"We had 78 percent saying that there was moderate to high potential for AI to really transform their processes around their business operations," said Lippincott. "But then, in terms of where they are in being able to actualize that, where only 5 percent said they were fully prepared to deploy and start to scale around either AI or agentic AI specifically across their organization. So we have this, what I would call an AI gap, where you have the potential that you see, but then your actual ability there."

Lana-Sophie Stawowski, senior strategic program manager at Camunda stressed the importance of evolving business process orchestration to meet the moment. Again, the idea was to set the right foundation.