BPM Analytics
Enhancing Operational Excellence with Augmented Business Process Management
Imagine a scenario where your business processes run smoothly and they continuously adapt and improve in real time! That is the promise of augmented business process management (BPM). As organisations grapple with increasing complexities and the pressures of digital transformation, traditional BPM approaches often fall short. Augmented BPM introduces a new paradigm that combines the power of advanced technologies and process management to unlock new levels of efficiency and effectiveness.
The process management domain has seen many technology-aided changes, such as process mining, Robotic Process Automation (RPA), predictive process analytics and digital twins. These advances have helped evolve a new approach to BPM that can leverage AI and analytics to derive unprecedented business value. The maturity of these technologies strengthens the BPM journey from data to insights and actions towards continuous process improvement. It gave rise to the augmented BPM concept, which promises new heights in operational excellence.
Understanding Augmented BPM
Augmented BPM leverages AI and analytics to make BPM proactive and context-sensitive by introducing adaptability and explainability while improving processes in real-time. It continuously analyses, monitors, adapts and re-designs business processes based on various performance indicators.
The proponents and practitioners of augmented BPM conceptualise it as a pyramid of capabilities that works up from (descriptive) process mining, predictive process mining and predictive process improvement to augmented BPM. The lower layers of this pyramid cover techniques such as automated process discovery, conformance checking, performance mining, variant analysis, and predictive and prescriptive process monitoring. In the topmost layer, adaptive self-driving processes and conversational process optimisers represent the pinnacle of augmented BPM.
It is a step-by-step process that begins with identifying bottlenecks based on various dataset analyses. Based on the inputs of the first phase of process mining, the second phase focuses on predictions of what lies ahead. Based on these predictions, the third phase focuses on process improvements through continuous real-time monitoring. Finally, the augmented BPM layer applies the intelligent BPM approach to re-design processes. While the system may recommend changes to the process owner to make the right choices, it gradually learns to make them automatically.
How is it different from a traditional BPM approach?
Let us look at a sample scenario to understand how augmented BPM intelligently pushes information instead of following the traditional pull to minimise search efforts and improve efficiency. In a manufacturing setup, a technician responsible for machine inspection and repair would traditionally need to look up history, schedule, manuals, etc. However, with augmented BPM, the person would receive an automated push notification about the scheduled inspection backed with the requisite information.
From history to real-time updates, alerts, and inspection and maintenance guidelines to step-by-step troubleshooting, contextual help is available for the person to complete the task much more efficiently. The result is a quantum leap in operational excellence derived from blending valuable process information and real-time user contexts for improved experiences and outcomes.
How is this different from someone searching for and accessing the information they need? Augmented BPM applies intelligence to the information shared to ensure the person only gets what they need. The need-to-know approach is the clincher, making information easily consumable for immediate needs. The person does not have to scour through too much information to understand the context and act, reducing confusion and delays. Also, the information shared is seamless, elevating user experiences. Consider the possibility of the person responsible for the machine inspection getting a notification on a device about a machine in proximity needing attention while moving around on the factory floor! That’s the potential of augmented BPM.
Some real-world use cases
Augmented BPM is an evolving concept that can turn around outcomes in the BPM domain. Here are some use cases businesses can consider to achieve unparalleled operational excellence.
Elevating customer experiences: Implementing augmented BPM in customer touchpoint processes can enrich customer interactions significantly. Leveraging customer behaviour analytics can reduce wait time and deliver personalised experiences. In entertainment and online retail shopping, augmented BPM is already elevating customer experiences based on personalised content and product recommendations. Chatbots fuelled by customer marketing analytics can help businesses increase revenues and conversion rates.
Supply chain optimisation: Augmented BPM can elevate demand forecasting, logistics planning and inventory management in the supply chain.
Fraud management: Augmented BPM can help combat fraud in the financial industry. Whether banking or insurance, flagging suspicious patterns and behaviours in real time can help mitigate losses and reputational damage due to fraud.
Predictive maintenance: Combining IoT and historical data, augmented BPM can predict equipment failure, monitor performance metrics and automatically schedule maintenance to prevent or reduce downtime and maintenance costs.
Improved healthcare: From AI-powered chatbots that converse with patients to assisting healthcare personnel in detecting and proposing the correct treatment or powering research into hitherto unseen paradigms for deriving new lines of treatment, augmented BPM can improve healthcare by changing how the industry functions.
How can Infosys BPM help?
Infosys BPM’s customer and marketing analytics services help uncover new revenue streams through enhanced/augmented digital solutions that cover end-to-end marketing requirements. Through our technical expertise and deep domain knowledge backed by innovative AI-ML-backed solutions, we help our customers devise concise marketing programs.