AI-Driven Business Process Reengineering: Transforming the Future of Work
Why it is Time We Completely Rethink How Business Workflows are Connected To Each Other, And How Naas Can Help
In the 1990s, Business Process Reengineering was a big thing, promising radical changes through technology implementation. However, many of these attempts failed to meet expectations. We now find ourselves in an era where AI has emerged as a transformative technology, offering the potential for actual process redesign. Yet, discussions often focus on the technology rather than its impact on business workflows.
In this article about the effects of AI on business process redesign, I will also elaborate on how Naas Solutions can drive process changes using AI and provide businesses with a comprehensive range of data products.
AI-Driven Reengineering: Renewing the Promise
During the 1990s, there was much hype surrounding the potential of reengineering. However, this excitement was short-lived as ERP systems such as SAP and Oracle proved to be too rigid. In 2013, I had a tough time working between Finance and IT. It was tough to implement ERP and Treasury System interfaces. Despite utilizing techniques like Lean, Six Sigma, and Agile, it felt like they were just temporary fixes and not permanent technological solutions.
Today, AI holds the key to unlocking transformative changes across various domains. That's where Naas Solutions comes in, harnessing the power of AI through its Foundation Engines: blueprint data products that businesses can personalize to their unique needs.
Updating Reengineering: AI as the Catalyst
When I entered the job market in Corporate Finance, AI was nowhere, it was just a dream. I dream that one day, I could chat with a program to build my financial reports and focus on analysis rather than production work. But this dream became realistic when the Transformers paper, “Attention is all your need” came out in 2017. I was amazed by the possibilities of this innovative AI approach. However, I felt there was no practical way to implement natural language business applications because everything seemed too technical.
And then, ChatGPT took the world by storm and made everyone realize how AI could impact everyone’s life. As the technology becomes more accessible and cost-effective, similar open-source models are now emerging. This motivated our team at Naas to revisit how to enable businesses to leverage AI in their business workflows.
AI Drives Process Reengineering: A Holistic Approach
When incorporating AI into business processes, companies must reevaluate which tasks are necessary, how frequently they should be completed, and who will perform them. In cases where partial automation is done, companies must also determine the roles of humans and machines in their processes. While many AI applications aim to enhance specific tasks, it's crucial to see the broader impact of AI. Forward-thinking companies are leveraging AI to reassess their end-to-end processes, save time, and generate new business opportunities.
Gone are the days of technology on one side and business on the other. Both should be sitting on the same bench, working on data products that will be sustainable for specific business objectives and interconnected with each other.
Who Should Lead AI-Enabled Process Change: A Collaborative Effort
Traditionally, process improvement was siloed to the domain of operations. However, AI initiatives require collaboration across disciplines, data product managers, business change managers, and technical delivery managers. Naas advocates for a unified strategy and proper opportunity discovery. Data consumers become movie directors crafting their scripts. By articulating their desired conversations with AI models, the technical team can evaluate the feasibility of capturing the scenes with the appropriate background. Both parties should be open to reengineering their part to ensure success.
Naas Solutions: Connecting the Dots
Naas Solutions' interconnected ecosystem revolves around a Core Model, a fundamental structure that underpins business concepts such as content, growth, sales, operations, finance, and open data.
At the apex of the graph above, the Content Engine gathers content data, which the Growth Engine then utilizes to generate qualified leads. The Sales Engine then uses these leads to craft effective message sequences.
Meanwhile, at the graph's base, the Operations Engine constantly supplies the Content Engine with fresh content ideas sourced from internal activities. It also keeps the Growth and Sales Engines updated with new sign-ups or product usage signals while providing the latest cost-related information to the Finance Engine. Additionally, the Finance Engine receives revenue-related data from the Sales Engine, while the Open Data Engine gathers relevant data points for content creation, sales enablement, and financial analysis.
The seamless integration between the engines is what we mean when we think about rethinking how business workflows are connected to each other for AI-driven decision-making and optimized processes across the organization.
Conclusion
AI-driven reengineering will revolutionize business processes, and Naas Solutions aims to be at the forefront of this transformative movement by offering robust data product solutions. By leveraging AI and combining Foundation Engines and Plugins that we will cover in coming articles, businesses can transform how they operate and gain a significant competitive edge.
We are actively implementing these solutions for our own organization and a select group of clients. If you wish to embark on this transformative journey with us, please feel free to reach out at jeremy@naas.ai.
I highly recommend reading "How AI Is Helping Companies Redesign Processes" in HBR by Thomas H. Davenport, Matthias Holweg, and Dan Jeavons, as it inspired today's article.