Artificial Intelligence and Process are on the Menu
(Previously published here on Sept 30)
I just attended Automation Anywhere’s Imagine conference right here in Austin, Texas [in September]. And then I attended CamundaCon this week, and wanted to just give first impressions from each:
Automation Anywhere
Automation Anywhere’s product offering has evolved, and I found the current incarnation to be the most coherent messaging and offering to the market that I’ve seen from them so far. The value they are offering clients is clear: an “Automation Success Platform” — and it is obvious how that is a thread Automation Anywhere can drive through their whole business, from their product planning to their sales and marketing messages. Key themes:
- Automation isn’t just something you do in silos. The message was to focus on the process and understanding the whole picture (which of course, resonates with me and my own business process background and bias). Automation inside a single application is much less interesting and doesn’t address someone’s workflow, nor does it address the whole business’ workflow.
- An Automation platform should make it easier to plug AI into your operations. Automation is the hands and feet to the AI brain. For many years, I’ve been saying about AI, “and then what?” meaning — once your algorithm gives you an insight, then what? how do you operationalize what the augmented intelligence is telling you? it isn’t enough for a CEO to know something new, or achieve an insight, we need to make those elements matter on the front lines of your business. You need to build a solution around your AI services or they are just interesting shelf-ware.
- A focus on the automation platform for supporting successful adoption. Automation Anywhere calls their offering the “Automation Success Platform” and it is a unifying theme that ties all of their product efforts together nicely. Why does this product exist? — It will help you deliver successful automation for your business. Got it.
Automation Anywhere has shared their keynote presentations which are recommended viewing if you want to understand the market or their positioning within it. Attendance was up from last year, and there was a good buzz around elements of the platform focused on scale — the COE manager and generative AI sessions were well attended all throughout. Everyone wants to understand how to scale automation, and everyone wants to understand how to get the most value from investments in new AI techniques.
The message is, put AI to work! and the linked article is a great blog explaining Automation Anywhere’s world-view. Personally, I appreciate that Automation Anywhere’s message is always about improving what we can do, augmenting what we can do, and enhancing what we can do — with automation and AI. I think this is an important perspective for responsible use of AI, and it leads to better decisions when you think about how AI can improve the work we do, rather than replace the people who do it. (see more on this perspective in my previous post “ What do Autonomous Driving and No Code Platforms have in Common?” where I make the argument that this “improvement” lens would have been a better starting point for autonomous driving and for low-code/no-code tooling)
I’ve been surprised that Automation-focused (formerly RPA-focused) software firms didn’t press harder into process-oriented thinking and orchestration. As a long-term process guy, this seems like an obvious evolution. But process orientation remains the domain of consultancies and not of software in this ecosystem, despite a nice shift in the talk track to really think about systems of work and the process not just the task automation.
I think it is just as simple as, looking at things through an automation lens, process is only interesting in as far as how well it supports your automation objectives. In a process lens, automation is only interesting in as far as how well it supports your process.
CamundaCon 2023
My next stop was CamundaCon 2023 — which took place in New York City (Brooklynn/Williamsburg to be more precise).
The words automation were barely uttered at CamundaCon, where process orchestration took center stage, with a side of AI generally and generative AI specifically.
Last year we published an interview that Jakob and I sat down to record, and I think it is timeless in that it illustrates how long-term thinkers like Jakob, Camunda, and BP3 view the world through the lens of process:
It’s a good listen — and if you’re interested, let me know, there’s a 30 minute version of this interview that has some great nuggets of wisdom that were left on the cutting room floor.
In my next post I’ll share thoughts from CamundaCon and what we learned. What I’ll say here is that we had a great experience and event — we would highly recommend it to any of our clients, and to our friends in the space. The content and production is top notch and so are the people who attend.
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Originally published at https://sfrancisatx.substack.com.
Scott Francis is CEO and Founder at BP3 — where we focus on process as the lens to drive business value: because if your business matters, your process matters.
