Courtesy of Camunda's Jakob Freund, below is a transcript of his speaking session on 'Automate any Process, Anywhere' to Build a Thriving Enterprise that took place at iBPM Live Virtual Conference.
Session Information:
Automate any Process, Anywhere
Imagine your people could effectively work together so that they can build the processes that accelerate the business and improve customer's experiences – all at the right time and with the flexibility to change as soon the business needs change.
Imagine the processes could orchestrate all people, systems, and things that are needed to drive great outcomes. And imagine you could quickly understand any potential inefficiencies or bottlenecks and improve these processes as you go.
I would like to share Camunda's vision for process automation with you – a vision in which you can eventually automate any process, anywhere.
The 21st century will be dominated by algorithms. ‘Algorithm’ is arguably the single most important concept in our world -- Yuval Noah Harari: Homo Deus, 2016.
Processes are the Algorithms of an Organization. Successful businesses are masters in optimizing their algorithms
- by automating business processes that are designed precisely to their needs,
- by improving continuously as they gain more insights over time and
- by relentlessly leaving no part of a process across people, systems or devices behind.
Today’s Process Automation Challenge is End-to-end Process Automation --the key to Digital Transformation.
It’s Camunda’s mission to let you automate any process, anywhere.
Session Transcript:
Our very first guests today.
And he's coming directly from Berlin in Germany. And I'm very, very excited for welcoming Jacob Fry to be here with us. Jacob Freud is the co-founder and CEO of Commander. He is responsible for the company's vision and strategy. He's also the driving force behind come on this global growth and takes responsibility for the company culture.
As well as holding an MSC in Computer Science. He co-authored the book, Real Life BPM In, and it's a Site After Speaker at Acknowledge, and Industry Events.
Jacob, what a real pleasure to have you with us. Thank you so much for taking the time today to share your expertise with a global audience.
Thank you for that very nice introduction. Appreciate it. So.
Yeah, I'm one of those guys who wrote a book. I think you mentioned that. But also have a bit of of practice experience, which I wanted to share with the audience today. So, welcome, everyone, but I'm happy to be here with you today. And what I would like to share is a vision that we like to call, automate any process anywhere.
So, let me just show my screen and take it from here. And then I'm very happy to you.
I'm answering the questions that might come about. So, a quick intro, in case you don't know, come on that yet.
We are a software company that originated out of Berlin, Germany, but a small, globally present. And we focused on process automation. And I mentioned that, that fun, fun story about the books. So when, my cool for them, I started to come on the, back in 2008, we didn't want to build a software business. We just wanted to help organizations, supply business process management, and we're quite passionate passionate about that, that discipline. So we, we wrote that book based on the first experiences that we had gathered regarding more experiences over the course of five years and then turned our experiences into a software product basically, which is all about process automation. And, that is a bit unusual, compared to many other products out there, because, for example, when we develop oriented. So, I'm going to explain that a bit more, because it as part of that division I want to share with you today. And long story short.
Nowadays, we are a pretty well established software vendor, when it comes to automation, with many different customers all over the world.
I would say one of the most exciting projects that we are able to support nowadays is the Maastricht 20 mission.
So, the, the, the perseverance robot, that it's deployed on, mass right now, sending pictures, et cetera, back to Earth, is supported by ..., are not on the rover. But on Earth. But still come on, the hubs processing the data that is being sent back. That's a process that's automated on come under, which is obviously something that we're very proud of, quite excited about.
However, typically our customers don't send Huelva, Tomas. They have the other matters to take care of, and that's what I want to talk about.
And I'd like to start by quoting an article that I read a few music, oh, actually, but still valid, valid.
Was published by Guardian. And I can live commanded. It's about the overarching fear of death by Amazon. So what does death by Amazon mean?
No matter what industry you're in, if you're an insurance company, or a bank, or a Telco company, whenever you need to serve customers in order to actually generate revenue, you're now under threat to some degree by Amazon or other digital native companies. Because Amazon here, by the way, it's fully translate that sort of its symbol. So, what they have figured out as the secret sauce of providing superior customer experience, like really giving people what they want, when they want, where they want it right away.
This experience is now sort of determining people's expectations, also towards the bank, the insurance, the ....
So, the overarching fear is that Amazon, or someone else who might be able to provide similar experiences, might enter our industry. So the Amazon of insurance, the Amazon of banks, it doesn't have to be Amazon itself, can be the next fintech startup. The next and short tech startup. Or even that other competitor in our traditional inter maturing, or bank, or Telco industry, that is able to provide the superior customer experience. And combining that with operational efficiency at scale.
Because that is really the the sort of impossible unbalanced that that you can actually find if you, if you're an Amazon or fintech on shore tech startup and providing that experience with operational efficiency at scale. So, once you have achieved that, you can basically put anyone else out of business, Which is happening, and therefore, to death.
But I'm muslim here, that is also very present in many different organizations all over the world, as of today. So, how do we actually mitigate that? How do we become the Amazon of our industry? That's what everyone is wondering about, and process automation, And the topic for today is actually a key topic.
And the key enabler, for making that happen.
So, this is just one data point and automation survey that was conducted last year, where decision makers in different industries were interviewed about their digital transformation, ambition and agenda and how process automation ties into that.
And, the vast majority, almost everyone, confirmed that process automation is key to digital transformation.
So, now, the question, of course, is, what does that mean?
So, what is process automation? I mean, there's so many different ways to go about automation out there. And then Gartner calls it the automation toolbox. So it's not that there's not this one single product, for example, that serves as the silver bullet, and that makes all of that happening.
So, one thing to be aware of is that that's also confirmed that study, and that actual Android and process automation spans, across many different possible endpoints, many possible local automations thing, for example, RPA, which is local task automation, or, think AI, Which is local decision making and, or APIs which encapsulate and low cost services, that micro services, et cetera, That trust conduct one part of the overall business process. So, so end to end automation spans, across all those different end points. and, therefore, all of those different end points need to be orchestrated and not just in our traditional data center, but also at the Cloud. And let it be the public cloud, private, cloud. And Cloud. And increasingly also hybrid setups. Because we can't, typically, just move from our on prem data center to the public cloud title way. So this is the reality that we're facing as of today.
And we're going to talk a bit about those challenges in on this presentation.
But it all starts with the realization that process, as a concept, might be one of the most important concepts that we're seeing in today's organizations. And to maybe also bring that together with a few more fundamental understanding. So wanted to quote, the book author that, I can highly recommend you all know how valuable wrote a book called **** Deus.
You might've heard of Ferrari a historian from Israel because he also offer the best seller sapiens A brief history of mankind. So, also very common to this one is sort of the, the, the SQL and normal deals and the obvious speaks about the 21st century and what we have to expect. And that essentially and he quotes Edmund States, right?
At the beginning, actually, of that book that the algorithm might be the single, most important concept in our world. So, he then goes on this probably what I would do with who's actually R&D provides a few examples for that.
And if you're a few, just half the time, I recommend to just do that, exercise and read the book and read that chapter about the algorithm, and tried to express those examples in process flow charts, because it's actually very straightforward. I did that myself, and let model those algorithms and the BPM and process modeling standard, and it's very straightforward that leads to do that.
And the reason for that is that the BPM and standard richest you probably know. It's the ISO standard, so the globally recognized standard for expressing business processes and flowchart diagrams, that BPM and standard is meant to capture a business process as an algorithm.
And as soon as we have that algorithm in our hands, as soon we have it in front of us and it is clearly described. And it also becomes executable, which is the very first ingredient and precondition for successful automation.
So when you think of processes in your organization, I recommend to make that connection and understand processes as the algorithms of your organization.
So this is really the key fundamental concept to make automation happening across different technologies. products and deployment setups. Think of a process as an algorithm captured somehow their wisdom, and then you have my very first step to actually automate that.
And it's perfectly possible to do that using well known, widely recognized standards, like BPM, and which are supported by many different vendors and products, OK? Well, that's nice. So we have that, let's say, that fundamental concept. But now, what's the, what's the real-world situation? What does it mean for us? Once we have the process in front of us, express that as algorithms, and we can really undergo that fundamental digital transformation that we have to undergo in order to stay in power, And when I left over the Amazons of the world, because if we don't do that, we might be out of business tomorrow, so we have to re-invent ourselves. So dy going Forward, which means that we have to organize all the processes across people and systems and increasingly also physical devices. We have to provide that superior customer experience towards our, our, our audience system markets, across different channels, whether it be, the wrap, the phone, the on-site experience from limit. And we have to do all of that in a way that a swift efficient and streamlined, that we're really not just produce, but mitigate those operational costs and improve profitability.
Especially also at scale, it's always about at scale manolo to dominate, to lead our industry, our category.
So, let us see that set.
Then done, I mean, if we are that fintech startup or that in short tech startup, you could argue that, well, they don't feel that they lack a lot of things that we have as established enterprises. They don't talk about brand. For example, they don't have our marketing reach that, I'm half our customer base, so They lack a lot of things that you could aren't you are actually at our advantage.
At the same time, the threatening us and Noah in our business. And that is because they don't trust leg, or the good things, we are half. They also lack something that is actually our way.
And that can be summarized as legacy to be a bit more specific about that. But what sort of legacy am I talking about here? So one is quite obvious.
I'm assuming at least you're aware of, that, it's about technology, it's about our applications, all those core banking systems, other applications that we may be purchased, like two or decades ago, that we implemented ourselves even just one decade ago. All of that is an impediment. If it actually doesn't help us to correctly flexibly, adjust our operations by reflecting on business processes in the technology that is supposed to execute them. So, we're half the technology legacy.
We have the infrastructure legacy. Wish that speaks to, for example, the way we operate and provide our technologies. So, coming back to the matter about the data center, for example. and the different local data centers that are not so easily transferred to the cloud.
And the third element that is often often not so, like, look, everyone is aware of that. But the third one is our organization's legacy ping the organization itself. And this speaks to how we basically go about things. So our again, processes, our org chart, how we have basically tailored our organization in silos with different departments that are actually departmentalized. So that sense they don't really talk to each other. Especially if things, for example, we have the business units on the one hand.
And we have the ITN Development Units on the other hand and more recent movements in software development like, for example, Scrum and Agile paradigms, they speak to that problem, but the problem is still there. So when we look at, for example, now the matter of business process and how we understand our processes, we have a huge problem. If we don't speak the same language, for example, lunch, only, communicating and change requests. And I'm not really express different helpful.
So all these, all these roadblocks on our way and they aren't in the way of a greenfield startup because they don't have to two to deal with that sort of legacy.
So as an established enterprise just means that we, we experienced a certain disconnect. So, we turn to that, that disconnect the enterprise, which means that business processes, they are fragmented. there, are basically scattered across different departments of IT systems.
So we don't have that order to cash. Put your mental pay, and awesome our processes, in one hand, from a holistic understanding, and one holistic execution level, but we have parts of it, and system. A, we have parts of this system be. Hopefully, have some sort of integration of off, more than not, And the integration isn't really helpful, And we have no specific responsibility. That is all about making sure that this process works actually really, really well from the customer's point of view, as well as from an efficiency point of view.
We don't have that connection with them, if we don't have that, that end to end visibility. So this means that you basically don't really know what's happening, and we don't really know where certain cases are pending, or if we're performing well, or could perform much better when it comes to, for example, start with time in order to provide the customer what they have audit and within a certain SLA, So we just don't know, let alone, do we have the, the control? So the ability to do anything about it.
So, in that sense, we are not able to quickly go through an incremental improvement cycles and make change happen Within the, like, within a day or within a week, It's always means that we have to set up some more cumbersome of IT change project, which then can again and take a longtime unto others completed, which is completely inacceptable if you really want to, again, be on Palm I level with the Amazons of the world.
So, the silo teams that I mentioned, the business of MIT, has worked in isolation, and they're not really a joint collaborative team that work together, and but everyone is doing, like, sort of their own thing. And therefore, again, more often than not, they lose time when it comes to quickly clarifying what needs to be done in the sense of implementing a new process, or change an existing process on the technical level.
So, so that the short story gets me off that that overall disconnection or miss alignment across the organization, that that pins us down.
Basically, it means that we are well aware, that we need to, for example, launch that new product, launch that your data plan that provides some seasons specific offering to our cell phone and mobile network customers, for example.
Or and provide that new way of buying health insurance or claiming my, my, my damaged settlements in Nevada convenient way, all those sort of of changes and improvements don't really happen, or don't happen fast enough, because of that disconnect. So, in total, you could say, we are basically paralyzed by that, that legacy and quite often. It's not this one thing that pins or stones. So, it's not that we could say. Oh, we could just get rid of that one system or for could just replace that, that one team with a more Agile team, for example. All the the issues would go away as A as an organization that has grown over years and decades and sometimes even centuries. With thousands of employees. We typically are pinned down by a number of different and a single items that that hinder. Our our agility and total basically paralyze us.
So, the big question now is OK, well, if if that is the situation, If, that's what's keeping us, from combining our existing strengths around brand market access, um, Market know-how know-how in product delivery. So, combining that with all the new and an upcoming ways to reach customers, make them aware of us, and provide that amazing experience, delivering our services instantly and not overnight.
Or even over the course of days or weeks.
If we are, if you want to combine those two things in order to be truly leading our category, but we are hindered by that, paralysis by that, by that legacy What can we do about it?
That's the correction to that, that I'm hearing in my conversations with CIOs, Center of Excellence, leads for for automation, CEO's even. Sometimes.
When I'm hearing that question, the answer is almost always the .... We don't have the luxury of greenfield products or projects. So we need to work with a situation that we have. And then we need to transform gradually step by step. So, it means that, OK, let's go from our old, legacy world, our old legacy environment, step by step, slowly but steadily with a relentless focus on and strategic agenda, but incrementally.
And let's, let's transform ourselves into this new digital, me, as an organization, in order to actually become the Amazon of our industry.
That is easier said, than done as to kinda margin. But I would argue that, for example, the rise of robotic process automation, that you're probably aware of, and we're not an RPA vendor ourselves. So let's sense, we are agnostic. But the rise of RPA is exactly because of that, because an existing organizations or established organizations contrast the rip out the old legacy systems and replace them with something greenfield, microservices based, modern architecture. They have to somehow automate where they can automate By, for example, mimicking man, your behavior that happens in front of the user interface, which is exactly what an RPA robot does. That is not process automation, that is task automation. So in that sense, the acronym ... is a bit misleading, but it is automation over the last.
And it's one of those, one of those tiny steps that lets you can make in order to gradually transform and increase the level of automation. In this particular example, with RPA, it comes with strings attached that I also want to talk about briefly address in order to make this presentation awesome formative. But let's, first before, and look at the overall situation. So, when I say we have that legacy that we need to deal with, in order to gradually transformed, what does it mean?
What are the typical categories, now, on a, on a technical level, that we have to be aware of? So one is the diversity of endpoints, basically.
So when we look at I Let us say, I don't know a lot of which a nation process, if I'm a bank, for example, And my typically, you have many different parts of that process. So some things might need to happen manually. So, depending on the size of the loan, for example, or the demographics of the customer, the plans for the lawn, or based on other criteria, we might need some sort of manual check before we actually grant alone. So, we have people, basically, that contribute to the execution of a process by, by completing tasks that were assigned to them.
That's that's the manual part. Then we have rules like business rules, for example, expressed, for example, or decision tables, that allow us to automatically make decisions, not yet AI based.
But, but, let's say simple algorithmic decision table based decisions, and but also, for example, my loan origination might decide upon the credit worthiness of someone who applies for, we have API endpoints. So things that are encapsulated, but exposed via a proper, for example, the rest API, this could be either a some ERP system, or quote banking system that expose a certain functionality, and via API, Or it could be.
But if you have bought off the shelf, or it could be some, home-grown, a piece of code, basically, and that, the exposed by our Services API service system, in order to really use that in different circumstances, including our business process, Where we might, for example, to say, OK, we need to add certain data of the applicant to our core banking system in order to store that data, For example, we might have IOT devices. So actual physical parts, that they play a role in our business process. I have to admit that. my imagination isn't big enough to make something for a lot of which nation process in this context. But, for example, we see that quite often in research labs, so actual, for example, physical robots conducting certain test operations. And that is a typical example of an IOT device. And that might play a role, and contribute to a mission, critical core, end to end process. You might have microservices exposed, for example, by the event bus systems like Apache Kafka, and we have RPA robots.
As I said, robots are bots an RPA. Don't automate processes, they automate tasks, So routines that are relatively shorter, wanting, typically set of steps conducted by a human operator. So in that sense, very much an equivalent to the manual work here on the left hand side, but mimicked, and basically buy a piece of software called the RPA tool and which again, contributes to the end to end process. And we have the sort of next generation. For the Business rule automation, we have to machine learning slash AI elements, that might, for, example, support, doesn't want to touch. And again, when it comes to vote on which a nation, and also our damage claim settlement process.
So, we need to, we need to be able to involve all those different endpoints in our end to end process, and those endpoints are often part of our legacy.
That's the whole point. So, so, quite often, this means that we still need to be able to, and to involve to include our existing systems, and in the end, to end automation, And we need a way to make that happen.
We also need a way to include, let's say, a greenfield developed parts of our business process in those end to end flows. And those might be implemented in very different technology stacks. So ask the reader or the former CEO of Goldman Goldman Sachs one set, Goldman Sachs is a technology company.
Goldman Sachs is not a bank, Goldman Sachs is a technology company that knows about money.
So Goldman Sachs employ more software developers than, for example, LinkedIn or Facebook.
So, think about that process, that we're all tuning into software companies, and we're all going to employ software developers, Kudos Java, c-sharp, Python, you name it, in order to implement our core.
Like, our mission critical is unique, differentiating operations. In our, in our systems, it's not gonna happen. Buy off the shelf products. Use off the shelf software for, I didn't know your absence workflow, or whatever.
But if you're a bank or insurance, and you want to automate your core business, and you're almost going to conduct actual software development project, which means that you're going to employ software developers of certain, different kinds.
And you'll need, again, the ability to include that diversity of tax tax, in your end, to end flow. So, you might have part of your process that implemented in Java, and others might be implemented in c-sharp, this is not going to become less. It's going to become more and because the rope becomes more polyglot, and we have to move very, very fast, and they cannot afford to always completely re platform everything that gets implemented two decades ago. And I don't know, Java to something that you feel might be more modern nowadays, for example.
So the, the third element of complexity is, where do we want our, our automation stack, basically. So I mentioned the local data center, where this the public cloud, multi-cloud vendors for the trees that are coming about. So wanting parts of it. For example, on GCP parts of it on Azure, or AWS, and having hybrid cloud setup go for, and parts of it, and my public cloud. Or whether it be, for example, GCP Google Cloud parts of it, and my private cloud parts of it on my true, like on prem server, that is somewhere, I don't know, my living room. So we have, we have processes, we're seeing end to end processes that actually run those different clouds and local deployments. But it's the same process. So that, again, the needs of their needs to be seamless hand over in order to make that happen. And the reliable and customer friendly way.
So, all of that requires a new approach to process automation, which is where we come in, based on our experience. And that's how we defined come window as consultants. But, of course, this is more philosophy than a certain certain products. So, I just recommend to look for that sort of philosophy when looking at end to end process automation and technology stacks not as a substitute to other elements of your automation toolbox, Like, for example, RPA, but as a compliment, because we combine those products in order to make true automation happening. So, what, what I would advise against us looking at, at the old ways of BPM S So there was a category and defined in the early two thousands, basically called BPM system, or BPM suite, and that's like two decades ago. And so.
So, back in the days, there wasn't an idea about, Hey, I have this one system, this one product, and here, I built my entire process automation solution. Like it, like a one stop shop, basically, at my UI, and my different services, and everything that is part of my process is implemented, and operated and maintained. And this one vendor's product, basically.
And often, in a way, that is sort of the model driven, low Kurdish and a sense of high use. Our great product, vendor, ..., implement everything, and our X Y is that language, and you won't need software developers anymore. And that was the promise that was never actually held, and for mission critical, key business process automation projects. So, instead of looking at that isolated one stop shop in this vendor specific proprietary way, really cool mind to think about process automation as an, as an end to end orchestration layer that spans across all those other elements of your process. And that means that those are the elements, aren't implemented a new entrant orchestration layer.
It's a natural thing you'll need to plug and play basically all the time in order to, to, to, to keep agile and modernize your automation stack. So think about it in a loosely coupled away and not a vendor specific proprietary implementation way. So embrace your software developers to your Java c-sharp, Python developers. They are strongest asset, you are a software company where Miguel, within the sphere in US up the company, so make sure that you have the best software developers in your organization and empower them with an approach that is.
develop a friendly, not tough install extend, closed suite, black Box, sort of, proprietary monolith.
But this developer oriented, that's about it open, ended allows your different stakeholders to collaborate based on standards. Like, for example, the BPM and standard for process modeling, the ... standard for decision automation. They are different standards that embraced by different stakeholders, stop a developer's enterprise architects, project managers, all the way to, to business and line managers all the way to the people that make sure your transformation happen smoothly. All the way to even the CIO, and even CEOs, are able to look at those standards based diagrams and understand what is happening in their business in a real-time way.
So this is what?
what, what does we commendable and the sense of an of an approach and the philosophy and if you apply this and should go for that gradual transformation, like project by project, step by step, and the business outcomes that you always should be looking for are the four on the right-hand side.
So those projects should typically provide a better customer experience either for you, customers, the ones that you're selling tool, or your internal customers, if you're looking at internal services, for example, like ITSM. So better customer experience of measured in metrics like M cycle Time. That's that's the usual suspect.
I want my stuff faster, like its value to them, but I'm traveling to the US from Europe. I want to use my credit card over there. I want to activate my credit card for a broad payments, and I don't want to buy for a day until I get that confirmation. I want to go that now. So don't tell me that you have to process my request in the batch fashion overnight and your mainframe system because that's how it was implemented. Figure out single instance processing, provide the customer experience, and that that service I'm requesting, Hideaway, that's, that's the first one.
Second one, and that's often a combination by the way, of those business outcomes.
Second one is being able to quicker, get to the market. For example, with your new product, I mentioned that data plan example, so, being able to come up with a new data plan as a Telco company and launch that data plan, I don't know, our special Christmas package for you, and you enter your beloved ones, and this is the bundled price. New data plan needs a delivery across different, again, legacy systems renewed to orchestrate all of them in one end to end flow Avenue to do that very, very quickly in order to be able to launch our competitive offering before the other stew. on Short notice, that's shorter time to value.
Hi, agility is obviously, related to that, so let's, it's about being able to correctly implement changes. So sorts of business, and driven changes, that need to happen on our end to end process, in order to, again, provide a certain customer experience, or to reflect, for example, compliance and regulations that have changed, and etcetera.
So being quick, being fast, and despite all those legacy systems that still exist in your organization, and the fourth month, but just again sort of self explanatory: the operational efficiency. That that allows you to provide all of that and evaluate economically by at scale. So those four, and should typically be on your radar, when striving for tangible provable business outcomes of your automation projects and this is also what you can expect to Berkeley sometimes just one of the four. But often it's a combination of flight.
So one example here, a structured telecom. That's the case study I'd like to conclude with. Great, great role model. I believe, so, doctor Telecom and biggest toggle carrier and Europe. And they have a customer service department, or at rates that's on unit, I think, around 3000 employees, looking after customers that have issues with their land lines, for example. And they introduced RPA for local task automation of years ago, already, great success.
Then now, going through the next cycle of the, of the transformation agenda, basically. So then now this case, using can wonder in order to orchestrate their local RPA bots so that they don't get overwhelmed by those hundreds of bots, are actually 3000 bots. And that will happen production, which is very easy to manage or very difficult to manage, if you're really looking at the end to end and business process.
So they are putting, come one day as an end to end orchestrator.
On top of the RPA landscape, orchestrating those different RPA bots. So telling each spot, when it's their turn, to complete a certain task as part of the end to end process. And more comes to clue. They know, as you hopefully to us, roll, that RPA is not a long term solution. RPA lives off the pain of having a legacy system. So RPA is like a painkiller like an e-book, or in general if you're having back pains just like pop a pill and you're feeling better.
But your back paints are not actually cured. Just mitigating the symptom, that's RPA. If you really want to become healthy again, and you really want to become a sustainable, modern, technology based organizations, you need to get rid of your legacy, eventually, nothing, big, bang, fashion, by, step, by step, slowly, and, and relentlessly unsteadily. So what they're doing in such a tenant comments, they're leveraging the entrant orchestration layer commander.
And then now sunsetting select the bots, like, one after the other and replacing those with properly developed microservices.
So in that sense, I might have a business process, consists of, let us say, I don't know, 40 steps, and let's say 30 of those, are conducted by RPA bots. Let's say five of them are still conducted by, by manual work, like a personal front of a computer, and five of them are already conducted by micro services, which used to be RPA bots before, which used to be manual work tasks. And even before that, so going from manual work to RPA bot to microservice. And having that, and I, and a hybrid setup within the same business process, gives you that flexibility and control to, to gradually replace first, the manual work with bots than the bots with microservices. Or you're just skip the box and go home. And sometimes, by the way, that depends on your, on your circumstances, obviously.
So let us, that is one example of true to overcome the problem of legacy paralysis And the curse of digital transformation, all right. There's plenty of more examples I mentioned, banks, insurance telcos and most often because that's what you typically see in our customer base. But as you know, and I assume process automation to subvert the industry in this field Gnostic and topic and all the way to processing data sent back from the mass robots. So that's obviously like one of a kind as a case study.
All right. That's what I have. Asked the acid presentation. And I've shared that with you. Our mission is to automate any process, no matter what endpoints you want to orchestrate, and automate that anywhere, no matter where your, when your business process, on earth or somewhere else. So that's the story of, come on. and I hope I was able to convey the airline philosophy, which I believe makes little sense and also outside of specific vendors.
Good, I'm done.
I don't know if anyone have a terrific presentation.
I'm going to ask you to stop sharing your your slides so that I can come back in and the so we have a number of questions that have come up here during your presentation. Thank you, audience, for providing those questions. You still have time, if you didn't get your question in, get it in. And that will now relate them to, to Jacob here. As we have an opportunity to have this live Q&A, S questions that are most meaningful to your contacts, it doesn't matter if your experience story, if you're beginning your journey on business process management. So, Jacob, I'm going to start with a couple of kind of fundamental questions that were asked by the, by the audience. There's a really good one here by Neil Newbie, who is asking.
And he asks about the current state of BPM. So I'll read his background.
First of all, he says, Great presentation, and I grew up in the world of BPM 4 or 5 years ago.
When was this shift made to I BPM or Intelligent BPM?
And so, what has been, kind of, the, the, if you look at the last five years or so, what has been kind of the evolution of business process management, and this, this idea of having intelligent business process management, is that just like fancy branding, or is it because we have a technology automation and growth of digital transformation? How do you assess the evolution of BPM in the last five years in this intelligent component?
Millimeter, hmm. No, it's a great question, but I mean, I've been in the space and BPM space for now.
Gosh, I think like 15 years. So I started to become a way of BPM as a thing, but there was still studying actually, so that was like in 25.
So, so since then, this, this, this whole thing has has developed or changed quite tremendous. And I believe sometimes it was also a bit difficult and confusing because BPM is such a branch to them. I mean, everything's process in a way, the management is everywhere, and I mean, business, OK.
That's not really qualifying at any further, so, So business process management, that's a, that's an incredibly generic term.
And therefore the curse and blessing and the eye didn't make it any easier. I mean, intelligent again, it's not very specific. So, that's, that's a preface, I'm saying that because it means that different people might have different opinions about the semantics behind the term.
When I think about the past five years, let's have a kind of conversation about that.
I think BPM as a term, is not actually a password anymore, and, in fact, and that's a pity, because that speaks about something very, very important.
So the problem of process and process management and automation has not gone anywhere. It's imminent, and it becomes bigger and bigger and the minds of RPA, for example. It's a great testament to that.
So in that sense, from a marketing standpoint, and BPM is actually a bit problematic nowadays, it's not as hot anymore for my practitioner standpoint. It's it's actually very important. There's a lot to do in the space, or they are. So try not to answer that question.
I think that that, therefore, BPM, practitioners, and protagonists have struggled with a term a bit in the past five years, but with regards to to actual projects that happening that I can talk about, I mean, we grew like 60, 80, 90% year over year, the past five years, so, we're doing well.
And, we don't only VPN, so, and, that sense, there's a certain. There's a certain that's, like, gaps between between the, the verdict the marketing and the reality out there. On the other hand, now, quickly covering the eye and the intelligent aspect. So, Gartner says, for example, that the Hyper automation, Britches mother category, but a, an idea a concept. And you have an automation toolbox that Johan, for example, RPA, but also the ID PMS. And also dedicated an AI and machine learning components and they also sort of throwing process mining. And then you have a certain certain mixed.
I would argue that the, It depends very much, how you define intelligence in the BPM context, but if you think of specific machine learning, and an AI M, there is, there is potential and opportunity there, and that is being leveraged. For example, I mentioned the fourth detection example, which was then part of an overarching process, but, for example, also, learning continuously by data generated, by automate the processes. And then, feeding that back into a process to predict, for example, a certain risk in a certain process instance, like, oh, under those circumstances, this might be for the attempt. And then be detected yet. But we are fitting, can route the process accordingly, for example, to a manual workup stuff Like that is happening.
But, quite frankly, that's maybe, like, five or 10% of the projects, like the big problems. They are much more down to Earth, like just solving the disconnect problem, for example, about the legacy systems.
That's very if you're thinking that the petitioner it's quite boring, sometimes not so fancy, but there's a lot of lot of money to make by having organizations overcome that problem.
Farewell, farewell, upgrading sites, Jacob.
I have the next question here comes from William Fuller and he is talking about the The dimension that you had about a standards based collaboration and the and his question is, Are there universo standards like ISO standards related to, to, to this area, to these collaborations area that you describe during a presentation?
Absolutely, yeah, I mentioned one, but I should, like explained that maybe a bit further. I'll make sure it's like received. So, the most important standard out there is code BPM and so on.
Business process, modeling notation, if you Google that Standard, you should hopefully see that it's an ISO standard. So, it was originally invented actually by a gentleman called Steve White quake II, by the way, worked at IBM back in the days of 2002, was then, embraced by Object Management Group. So, that's, like an industry standards group. And they would do the heavy lifting with the further development was published in 20 11 and version 2 dot 0, which was a big milestone because that standard, you can graphically expressive business process flowchart, boxes, arrows, last bit of symbols. But you're also like automatically describing it as executable code, so the standard defines a so-called civilization form it underneath that. Flowchart and tools like ... come on now. And 50 other tools speak that standard.
So, if you want to learn the most important step in the process automation, lookup BPM, and that's what I would recommend, that's very helpful, Thank you for that.
The next question is from Jorge, he copied here, and Jorge is talking about some, the issue about, you know, anything to empower this transformation.
But before, I get to this question, you know, just as a setting, I have been for over 25 years on BPA BPM. And if you look at BPM in manufacturing, for example, it's such a straightforward thing, because engineers and scientists are sitting there, thinking about how to design a manufacturing line, and to end process definition, is something that's very basic in the steps of manufacturing processes.
Then you go into the world of transactional processes, and it's kind of a free for all that everybody has their own idea and how it should be done, you know, this leadership team is in charge for three years, so they do things in a certain way.
There comes a new leadership team, and they changed the philosophy, almost overnight about how certain processes are going to be done, and then, over time, especially in transactional processes, there is the lack of process definition, and to end is striking number one, and then, there is this organizational silos, that form.
So, all of this to address to, to bring up Jorge's question, which is that, before we even get into automation, why? You must experience this all the time, because you're gonna go try to automate something for your client, and you'll get into some basic, fundamental issues of organizational silos, lack of end to end process, definition, and understanding. So the question is, how do you address some of those fundamental issues before you move into automating processes?
Yeah, that's an old question. That's a very good question. Sort of problems, obviously, not, not, not new. And what you said, of course, shows up as, right?
Still, so many angles to that, like, you know, top management commitment. How do I get the buy in and get people's time to sit down with me and discuss the process? And they will act in their daily work they need to look at.
So, I gotta say, as also a, let's say, a seasoned practitioner with scars on my back.
I still do need to need to dangle the carrot in front of stakeholders, that is strong.
And the one carrot that, because of our business, I guess, we're most familiar with, is, in fact, the automation part. What I mean, this. And that's, that's, again, think waterfall against agile, Like waterfall means I have, like, six months of concept, that six months of implementation.
What agile means. I have, let's say, I don't know, 2 to 4 weeks of concept at most. And then I have my increment implementation. I get something back. I see something that's tangible. And then I move on.
So what worked for us really well was, And to really combine that, so don't think, again, in silos, like process mapping and process automation, but think it as one integrated exercise. So let's look at a process. That's captured correctly. Let's feed it into the engine. See how it wants and assimilated fashion first but go through that that cycle as quickly as possible.
And that is because automation opens all doors.
So it's a, it's a strong, it's a strong ally issue in the process management practice.
That's an excellent point, and I think you mentioned this during our presentation, if there is the good, the bad and the ugly related to RPA, for example. But the good of RPA is that there has created because a certain task automation that kind of has surfaced the value creation, potential, certain areas, that allow people to look at those areas and say, well, you know what, there's more to be done here, and Joanne. And if it is built, may be a bit of momentum to do the end to end process exploration. Because, as you mentioned earlier, sometimes the end to end process definition can feel to organizations, like, trying to solve world hunger, special, and very complex processes, you know, end to end.
So this point, opportunities for value creation of RPA is a, is a, is a great way of kind, of getting people interested. And then they say there's more that we can do, And that's almost building that from the inside out.
There are pros and cons of all approaches, but I think you would agree that as so much of that depends on the level of commitment from senior leaders, and the vision, and understanding that they have of the entire program.
So, we, um, great questions from the audience. Thank you so much. I'm going to ask you a second question, because we are over time. But this is a quick question from Anna Martinez here. We've talked about all this technologists, and we cannot overlook the fact that there is process mining out there. We talk about RPA. How this process mining, if you could do it quickly, for me, fit into this picture.
Like that, quickly.
So, if I don't have process automation yet, but I have processes and then leave traces in my data, I can use process mining to get a first understanding of how those processes actually won.
And, the only the intersection with automation is that I might also get an idea, or direction of, where I could apply automation, in order to leverage potential. That's totally work together, basically.
That's fantastic, and for the audience, and for those of you who don't know a process mind, is, that was just a great primary right there for Jacob, And that next week, we have the entire three days dedicated, exclusively to process mining, make sure you register for that conference. Jacob .... Thank you so much for taking your time to share your expertise of our global audience from Berlin, Germany, to the world. We're very thankful for your participation.
Yeah, Thank you, Deserve. Great. Having a big part of your presentations.
Thank you.
Ladies and gentlemen that was Jacobs from the Sea off Commander, sharing his expertise about business process management. We will be shifting gears in our next session that's going to start at the top of the hour. And I'm thrilled to welcome doctor Keith Clean Scale who's going to talk to us about applications in government. Any specifically, his session is your Attitude is your breakthrough change in the attitude. Change the culture. So, doctor Keith ... gonna talk to us about how he has engaged his organization and government in the, in that journey of culture, business, and digital transformation, and the, and how attitude matters. So, I hope to see you back at the top of the hour for this exciting session. So, thank you.
Jakob Freund,
Co-Founder and CEO,
Camunda.
Jakob is Co-Founder and CEO of Camunda – responsible for the company’s vision and strategy. He’s also the driving force behind Camunda’s global growth and takes responsibility for the company culture. As well as holding an MSc in Computer Science, he co-authored the book “Real-Life BPMN” and is a sought-after speaker at technology and industry events.
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