The Software AG International User Groups (IUG24) conference in Dublin this week announced the vendor’s signature mission for generative artificial intelligence – the democratization of mining and business process management.
Stefan Sigg, product director at the German business software group, told the assembled media and analysts ahead of his keynote presentation that organizations are still in the early stages of discovering how GenAI can improve business process mining and modeling, but that it holds significant promise. And that it needs to be better understood in order for that to happen.
Sigg is a mathematician by training and spent 22 years at SAP, joining Software AG in 2017.
At the briefing, he said that they are announcing “two revolutionary ways to use GenerativeAI, i.e. large language models. Number one, we allow artificial intelligence to find where business processes need to be improved… Number two, we allow artificial intelligence to create [business process] models.”
He showed how, using ChatGPT, the vendor’s Aris business process mining and management software can answer queries like, “what is my most difficult business process?” and “write an email for me to my CEO about how it can be improved”.
He said that these GenAI characteristics profit, as do all GenAIs from the wisdom of the crowd.
“If you want to do something with artificial intelligence, you have to have evidence that there is enough world wisdom. If you ask something that nobody knows, of course it won’t work. It won’t give you the answer to a new math problem.”
At the conference, which was attended by more than 600 people from about 300 of Software AG’s global customers, the vendor announced updates to its Aris process mining/modeling tool and its Alfabet business architecture and strategic portfolio management system.
Within Aris, he introduced what he calls an “AI companion, to enable employees at any level to identify and increase the efficiency of their operations by helping them mine and model business processes. At a time when rapid change and fierce competition are commonplace, this new feature has the ability to democratize streamlining processes within organizations,” the statement said.
In that statement, Sigg added: “Ultimately, jobs must be more competitive and differentiated.” The obstacle is that they often know what to do, but the complexity of their organization prevents them from identifying clear areas for improvement. As they try to analyze their key business processes more deeply, the adoption of sophisticated yet accessible process modeling and process mining tools is required. The introduction of AI assistance in ARIS will accelerate and simplify this initiative. Using natural language queries to extract specific insights from process data is a really sharp weapon for teams to create sustainable business success.”
In the media and analyst session, he went further into what he sees as the value of Generative AI for business software, such as business process mining. It is worth quoting at length because GenAI is not universally understood, or could be.
“These big language models are stupid. The intelligence is based on the incredible amount of data they index. Now, that’s not new technology. Where this technology comes from is language translation. That is why they are also called language models.
“In the 80s or so, people tried to teach a software system what a language was. They tried to build software systems that understand language, semantically, syntactically, for translation, but then a new approach came along with the Internet. The internet has billions of web pages, probably all of them have been translated somewhere. So instead of teaching the software what the language is, we just look at what the translation looks like. In a smart way, not the whole text, but token by token. »How many times has it been
translated this way?’ We take the top of that and then glue it. And what comes out is magic. He’s incredibly good. What we have here is a huge network, and there is an algorithm that works on that network in a very smart way”.
GenAI is still going strong
GenAI seems to remain a topic of interest for enterprise IT and among customers like Software AG. despite some user fatigue. For example, a recent study by TechTarget’s Market Insights team, based on an analysis of user activity on our global network of websites, shows a 183% increase in engagement with GenerativeAI among a business process management-specific audience over the past 12 months. And the 2024 Technology Spending Intentions Survey, conducted by Enterprise Strategy Group and TechTarget Research, found that 39% of surveyed organizations worldwide plan to make significant investments in business process automation in the next 12 months.
Asking business questions
Software AG claims its AI assistant will enable anyone in an organization to ask standard and relevant business questions to easily explore processes. They can ask questions like “find anomalies in our buy-to-pay processes” or “what are the biggest bottlenecks in our distribution networks”? And in response, they can get detailed answers, claims the supplier.
It is available now. In the third quarter of this year, its AI process modeling assistant, as Sigg demonstrated in a media and analyst session and also in his keynote, promises to let users use natural language queries to generate process models without manual editing.
The vendor also announced a new release of its Alfabet product for enterprise architecture and strategic portfolio management. The release, the vendor said, makes analysis of Alfabet’s “large and intertwined repository of IT landscape information far more accessible to non-IT users”.
In this regard, Sigg commented: “We are in a new period of business. More products and services are digital and almost everyone in business has a personal interest in IT. Everyone should contribute and cooperate in order to properly analyze and decide what to do next. That’s why we redesigned Alfabet. AI is redefining what it means to have access to information, so we’re removing barriers to accessing, analyzing and sharing the data that’s critical to everyone’s role in digital transformation.”
The new features are described as follows:
- Smart Data Workbench: Allows users to fully customize information display, filters and graphics to get the analysis they need.
- Data Quality Rules: Allows each user to set parameters for acceptable data quality, and also displays suggested fixes.
- Fast Track Configuration: This is said to apply thought-based AI to the Alphabet meta model to reduce product configuration effort.
Take away
Software AG’s vision of using GenAI to democratize process mining and management is admittedly compelling. I’ve previously expressed skepticism about the idea of forcing busy business professionals to use low-code and no-code tools, for example around the 2022 SAP Build announcement.
Similarly, TechTarget Industry Editor David Essex and Constellation Research’s Holger Mueller had a stimulating discussion in late 2022 on the topic of ERP vendors using low-code/no-code development that explored the positives and negatives of the trend.
But it is possible that GenAI will finally enable the long-awaited democratization and greater inclusivity of business software usage among a wider population of business users.
Brian McKenna is a senior analyst in the TechTarget Enterprise Strategy Group, focusing on business applications. He was previously an editor at ComputerWeekly.
Enterprise Strategy Group is a division of TechTarget. Its analysts have business relationships with suppliers.