Artificial Intelligence
Article

How AI Is Helping Companies Redesign Processes

by
Harvard Business Review
March 14, 2023
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Summary

Most companies use datasets somewhere in their operations to gauge success. However, interpreting the correct patterns and trends in the data is where human analysis can fall short and AI can be utilized to its fullest potential. See how AI can help businesses redefine processes through a mass analysis of data.

In the 1990s, business process reengineering was all the rage: Companies used budding technologies such as enterprise resource planning (ERP) systems and the internet to enact radical changes to broad, end-to-end business processes. Buoyed by reengineering’s academic and consulting proponents, companies anticipated transformative changes to broad processes like order-to-cash and conception to commercialization of new products.

But while technology did bring major updates, implementations often failed to live up to the sky-high expectations. For example, large-scale ERP systems like SAP or Oracle provided a useful IT backbone to exchange data, yet also created very rigid processes that were hard to change past the IT implementation. Since then, process management typically involved only incremental change to local processes — Lean and Six Sigma for repetitive processes, and Agile Lean Startup methods for development — all without any assistance from technology.

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Harvard Business Review
Harvard Business Review

Harvard Business Publishing (HBP) was founded in 1994 as a not-for-profit, wholly-owned subsidiary of Harvard University, reporting into Harvard Business School. Our mission is to improve the practice of management in a changing world. This mission influences how we approach what we do here and what we believe is important.

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