Will AI-enabled ARIS redefine the role of a BP analyst?

Business process analysts, at least not the good ones, do not yet need to be worried about the launch by Software AG of an AI-enabled release of ARIS, its business process management (BPM) and process mining suite, an analyst said Wednesday.

The new version, ARIS 10 SR27, available now, includes AI Companion, which a release stated contains capabilities such as the ability for users to query information stored in models within the ARIS repository without the need for an exact match on keywords, and can translate text-based descriptions into structured BPM models.

In addition, Software AG said Companion will allow users to generate code and create KPIs without needing coding expertise, as well as let them receive what it described as actionable insights from the data within ARIS, simply by prompting it to, for example, display detailed descriptions of variances from established processes. “This allows a quick and easy analysis not just of data, but of real-life practices within the organization,” the company said.

Alleviate the grunt work

Vince Mirabelli, principal research director at Info-Tech Research Group, said, “this tool presents an opportunity to alleviate much of the grunt work associated with constructing a process model, which frees up the capacity to deliver strategic, higher-value activities, such as continuous improvement of the process or supporting their business partners in re-imagining what is possible, getting them unstuck from the inertia of ‘that’s the way we’ve always done it.’”

When asked what triggered the launch, Marc Vietor, chief product officer for ARIS, said via email that AI Companion has been in development for around 18 months. “From Day Zero, as ChatGPT became more viable, we started to look at how we could integrate AI in a valuable way for customers. We launched an initial pilot phase in April and have been customer-testing since.”

During the testing phase, he said, “we worked with around 20 of our close customers. They were given pilot versions of the software to see how well it functioned in their operations. Some people are still wondering whether AI is hype or real — but we have been able to show multiple use cases (as outlined in the press release) where it ‘just works’ for customers in real-life scenarios.”

When asked if AI Companion could put business process analysts at risk, Vietor said, to the contrary, it will help them “concentrate on the value creation part of the job, like optimizing the process and managing/governing the change. We reduce the manual (not loved) efforts and improve the quality dramatically.”

Gartner analyst Whit Andrews described the launch as an example of the “continued emergence of the long tail as the most critical aspect of AI products and services that are entering the marketplace.”

That long tail, he said, is where you have a “small amount of interest in a very particular concept,” which in the case of Software AG is BPM.

Approach employment in a new way

As for what impact this might have on the business analyst, he said that initiatives such as AI Companion, “will make it necessary for them to approach employment in a new way.”

Andrews added, “if I was talking to a person who this technology affected, I’d say, ‘probably the most important thing is for you to invest today in experimentation to discover whether you think you want to be part of the future for this kind of task.’”

Some people, he said, “”will say, ‘what I loved about the work is sufficiently at risk such that I need to look for something new.’ And other people will say, ‘what I love about the work is untouched by this’ and that is perfectly appropriate.”

Andrews said, “I don’t minimize this [launch] at all. This presents meaningful financial disruption to individuals with names and addresses and budgets, and that’s a big deal. I am not diminishing that impact at any level. What I would argue is that for some people, the disruption will be so fundamental for the thing that they value in their endeavors, that this will cause them to essentially see that there’s a clock that’s ticking.”

But for a lot of people, he said, “some aspect of their endeavor will fundamentally change, but that won’t mean that they have to walk away from the industry or the aspect of their work that they love.”