PEXREPORT 2022Capitalizing on change and innovation in an altered business environment
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Inside
Twitter’s use of AI to improve user experience
How Spotify implemented 120 bots in less than 18 months
How Siemens Gamesa encourages a culture of change following a merger
Nike on using advanced analytics to ensure quality across its supply chain
2 The PEX Report 2022
Note from the editor
Hello, and a warm welcome to PEX Network’s annual
state-of-the industry report. It has been incredibly
interesting to talk to our professional community over
the past year and learn how operational excellence
professionals have played a vital role in helping their
organizations survive during the pandemic.
Now that we are veering toward permanent hybrid
work models, businesses require a complete shift in
focus in the way they work and create engagement
from employees. To ensure it is business-as-usual for
organizations, they need visibility more than ever before
on internal processes to improve operational efficiency
and guarantee customer delivery in this new context.
PEX Report 2022 features the exclusive results of our
annual global state-of-the-industry survey which informs
us on the impact of the pandemic and process priorities,
investments and challenges over the coming year.
It also features success stories and insights from
renowned organizations such as Twitter, Spotify, Nike
and Siemens Gamesa, along with advice from leading
experts to ensure the success of your OPEX and business
transformation programs. Take your pick between
themes such as continuous improvement, intelligent
automation and low-code.
The PEX Network team hopes this report will help you
navigate your current challenges and build a strong base
for business resilience and growth in the next 12 months.
We are always keen to hear your feedback on the
content and events we produce, so feel free to get in
touch with me to share your thoughts on this report.
Alice ClochetEditor, PEX Network
State-of-the-industry survey analysis
Page 5 – OPEX proving vital to enabling new working
methods during the pandemic
Page 7 – OPEX programs have become an integral part of
an organization’s strategy
Page 13 – OPEX and business transformation budgets are
on the rise
Page 14 – The data analytics revolution will continue over
the coming year
Spotlight on process excellence experts
Page 21 – Welcome to OPEX Week 2022
Page 22 – Shell Chemicals Europe’s journey to continuous
improvement success
Page 24 – How Twitter deploys AI to improve user
experience
Process excellence success stories
Page 27 – How Spotify implemented 120 bots in less than
18 months
Page 29 – Encouraging a culture of change following a
major merger
Page 31 – How Nike is ensuring quality across its
supply chain
Page 32 – How Deutsche Telekom is optimizing P2P with
AI and machine learning
Page 34 – How Front Signs drove success when on the
brink of collapse
Expertise from our industry partners
Page 36 – Why relying on a single process automation
platform leads to failure
Page 37 – Five critical steps for your process automation
success
Page 38 – Low-code/no-code: The future of enterprise
software
Page 40 – How Veritas’s process management initiative
enabled its digital transformation
Page 42 – Powering digital transformation with BPM,
low-code and no-code
Page 44 – PEX Network’s editorial calendar
Contents:
Industry trendsSuccess storiesSurvey analysis Expert insights Industry trends
35
26
20
4
3 The PEX Report 2022
Lead sponsor - Nintex Nintex is the global standard for process management
and automation. Today more than 10,000 public and
private sector organizations across 90 countries turn to
the Nintex Platform to accelerate progress on their digital
transformation journeys by quickly and easily managing,
automating and optimizing business processes.
Learn more at www.nintex.com and experience how
Nintex and its global partner network are shaping the
future of intelligent process automation (IPA).
CreatioCreatio is a global software company that provides a
leading low-code platform for process management and
CRM. It has been highly recognized as a market leader by
key industry analysts. Its intelligent products accelerate
sales, marketing, service and operations for mid-size and
large enterprises. Together with hundreds of partners
Creatio operates in 110 countries worldwide.
Learn more at www.creatio.com
SignavioThe acquisition of Signavio by SAP combined SAP’s
Business Process Intelligence unit with Signavio’s Business
Transformation Suite, with the aim to strengthen SAP’s
capacity to help organizations manage their processes.
This approach includes analysis, redesigning, testing and
optimizing new processes to serve customer excellence,
accelerate digital transformation and foster collaborative
process optimization.
Learn more at www.signavio.com
MavimFor complex global organizations that are changing or
reinventing their operating models to respond quickly in
a rapidly shifting environment, Mavim provides software
that enables digital transformation. With our product,
we create context and visibility for companies who face
the challenges associated with changes in technology,
competition and consumer behavior.
Learn more at www.mavim.com
PEX Report 2022 sponsors:
PEX Report 2022 contributors
Cathy GuEvent director, OPEX Week:
Business Transformation World Summit
Peter EvansDirector of service and performance
management for shared services at LEGO Group
Maneesh SubherwalExecutive director of business transformation,
commercial bank at JP Morgan Chase & Co.
José Manuel Escobar Continuous improvement manager at DHL
Gerard PoolmanCI Master in Shell Projects and Technology at
Shell’s Integrated Gas Division
Andrae KirklandSenior program manager at Twitter
Sidney Madison PrescottGlobal intelligent automation lead at Spotify
Mark GhibrilGlobal vice-president – head of regional
CIOs and user engagement experience center
at Siemens Gamesa
Peter TasevSVP procure-to-pay at Deutsche Telekom
Industry trendsSuccess storiesSurvey analysis Expert insights Industry trends
OPEX proving vital to enabling new working methods during the pandemic
OPEX programs have become an integral part of an organization’s strategy
OPEX and business transformation budgets are on the rise
The data analytics revolution will continue over the coming year
4 The PEX Report 2022
State-of-the-industry survey analysis
Success storiesSurvey analysis Expert insights Industry trends
5 The PEX Report 2022
OPEX proving vital to enabling new working methods during the pandemic
It could be argued that, despite its grueling effect
on healthcare systems and the global economy, the
Covid-19 pandemic has played a role in showcasing the
importance of process excellence (PEX) practitioners
and operational excellence (OPEX) programs within
organizations to drive them forward.
Peter Evans, director of service and performance
management for shared services at the LEGO Group,
says: “Companies have had to reflect on their efficiencies,
digital capabilities and communications, and because
of that, there is an understanding of the power of what
OPEX is, and the role it can play when they are forced to
operate and think differently.”
The last edition of this report, PEX Report 2021, found
that the majority of respondents saw the pandemic
as having changed the way companies viewed their
OPEX programs (73 per cent). The survey performed for
this latest edition, PEX Report 2022, found that overall,
its disruption on OPEX initiatives is deemed as hugely
disruptive for only 27 per cent of respondents, while 68 per
cent see it as either fairly or not very disruptive.
Evans mentioned in PEX Report 2021 that the pandemic
was perhaps not very disruptive for organizations having
OPEX programs in place already. For this edition of the
report, however, he suspects that businesses are now
becoming increasingly focused on driving change in the
current context and are, therefore, more engaged in their
OPEX initiatives. He adds: “This engagement can be an
indication that people in the field can flex their muscles
more than before.”
FIGURE 1
Q: How disruptive has the Covid-19 pandemic been on your OPEX initiative?
Hugely disruptive
27%
Fairly disruptive
40%
Not very disruptive Not disruptive at all
5%28%
“Strategic agility and momentum are key indicators to organizational success and longevity. You have to be nimble to withstand seismic events, and to be able to adapt quickly and continuously.“
Maneesh SubherwalExecutive director of business transformation, commercial bank at
JP Morgan Chase & Co.
Success storiesSurvey analysis Expert insights Industry trends
6 The PEX Report 2022
The focus for process improvement as a direct result of
the pandemic remains consistent between the surveys
performed for PEX Report 2021 and PEX Report 2022, with
customer service and call centers remaining at the top
(35 per cent) followed by supply chain (27 per cent). This,
according to Cathy Gu, event director of OPEX Week:
Business Transformation World Summit, clearly shows
a continuous push for customer service and customer
experience transformation.
The role of finance has increased in importance for
organizations, placed third by survey respondents with 26
per cent, moving up from fifth in the 2021 survey. Maneesh
Subherwal, executive director of business transformation,
commercial bank at JP Morgan Chase & Co., explains
that it is being driven by a need for companies to be
financially resilient in order to enable innovation.
Subherwal says: “Financial stability is an enabler
of strategic agility. To increase stability, you may
need to consider expanding reserves, automating
financial operations and improving transactional
processes to drive traction and momentum on your
organizational initiatives.”
OPEX proving vital to enabling new working methodsduring the pandemic
Top three areas in PEX Report 2021
1 2 3
FIGURE 2
Q: Which areas have you seen more demand/requests on process improvement since the outbreak of the Covid-19 pandemic?*
Customer services
and call centersSupply chain Marketing and sales
Customer service and call centers
Supply chain
Finance
Marketing and sales
Shared services
Distribution of goods/services
Human resources
Procurement
R&D
Other
35%
27%
26%
22%
21%
20%
20%
15%
11%
8%
*Survey respondents could select more than one option
Success storiesSurvey analysis Expert insights Industry trends
7 The PEX Report 2022
OPEX programs have become an integral part of an organization’s strategy
Compared to results of the survey featured in PEX Report
2021, more companies are now deploying OPEX programs
as part of an enterprise-wide transformation, with 44 per
cent of responses saying they are doing so, compared
to 35 per cent last year. OPEX Week’s Gu notes: “It is an
encouraging trend, it shows transformation programs are
dropping from the C-suite and one of the key success
factors for enterprise-level transformation is to have
direct support from CEOs.”
This is confirmed by Figure 5, which reveals the leading
sponsor of OPEX and transformation programs is the
CEO (29 per cent) at the organizations represented in our
survey, followed by the board of directors (23 per cent),
the chief operating officer and department heads (both
at 10 per cent).
Transformation is now being recognized as an integral part
of an organization’s strategy as opposed to solely being
driven by PEX practitioners. LEGO Group’s Evans says:
“Businesses are starting to be led by people who have
seen successful PEX programs or been involved in enough
to realize their benefits – we are passing the period of
people needing to be convinced now, CEOs are more
educated and attuned to what good OPEX can bring.”
José Manuel Escobar, continuous improvement manager
at DHL, notes that because the Covid-19 context has
enabled PEX practitioners to bring adaptability and
emergency cutting costs that ensured survival for many
companies, it might have had a positive impact on why
high management supports and sponsors projects.
According to Escobar, what really matters is how
OPEX practitioners can transform their role to be the
“sustainable guardians” of organizations and “upgrade
that perception of short-term deliveries and migrate to
serve as a compass for businesses”.
Escobar explains: “CEOs and boards of directors
acknowledge that the world changes mercilessly fast and
OPEX practitioners’ roles need to guarantee success in
that new scenario year after year by helping to respond
accordingly and even reshape the company’s strategy –
continuous improvement becomes more important than
ever before.”
FIGURE 3
Q: Which of the following best describes the current scope (2021 onward) of the PEX/OPEX deployment at your company?
Enterprise-wide transformation
Deployment at one or more
business units
Have trained process
improvement resources but no
formal PEX/OPEX program
Small-scale pilot
No process PEX/OPEX program
Disclaimer: the 2021 results are from PEX Report 2021
45%
0%
Resp
ond
ents
(%)
2021 2022
35% 44%
2021 2022
32% 17%
2021 2022
14% 18%
2021 2022
14% 9%
2021 2022
5% 12%
Success storiesSurvey analysis Expert insights Industry trends
8 The PEX Report 2022
OPEX programs have become an integral part of an organization’s strategy
FIGURE 4
Q: How is your transformation structured?
Enterprise-wide transformation office
Top-down transformation
Transformation takes place at business unit/department level
Bottom-up grassroots continuous improvement
PMO office
FIGURE 5
Q: Who is the main sponsor of your business transformation program?
Top five survey answers:
29%
CEO
23%
Board of directors/
Chairperson
10%
Department head COO
6%
CFO
26%
18%35%
16%
5%
10%
“We have a great opportunity to take OPEX to a new level and be aligned to strategy by sharing what the focus should be on the process level, while management set their plans on technology, investments, projects and workforce”.
José Manuel EscobarContinuous improvement manager at DHL
Success storiesSurvey analysis Expert insights Industry trends
9 The PEX Report 2022
OPEX programs have become an integral part of an organization’s strategy
Top three views of OPEX and business transformation in PEX Report 2021
1 2 3A way to improve productivity
and efficiency -
63%
A mission-critical strategy
to help the organization
to drive growth, manage
turnaround and deliver
strategic objectives -
56%
A way to improve
customer satisfaction
through better quality
and efficiency -
53%
The view in which companies view OPEX and business
transformation has not changed since PEX Report 2021,
with the same three remaining at the top: a way to improve
productivity and efficiency (59 per cent), a mission-critical
strategy to help the organization to drive growth, manage
turnaround and deliver strategic objectives (58 per cent),
and improve customer satisfaction through better quality
and efficiency (56 per cent).
Growth is a key focus for organizations this year, as
predicted in PEX Network’s Trends Report 2021, and it
is no surprise OPEX programs can enable that. Escobar
notes that “we have a great opportunity to take OPEX
to a new level and be aligned to strategy by sharing
what the focus should be on the process level, while
management set their plans on technology, investments,
projects and workforce”.
FIGURE 6
Q: Which of the following best describes how your company views OPEX and business transformation?*
60%
0%
Resp
ond
ents
(%)
59% 58% 56% 50% 45% 42% 36% 27% 24% 3%A way to improve productivity and efficiency
A mission-critical strategy to help the
organization to drive growth, manage
turnaround and deliver strategic objectives
A way to improve customer satisfaction
through better quality and efficiency
A way to automate processes
A way to reduce operational cost or
reducing headcount
A way to manage business risks and ensure
business continuity
A way to deliver culture and leadership
change across an organization
A way to adapt to remote working/hybrid
work models
A way to ensure compliance with
regulatory regimes
Other
*Survey respondents could select more than one option
Success storiesSurvey analysis Expert insights Industry trends
10 The PEX Report 2022
Operations is the top department responsible for driving
OPEX and transformation programs (61 per cent), which
could be explained by the need for organizations to
operate business-as-usual, ensuring continuity as remote
work and hybrid work models become a permanent
feature. Gu says the fact that the center of excellence
is second (39 per cent) means that these programs are
more expertise-driven.
JP Morgan Chase & Co.’s Subherwal is surprised that IT
and human resources (HR) are not higher on the list.
“Given where we are with Covid-19 case trends and
vaccination campaigns, I would expect a deeper focus
around future of work programs such as remote or hybrid
working models, which would increase IT and HR spend,”
Subherwal notes.
He suggests that continued focus on IT would push
organizations to remain future-focused. This includes
driving or re-igniting strategic initiatives such as legacy IT
modernization, cloud migration or product development
programs, and running experiments with customers. He
adds that focusing on HR policies could help companies
attract and retain talent in the hybrid and remote work
context, while ensuring companies have the tools to be
productive in this next normal.
OPEX programs have become an integral part of an organization’s strategy
FIGURE 7
Q: What top three departments at your organization are responsible for driving your OPEX and transformation program?*
Operations
Center of excellence
OPEX and transformation
IT
Finance
Human resources
Quality
Marketing and sales
Customer service and call centers
R&D
Shared services
Distribution of goods/services
Supply chain
Procurement
Other
61%
39%
29%
27%
26%
17%
16%
15%
14%
13%
11%
10%
9%
9%
3%
*Survey respondents could select more than one option
Success storiesSurvey analysis Expert insights Industry trends
11 The PEX Report 2022
OPEX programs have become an integral part of an organization’s strategy
FIGURE 8
Q: What is your primary measure of success for your OPEX and business transformation?
Top three measures of success in PEX Report 2021
1 2 3Cost saving -
25%Business top-line growth -
24%Increased throughput/
efficiency - 23%
Out of all the methodologies and solutions currently
used to support respondents’ OPEX projects, change
management is first (45 per cent), closely followed
by Agile (44 per cent), which shows that agility and
adaptability are key to today’s transformation projects.
Subherwal sees change management as critical in
hybrid work models since the internal rollout model of
new products, campaigns and strategies that used to be
conducted in town halls and large big bang rollouts has
“turned on its head”.
“You have gone from a very functional, sequential model
to a fragmented one – this is a key area where change
management is needed,” Subherwal remarks.
He adds that Agile is also essential, noting:
“Strategic agility and momentum are key indicators to
organizational success and longevity. You have to be
nimble to withstand seismic events, and to be able to
adapt quickly and continuously.”
Subherwal says both methodologies, Agile and
change management, go hand in hand because “even
the change management exercises and experiments
need to be very agile in terms of processes and tools that
are implemented”.
LEGO Group’s Evans notes that Agile being second on
the list is not surprising since it was born out of Lean and
explains the enthusiasm around it by the need to drive
speed within organizations.
Evans states: “Agile resonates with people involved with
change because they can enable it quicker or take
bigger risks than perhaps traditional methodologies
25%
20%
18%
14%
6%
6%
5%4%
2%
Cost savings
Increased throughput/efficiency
Business top-line growth
Improved customer satisfaction
Employee engagement/retention
Customer retention
Number of projects completed
Reduced operational risk
Other
Success storiesSurvey analysis Expert insights Industry trends
12 The PEX Report 2022
encourage and C-suite management get a degree of
comfort that things are moving fast.”
Lean Six Sigma is fourth on the list (35 per cent) and
one might question its relevance in today’s digital world
compared to newer methodologies such as Agile.
Subherwal explains that some organizations that have
been doing Lean Six Sigma for the past 20 years might
want to double down on that investment instead of
walking away from it. For companies not having conducted
OPEX initiatives before, then Agile is the way to go.
“Lean Six Sigma is primarily focused on process improvement,
whereas Agile methodologies expand that toward
product development and deployment. For organizations,
this will depend on how people think about change. Also,
Agile is often used as an umbrella term to reference many
other methodologies listed,” Subherwal remarks.
OPEX programs have become an integral part of an organization’s strategy
FIGURE 9
Q: Which methodologies and solutions are you currently using to support your operational excellence projects?*
Top three methodologies and solutions in PEX Report 2021
1 2 3Change management -
56%Business process reengineering -
54%Agile -
39%
Change management45%
Agile44%
Data analytics/business intelligence
41%
Lean Six Sigma35%
Business process reengineering34%
Workflow automation33%
Digital transformation31%
Behavioral/employee engagement
30%
Lean30%
RPA30%
Consultancy29%
Process modelling/mapping tools29%
AI28%
Digital process automation27%
Design thinking25%
Cultural transformation21%
ISO21%
BPM methodology20%
Total quality management/total productivity management
18%
Kanban16%
Gemba Kaizen15%
Business architecture14%
BPM solutions14%
Automated process discovery13%
Intelligent automation11%
PFMEA10%
Process mining10%
Enterprise architecture9%
Process simulation9%
DFSS8%
Hoshin planning8%
Dynamic case management4%
Hyperautomation2%
*Survey respondents could select more than one option
Success storiesSurvey analysis Expert insights Industry trends
13 The PEX Report 2022
OPEX and business transformation budgets are on the rise
More respondents than in the previous year are seeing
their budget for OPEX increase, rising from 18 per cent in
PEX Report 2021 to 24 per cent in PEX Report 2022, which
OPEX week’s Gu declares is “great news”.
Gu explains: “One worry from the hardcore OPEX people
is that OPEX programs typically take place when
everybody is on site and now that everyone is working
remotely, the enthusiasm from organizations will drop a
little, but these results show the opposite.”
Compared to the last edition of this report, companies
are in a better place to look at recovery and “can almost
see the light at the end of the tunnel”, which she explains
might be a reason budget is increasing. Gu adds that
OPEX programs are a process, with the requirement of
OPEX teams being to evaluate the situation, train people
and implement automation programs.
“Even if you have not got the money now, you may
need to get it in the next 12 months,” Gu notes. “More
than anything, OPEX teams need to be seen as making
improvements and if you do nothing while other people
are doing something, you will be left behind.”
FIGURE 11
Q: Which statement best describes the effect the economy is having on your operational excellence program budget?
Our budget is expected to increase over
the next 12 months
Our budget is expected to remain flat over
the next 12 months
Our budget is expected to decline over
the next 12 months
Don’t know
Disclaimer: the 2021 results are from PEX Report 2021
40%
0%
Resp
ond
ents
(%)
2021 2022
18% 24%
2021 2022
35% 36%
2021 2022
30% 19%
2021 2022
17% 21%
FIGURE 10
Q: What is your organization’s annual budget for investment in OPEX and transformation next year (US$)?
34%
$0
– $100,000 17%
$100,000
– $500,000
8%
$1m – $5m
4%
More than $10m
11%
$500,000 – $1m
22%
Don’t know
4%
$5m – $10m
Success storiesSurvey analysis Expert insights Industry trends
14 The PEX Report 2022
Below, we reveal a handful of responses we received on reasons data is so important in OPEX and transformation initiatives.
“The increased focus on straight-through processing
and broad digital transformation increases reliance
on both data availability and meaningful insights
derived from data analytics.”
“Decisions need to be backed
up with the right information
and impacts of deployments
need to be monitored”
“Data analytics
determine the end state
of a process and how it
needs to be made more
efficient to get there.”
“Data analytics is critical because we want
to move from postmortem to predictive
analysis that will result in early warning on
potential problems.”
The data analytics revolution will continue over the coming year
When it comes to solutions that survey respondents are
looking to invest in over the next 12 months, data analytics
and business intelligence has made it to the top, at 43
per cent, followed by workflow automation (34 per cent)
and digital transformation (31 per cent). In PEX Report
2021, digital transformation was first, followed by data
analytics and business intelligence second and cultural
transformation third.
OPEX Week’s Gu notes that key investment shifting
toward analytics with workflow automation being second
shows that automation and data-driven transformation
will continue for years to come. This strengthening in
the importance of data is not surprising considering the
prevalence of remote working and the implementation of
hybrid work models.
Our respondents also noted the attractiveness of data to
the need to stop guessing in transformation initiatives and
the fact that success cannot be measured without data.
DHL’s Escobar sees this focus as “very good news”, since
adopting a data-driven mind-set as part of process data
collection and analysis will enhance the effectiveness of
OPEX practitioners’ work.
He explains that it enhances their scope to non-traditional
touchpoints in which they did not have enough data to
apply their methods in the past.
Escobar adds: “It is a very exciting new context in which
our solutions are boosted as predictive, with a prescriptive
methodology enabling better prioritization and accurate
measures of our success.”
One survey respondent, however, warns against the
lack of awareness and processes currently in place that
are disparate and produce “data dumps” that do not
generate the business intelligence at the level it should.
To overcome this, they recommend collecting good data
along with teams’ real-time issues to be the cornerstone of
any OPEX and transformation initiative.
Success storiesSurvey analysis Expert insights Industry trends
15 The PEX Report 2022
The data analytics revolution will continue over the coming year
FIGURE 13
Q: How would you rate the importance of data analytics in OPEX and business transformation initiatives at your organization?
Top five solutions in PEX Report 2021
1
Digital
transformation
2
Data analytics/
business intelligence
3
Cultural
transformation
4
Workflow
automation
5
Behavioral/employee
engagement
59% Very important 18% Fairly important 14% Important
4% Slightly important 2% Not at all important 3% Don’t know
Success storiesSurvey analysis Expert insights Industry trends
FIGURE 12
Q: What solutions are you looking to invest in to drive your OPEX and transformation programs over the next 12 months?*
45%
0%
Resp
ond
ents
(%)
43%
Data analytics/business intelligence
Workflow automation
Digital transformation
AI
Behavioral/employee engagement
Process modelling/mapping tools
RPA
Business transformation consultancy
Process excellence consultancy
Automated process discovery
Intelligent automation
Cultural transformation
Digital business platform
BPM
Process simulation
Process mining
Hyperautomation
Other
34% 31% 29% 25% 25% 25% 21% 20% 19% 18% 18% 18% 15% 13% 12% 6% 5%
*Survey respondents could select more than one option
16 The PEX Report 2022
Although low-code and no-code have been around for
years, their importance has been highlighted during the
Covid-19 pandemic as a way for companies to automate
at scale and become more innovative by implementing
applications quickly. While 24 per cent of respondents are
already using it, only 6 per cent are looking to invest in it
in the next six months.
While they are interesting alternatives to counter the
growing demand of software developers and budget
limitations, complexity and compliance are two factors
that become more relevant as the companies grow and
regulations become more predominant.
Escobar explains that the low number of short-term
investment is due to mid and large companies having
limited attraction to these technologies as they will
face hard times with customization and dependency. In
effect, 51 per cent of respondents of this survey are
from companies having an annual turnover of $50m
and more.
JP Morgan Chase & Co.’s Subherwal argues that this
low number is down to talent and culture: if working
models and organizational culture do not become more
people-centric, the people that drive the leading-edge
capabilities such as low-code and no-code will not
be able to “step up”, and will ultimately leave. Legacy
modernizations usually take years, and organizations
need to find ways to execute on impactful experiments in
the near term, with leading-edge capabilities.
Subherwal remarks: “Statistics and trends around low-
code experiments are lagging indicators. Organizations
need to discover ways to rotate and train existing staff,
so that they can execute on these fresh ideas.”
The data analytics revolution will continue over the coming year
FIGURE 14
Q: Are you planning to invest in low-code and no-code app development?
We are already using it
We are planning to invest in 0-6 months
We are planning to invest in 6-12 months
We are planning to invest in more than 12 months
We are not planning to invest in it
Don’t know
24%
6%
9%
8%
17%
36%
While process modelling was number 20 of the focus for
respondents’ process improvement work in PEX Report
2021, it has jumped to being number four this year, with
32 per cent, and Escobar believes it will have a strong
presence in the coming years.
“Digital transformation requires the understanding of what
is actually happening and it is more important than ever to
map the ‘as-is’ situation, otherwise the effectiveness of the
program is heavily compromised,” he says.
Success storiesSurvey analysis Expert insights Industry trends
Top three process improvement works in PEX Report 2021
1 2Creating a culture for culture
for transformation
Change management
strategy3
Customer-centric
process management
*Survey respondents could select more than one option
17 The PEX Report 2022
Creating a culture of transformation remains at the
top (36 per cent in PEX Report 2021, 39 per cent in PEX
Report 2022), which shows a willingness for organizations
to design and transform internally before turning to
delivering to customers.
Escobar explains: “You cannot have a customer-
centric culture if your people, no matter which area
they belong to in the company, start thinking from
outside to inside. When the ‘voice of the customer’ is
guiding your actions and plans, you realize that every
interaction matters and even when you face an internal
customer you understand that you are helping toward
customer satisfaction.”
The data analytics revolution will continue over the coming year
FIGURE 15
Q: What is your focus for process improvement work for the next 12 months?*
Creating a culture for transformation
Customer-centric process management
Change management strategy
Process modelling/documentation
Aligning process and IT
Implementing process management frameworks
Driving innovation
End-to-end process architecture
Integrating data into process
Developing leadership behavior
Agile transformation
Restructuring/redesigning the operating model
Redesigning performance metrics
Restructuring/redesigning the organizational structure
Holistic business transformation
Other
39%
35%
34%
32%
31%
30%
30%
29%
29%
28%
28%
27%
25%
21%
18%
2%
Success storiesSurvey analysis Expert insights Industry trends
18 The PEX Report 2022
Cost and budget limitations remains the top challenge
for our respondents (35 per cent), while linking process
improvement with top-level business strategy has
moved from third in PEX Report 2021 to second in
PEX Report 2022 (12 per cent). It could be a surprising
evolution since it was revealed earlier in the report that
sponsors of OPEX and business transformation programs
are board of directors and CEOs.
OPEX Week’s Gu explains that the challenge is for
PEX practitioners to prove their process initiatives and
resulting efficiency improvements have reinforced
the company’s strategy, while also proving return on
investment (ROI) to higher management.
Deploying new technologies remains in the top three
of challenges (11 per cent) despite the respondents’
investment in technologies such as data analytics,
workflow automation and AI revealed in Figure 12. Evans
notes that OPEX practitioners who have been brought
up in a tradition of problem-based improvement might
see technology as a problem, but they need to embrace
it along with Agile.
“If you believe that OPEX is ‘understand, improve, sustain
performance’, then by being open and embracing the
change that comes with technology you can make
sure the operating management system works with
new technology,” Evans says. “As PEX professionals,
we should look for opportunity around how to help
with the management system that ensures you get full
benefit from the technology and not get frightened
by it. Improvement can get you so far but technology
changes the game.
The data analytics revolution will continue over the coming year
FIGURE 16
Q: What do you see as your primary OPEX and transformation challenge for the next 12 months?
0%
Cost/budget limitations
Linking process improvement with
top-level business strategy
Deploying new technologies
Lack of alignment between business
and IT departments
Overcoming too much
short-term focus
Ensuring a customer-centric
focus throughout the business
Skills shortage
Sustaining change
Overcoming resistance
Securing executive buy-in
Maintaining executive buy-in
Other
40%
Resp
ond
ents
(%)
35% 12% 11% 10% 7% 6% 6% 4% 3% 2% 2% 2%
Top three challenges in PEX Report 2021
1
Cost/budget
limitations -
37%2
Deploying new
technologies -
18%3
Linking process improvement
with top-level business
strategy - 11%
Success storiesSurvey analysis Expert insights Industry trends
The results of this survey have demonstrated that the
role of PEX practitioners and their OPEX initiatives has
been recognized as more important than ever before as
a result the Covid-19 pandemic. With hybrid work models
becoming a reality for many organizations, it is clear that
the visibility provided by data is now vital for process
initiatives and that transformation projects will become
data-driven in the years to come.
While this survey analysis is aimed at providing a
benchmark for organizations currently undergoing or
planning to start an OPEX initiative, the rest of this report
provides real-life success stories, advice and trends on
the future of OPEX from a range of PEX practitioners and
industry partners.
“We are passing the period of people needing to be convinced now, CEOs are more educated and attuned to what good OPEX can bring.”
Peter EvansDirector of service and performance management for shared services the LEGO Group
Conclusion
Success storiesSurvey analysis Expert insights Industry trends
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Welcome to OPEX Week 2022
Shell Chemicals Europe’s journey to continuous improvement success
How Twitter deploys AI to improve user experience
Spotlight on process excellence experts
Success storiesSurvey analysis Expert insights Industry trends
20 The PEX Report 2022
21 The PEX Report 2022
Welcome to 2022 OPEX Week:Business Transformation World Summit
Dear colleagues,
As businesses poise for recovery and growth in 2022, it
has never been as critical for transformation executives
to take a leadership role in mastering the new ways of
working. Yet many OPEX and transformation leaders
find themselves in unfamiliar waters: The pace of
change spinning faster than ever, rulebooks torn and
redrawn, new trends and technologies surfacing, and
among all these a distributed workforce adding another
layer of complexity.
It is a calling card for the digital era. Retooling and
reskilling are urgently required and it is now absolutely
essential to sharpen your tool kits and insights for the
new norm of business and transformational excellence.
The 2022 OPEX Week: Business Transformation World
Summit returns to Orlando in January 2022 to support
decision-makers and transformation leaders to master
this change with the most relevant case studies from
Fortune 500 companies on rethinking your structure,
capabilities and processes.
Trusted transformation leaders will discuss developing
a readiness culture for change and enthusiastic
conversations will spark ideas on innovation and leading
transformation in the new hybrid environment.
As has been for the past 21 years, OPEX Week returns
to discuss tomorrow’s OPEX challenges and will cover
strategies, ideas, technologies and everything else
that you need to accelerate your business and digital
transformation in the new world.
I look forward to seeing you in January!
Cathy GuEvent director, OPEX Week and
Business Transformation
World Summit 2022
Industry trendsSuccess storiesSurvey analysis Expert insights Industry trends
THE NO.1 BUSINESS TRANSFORMATION SUMMIT RETURNS!
Bringing back the magic, energy and everything you love about OPEX:
50+ OPEX And Transformation Thought Leader Speakers
15+ Deep-Dive Workshops
15+ Thought-ProvokingInteractive Roundtables
8 Global Awards Categories
9 Trend-Setting Themed Tracks
3 Amazing Days Of In-Person Networking
SAVE THE DATES:
January 31 – February 2, 2022
OPEX IN MIAMI
And A Brand New Location
22 The PEX Report 2022
Shell Chemicals Europe’s journey to Continuous Improvement successGerard Poolman, CI Master in Shell Projects and Technology, tells the story behind how Shell Chemicals Europe won the Kaizen Award for Continuous Improvement in 2019
In 2014, Shell Chemicals Europe started out on its
Continuous Improvement (CI) journey with two main
drivers. Customer centricity was really important and our
ambition was to become the best in our customers’ mind,
we wanted to be their partner of choice. By providing
value to customers, not only will they order more from
you, they will also attract others simply because your
reputation will improve. Our vision explicitly stated that
we wanted value growth via CI in a competitive and
stable regional market.
We also wanted to be an employer that people wanted
to work for. We had a specific goal to operate at Goal
Zero, which meant no harm to people and leaks of
chemicals, for longer than a year. We are dealing with
big equipment and sometimes dangerous chemicals,
and they can be under high pressure. Goal Zero is very
important for a company like Shell, and we wanted
to make sure that all our employees, contractors and
customers were safe.
Some of the CI initiatives start because a company
wants to save money and if that is the primary purpose,
organizations get resistance or no buy-in because
employees will start fearing for their jobs. A wrong starting
point and the wrong purpose is often a recipe for failure in
CI initiatives.
In my opinion, a better CI approach would be to ask
where you can improve, either by increasing margins on
the products you sell and reducing costs on your business
model. Saying point blank “we need to save money” will
not necessarily help the customers and it will certainly
alienate your own employees, which is an issue because
you need their buy-in.
We used the Shingo Model at Shell Chemicals Europe.
To achieve the desired results, you need to start with a
strong culture, use CI across the organization as a normal
way of working, and get enterprise alignment around your
purpose. Your platforms and processes have to follow
your purpose and the role of CI is to make sure that the
whole system fits together. You need to make sure that
you create maximum value, assure quality at the source
and set out to seek perfection.
Quite often, CI and operational excellence are used
synonymously: it is imperative that CI is not an isolated
initiative of a couple of loose projects happening in the
organization, but that it is the way we work, and it is part
of the value chain and how we create results.
At Shell Chemicals Europe, we wanted leaders and
staff to be highly engaged in the initiative and show
CI behavior. Our approach was both top-down and
bottom-up. The former because the purpose of the
initiative clearly came from the top, with our top leaders
communicating about it and role modelling, to drive
engagement in the initiative from the people. The
latter because it started with a thorough analysis of
the different product lines and understanding of the
customers from the employees.
RESULTS
ENTERPRISEALIGNMENT
CONTINUOUS IMPROVEMENT
CULTURALENABLERS
Shingo Model
Industry trendsSuccess storiesSurvey analysis Expert insights Industry trends
23 The PEX Report 2022
The voice of the customer was important to make sure we
knew what the customers wanted and where we could
add value.
The CI culture is really at the root of everything and is
foundational. It is a culture of leading with humility and
showing respect. At Shell Chemicals Europe, I trained
leaders to ask the right questions and find out root causes
of problems to ensure they would not happen again.
When it comes to instilling the culture throughout
the organization, I had to make a decision on how to
approach it. I chose areas of focus, called seeds, to
deploy CI in a method called “inch wide, mile deep”.
I have learnt over the years that you cannot just give
people training and expect that they will do CI, it takes
time to adopt the mind-set. A CI culture and deployment
is all about learning new habits, good ones, but it is
also about unlearning bad habits, and it takes a lot of
coaching and individual attention.
If you really put your time and effort in the first seed,
and make it sustainable, you will know how to replicate
this in the second seed with less time and effort.
This mechanism you can use to transform the entire
company. This is the approach I chose and it proved to
be successful.
You also need to ask for patience to your management
because, in the beginning, CI is only sowing the seeds
(investing) and no harvesting. In year one you will have
a very small harvest, but throughout the years the
investment will decrease and the harvest will increase. In
the end you get a very high return on your investment.
We succeeded in achieving Goal Zero for longer than a
year. We did not have any incidents or leakages, which
was fantastic. Our customer feedback and Net Promoter
score improved a lot over that time.
Staff feedback also improved and we saw an increase
in employee satisfaction. We were able to achieve this
with less cost because we took out waste, extra and
dangerous work through CI. Winning the award only gave
us confirmation that we were doing the right thing, and it
motivated us to continue on that road.
Shell Chemicals Europe’s journey to ContinuousImprovement success
“A CI culture and deployment is all about learning new habits, good ones, but it is also about unlearning bad habits, and it takes a lot of coaching and individual attention.”
Gerard PoolmanCI Master in Shell Projects and Technology
Industry trendsSuccess storiesSurvey analysis Expert insights Industry trends
24 The PEX Report 2022
How Twitter deploys AI to improve user experienceAndrae Kirkland, senior program manager at Twitter, explains how the social media platform is leveraging intelligent automation technologies to protect users from spammy content and improve their experience
At Twitter we are all about focusing on serving the public
conversation. That means getting users involved on the
platform, into conversation. We want to make sure that
they feel safe to share thoughts and interact with others
and that the Twitter platform is a place that respects the
ability to do so.
We use robotic process automation (RPA), artificial
intelligence (AI) and intelligent automation (IA) technologies
to identify compromised accounts and flag content that
may be violative against our spam policies. They are
not perfect, but these technologies provide significant
scale to our efforts of identifying abusive behavior and
accounts that are adversarial to the health of the platform.
By leveraging the capabilities of intelligent automation,
we can track progress toward our goal of protecting and
elevating a premium user experience.
Spammy content can take many forms, as outlined in our
rules and policies. This can range from URL spam, direct
messages and even mentions. Platform manipulation, a
broader term for spam and content health, can take the
form of fake accounts with stolen profile photos, copied
profile bios, or intentionally misleading information.
Malicious content that encompasses misleading and
deceptive links, phishing campaigns and malware, and
artificial engagement that includes selling or purchasing
followers, engagement trading and sale of Twitter
accounts are all additional aspects of the scope of
platform manipulation as well.
Spammy content is always evolving. Content that
exists as spam today may no longer be relevant or as
prevalent tomorrow. This could be for a multitude of
reasons, but can mostly tie to our efforts of developing
robust intelligent solutions and processes, and for the
simple fact that users who engage in spam campaigns
have moved on to other strategies. So, it is a constant
evolution of IA products and processes since solutions
we put in place today may be outdated as early as
tomorrow or next week.
The priority behind amplifying our usage of IA stems from
a business priority of serving the public conversation and
ensuring users feel safe on the platform. My role is all
about ways to develop and use models to become more
intelligent about the adversarial aspect of this space to
ultimately improve user experience. At the most basic
level, we first need to understand the specific type of
spam and its prevalence across Twitter. From there, we
can begin to take steps toward mitigating its reach and
reduce the unfavorable impact on our users.
A key point to understand, as I mentioned earlier with
respect to not being perfect, IA solutions rely heavily on
heuristics. As a result, there will always be an aspect of
false positives that is inherent to any IA solution we deploy.
We are always working proportionality and building tools
and remediations that maximize our ability to capture true
policy violations and minimize potential false positives.
Consequently, there is a need to think about a ratio
we are comfortable with managing, which could vary
based on the specific type of spam in question and what
“We use RPA, AI and IA technologies to identify compromised accounts and flag content that may be violative against our spam policies.”
Andrae KirklandSenior program manager at Twitter
Industry trendsSuccess storiesSurvey analysis Expert insights Industry trends
25 The PEX Report 2022
might tie to potential for harm as it relates to the user
experience. Ultimately, though, we need to minimize false
positives while maximizing our capture of valid cases. To
round out the process and help reduce that false positive
rate, from an operational standpoint, we review flagged
content as quickly as possible and implement feedback
to the algorithms to increase their effectiveness.
As a Lean Six Sigma Black Belt, process is always a
focus. The approach to implement IA technologies is
critically important to me because it is about identifying
the problem I am trying to solve versus investing in a
solution that only addresses a symptom. Once I have
discretely identified the root cause and really understand
the problem that I am looking to resolve, then I can start
building out answers to the questions that drive the
business logic behind IA models.
Falling back on continuous improvement methodologies
again, the “root cause versus symptom” discussion is
largely facilitated by tools such as Ishikawa (fishbone)
diagrams, failure mode and effects analysis (FMEA), or
even a simple 5-Why. I use these tools to deep-dive into
the specific pain point we are evaluating and structure
questions such as ‘what is the end-to-end process?’
and ‘what data do we have?’. Once we establish that
well-defined picture from both a data and methodology
standpoint, we can then pivot our attention to how we
deliver a new capability or a new process to resolve what
brought us to the conversation in the first place.
Whenever you deal with tech solutions there are always
going to be challenges. When it comes to platform
manipulation and my scope at Twitter in particular,
dealing with heuristics-based solutions brings significant
risk to the user experience. However, when leveraged
appropriately and vetted thoroughly, they can be your
strongest asset in delivering compelling value to both the
user and our internal operations.
How Twitter deploys AI to improve user experience
“As a Lean Six Sigma Black Belt, process is always a focus. The approach to implementing IA technologies is critically important to me because it is about identifying the problem I am trying to solve versus investing in a solution that only addresses a symptom.”
Andrae KirklandSenior program manager at Twitter
Industry trendsSuccess storiesSurvey analysis Expert insights Industry trends
26 The PEX Report 2022
Process excellence success stories
Success storiesSurvey analysis Expert insights Industry trends
How Spotify implemented 120 bots in less than 18 months
Encouraging a culture of change following a major merger at Siemens Gamesa
How Nike is ensuring quality across its supply chain
How Deutsche Telekom is optimizing P2P with AI and machine learning
How Front Signs drove success when on the brink of collapse
27 The PEX Report 2022
Industry trendsSuccess storiesSurvey analysis Expert insights Industry trends
How Spotify implemented 120 bots in less than 18 monthsSidney Madison Prescott, global head of intelligent automation at Spotify, explains her approach to creating a hybrid model for the company’s Center of Excellence and reveals the successes she has experienced with automation
Spotify’s intelligent automation (IA) Center of Excellence
(CoE) was formally launched in January 2020. The CoE’s
aim is to optimize the cross-functional approach to making
business processes more efficient and automate at scale
with technologies such as robotic process automation
(RPA), artificial intelligence (AI), machine learning (ML) and
optical character recognition (OCR). The CoE is a global
effort, running processes across different regions, with the
goal of scaling out to all of Spotify’s global business units.
The team wants to provide valuable data and metrics to
better inform business stakeholders on their decisions. The
IA team is known within Spotify as the “Transformers”.
RPA was the baseline of the CoE’s work in 2020,
as the team developed use cases that work with
structured data and within well-defined parameters.
Tasks that RPA bots conduct include opening email
and attachments, logging into web or enterprise
applications, filing in forms, moving files and folders,
extracting structured data from documents, following
“if/then” rules, and making calculations.
One success we had with RPA was with the team
responsible for calculating profit and losses at the end
of each quarter was using a specific software which
was set to be stopped internally at the end of 2020. The
challenge was to keep the process alive and moving
despite transitioning off the software.
Before we implemented the bot, it took up to 1,000
minutes for employees to manually download all
the reports from our various reporting tools and run
the necessary queries to calculate transfer pricing
intercompany fees in Excel worksheets for each subsidiary.
Now, the Tax bot is responsible for extracting data from
the aforementioned system of record and uploading the
reports into a drive. It computes the transfer pricing and
populates it in an Excel worksheet for each subsidiary and
creates pivot tables that compute the transfer pricing
in each report that can all be used by the business
stakeholders for validation. It also sends an email to
the business stakeholders with the output files and
downloaded reports attached along with any business
and system exception.
Overall processing time has been reduced by 85 percent
and the process now takes 120 minutes of automated
end-to-end bot runtime.
In the middle of 2020, the CoE started looking at
enhanced automation and searched for use cases
containing both structured and unstructured data. This
particular type of use case can include some element of
human intervention or decision needed and can involve
ML models, out-of-the-box vendor tools, and a reach
into chatbots.
When it comes to enhanced automation, the team
focuses on enabling two elements. Firstly, building
customized ML models to provide the CoE with the
ability to take a process that includes unstructured
data, retool through a ML model to facilitate the
processing of that data and make it structured so it can
be consumed by our robotic processes. This allows us to
pick use cases that traditional RPA would not be able
to handle or provide us with a higher level of straight-
through processing.
Secondly, we focus on OCR, or document understanding.
We look at traditional PDF templates, CSVs, and all other
file types that traditionally would be difficult for a robot
to handle or process. The team is able to scrap the data
off the template and structure it in such a way that a bot
can leverage it to create a process around it.
Industry trendsSuccess storiesSurvey analysis Expert insights Industry trends
In 3Q2020, the CoE created a dashboard that pulls
all bot data and looks into which bots are working,
where they are operating and whether they are
attended (using user credentials to access systems
within Spotify) or unattended (working off of CoE
managed virtual machines).
The RPA dashboard is available to all stakeholders, and
it has facilitated the growth of trust for the CoE. The
data visualization continues to mature our offering, and
we prioritize a continuous feedback loop to better serve
business stakeholders through automation.
Our CoE is now reaching the middle point of enhanced
automation and has saved 40,000 hours through the
automation of manual processes since launching. We are
beginning to look outside of RPA to encompass the depth
and breadth of IA and as strong believers in continuous
improvement of our offerings to internal stakeholders, the
team is starting to think about true cognitive automation
for processes that traditionally need a strong focus on
human decision-making.
This is where AI is being used for predictive analytics
purposes, with a goal to have the bots to learn from
the nuances of processing transactions and making
“decisions” with little to no human intervention. We are
starting to branch out toward this initiative through
planning efforts in 4Q2021 and we are focusing on moving
into it in 2022.
Part of the success of Spotify’s CoE is due to providing
clear and concise insights into the purpose of intelligent
automation, how we can help business stakeholders
to understand the technologies we use, and how the
CoE plays an important role in enabling business users
to achieve company objectives. The CoE’s internal
marketing focuses heavily on showcasing the business
value we generate. This approach has been extremely
effective in providing credibility, establishing trust, and
motivating business stakeholders to take personal interest
in the innovation trajectory of the CoE.
Our approach to creating the CoE is not typical: The
team simultaneously scaled up a robust citizen developer
program on a global level while also enabling the building
of bots by skilled RPA programmers. The goal is that the
CoE becomes a hotbed of innovation and amplifies the
growth of a company-wide use case backlog and the
continuous enablement of automation.
The CoE focuses heavily on providing knowledge around
automation and teaching citizen developers to build their
own processes. Our citizens are encouraged to share
automation across the citizen community of bot builders,
and there are a set of rules defined by the CoE that
include stringent governance.
Spotify’s CoE currently has 130 bots in production and
the team is looking to hit more than 200 bots live in the
environment by the end of 4Q21.
How Spotify implemented 120 bots in less than 18 months
28 The PEX Report 2022
“Part of the success of Spotify’s CoE is due to providing clear and concise insights into the purpose of intelligent automation, how we can help business stakeholders to understand the technologies we use, and how the CoE plays an important role in enabling business users to achieve company objectives.”
Sidney Madison PrescottGlobal head of intelligent automation at Spotify
29 The PEX Report 2022
Encouraging a culture of change following a major mergerWhen two of Europe’s largest wind turbine manufacturers merged to form Siemens Gamesa, global vice-president Mark Ghibril was at the forefront of the new entity’s approach to process harmonization and digital transformation
Since Gamesa and Siemens Wind Power came together
to form renewable engineering company Siemens
Gamesa in 2017, the renewable energy industry has
continued growing at a rapid rate as power generation
costs fell and governments support flourished. With
growth, however, came a more competitive market and
an increasing demand to drive innovation.
In his role as global vice-president – head of regional
CIOs and user engagement experience center
at Siemens Gamesa, Mark Ghibril has been in the
driving seat of the company’s approach to process
transformation since its 2017 merger. Ghibril’s role has
seen him get involved in many of the challenges the
company faced when standardizing processes across
the new organization, as well as in encouraging the new
enterprise to think and act as one.
“When the two companies merged, both came with
various legacy tools and processes,” Ghibril explains. “We
started holding IT workshops and defined our journey to
transform our IT tools landscape based on standardized
and harmonized processes.”
Early in the process, Ghibril and the IT team identified
that the merged entity was not able to lead with one
legacy landscape over the other, with both Gamesa
and Siemens Wind Power bringing outdated systems
that required new investment to the table. The
company adopted a greenfield approach to its digital
transformation journey, as it looked to digitalize from the
inside to ensure all global operations acted as one.
“It was a great opportunity to start from scratch,” Ghibril
notes. “The legacy companies were operating outdated
technologies and a diverse set of processes that did not
support the business’s goal of being the leading pioneer
in the global renewable energy market.”
To ensure conformity and adherence across a vast
change management program that covered numerous
offices and locations is no small task. To counter
the potential issues that would derive from such an
ambitious program, Ghibril says the company created
a dedicated team and competence center which
brought all employees to the center of everything it did
in terms of IT.
“This enhanced adoption and acceptance of new
tools helped our transformation projects and programs
by bringing users and employees along on our very
complex journey,” Ghibril explains. “Through physical and
virtual town halls and road shows, we presented
the argument that change is positive, introduced the
new tools it would bring and explained the benefits for
the business.”
Shifting attitudes require change agents
To ensure the change project was understood by all
Siemens Gamesa employees, the company onboarded
change agents who were tasked with explaining the
benefits of change by encouraging positive outcomes
and increasing engagement.
“We presented the argument that change is positive, introduced the new tools it would bring and explained the benefits for the business.”
Mark GhibrilGlobal vice-president – head of regional CIOs and user
engagement experience center at Siemens Gamesa
Industry trendsSuccess storiesSurvey analysis Expert insights Industry trends
30 The PEX Report 2022
“This helped us to drive each initiative, especially in the
face of disruptions caused by the Covid-19 pandemic,”
says Ghibril.
Attitudes can often prove hard to shift during such a
large-scale project, so in emphasizing the ‘serious’ nature
of change management and digital transformation, Ghibril
and his team were able to get their message across.
“We made a clear decision to go as far as possible
to fully digitalize our systems to minimize interfaces to
other systems,” he explains. “This helped us to drive
automation much more quickly because we are able to
have standardized processes on a global level, making it
simpler, quicker and more effective.”
Among the challenges the team face was the availability
of people required to run such a large project.
“Time, effort and dedication were needed from
people who are experts in their field,” Ghibril adds. “It’s
easy to forget, however, that you can’t remove people
from their day-to-day work completely. We still need
to make money by selling wind turbines, so we had
to continue supporting the immediate needs of the
business too.”
To combat this and reduce the time required from
each person, the team created a business and IT
collaboration board, which came together to decide
on the changes that would be allowed to proceed as
defined by the standards defined during the design
phase of the project.
Ghibril warns, however, that “transformation never stops”
due to changing business demands and the need for
continuous process automation improvements.
“Now that we are future-proof, if we want to transform
a tool or process in a particular department, we only
need to do it once,” he asserts. This positive approach
led the merged company to adopt global standardized
processes, vastly contrasting with the past approach of
both legacy companies who both had in place numerous
systems and hundreds of varying processes.
Approaching automation at scale
To automate at scale, Ghibril advises process
excellence professionals to start by adopting a universal
approach to process harmonization across the entire
business ecosystem.
“If the different parts of a business are not initially
aligned on what a process should look like, then
you cannot automate at scale,” he states. “A good
PEX practitioner should define the links between all
processes and tools, so that they are aware of what can
and cannot be automated. If the tools do not interact
with each other, or if you have different processes on
different tools, it can become really hard and expensive
to automate.
Ghibril cites his experience in RPA, noting that any
change and transformation initiative should start with just
one automation tool performing an important function,
before tackling the next process challenge.
“Stick with it, because you will not be able to
migrate from one automation tool to another cheaply,”
Ghibril concludes.
Encouraging a culture of change following a major merger
“If the different parts of a business are not initially aligned on what a process should look like, then you cannot automate at scale. A good PEX practitioner should define the links between all processes and tools, so that they are aware of what can and cannot be automated.”
Mark GhibrilGlobal vice-president – head of regional CIOs and user
engagement experience center at Siemens Gamesa
Industry trendsSuccess storiesSurvey analysis Expert insights Industry trends
31 The PEX Report 2022
How Nike is ensuring quality acrossits supply chainChris Hill, former process excellence manager at Nike, explains how the clothing giant’s award-winning Global Shipping Performance tool operates and breaks down its role in improving customer experience
PEX Network caught up with Chris Hill, former process
excellence manager at Nike, to shed light on the global
sports apparel company’s Global Shipping Performance
tool for its North America supply chain, which went live
in October 2015 and won the internal “Just Do It” award
in June 2016. Hill explains how the tool works and how it
helps ensure quality across Nike’s complex global supply
chain network.
PEX Network: What capabilities does the Global
Shipping Performance tool have and how does it work on
a day-to-day basis?
Chris Hill: The tool is a visual basic for applications (VBA)
data solution relying on code to eliminate the manual
tracking, aggregating and reporting of shipment data
through a standardized form, with encoded logic to
automate the aforementioned tracking and reporting
process in real-time.
It autonomously takes information input into a
standardized form created for data validation
purposes for team members across the supply chain
network. Its aim is to audit and track the quality, or
accuracy, of packed shipments, either before they
leave the distribution centers, once they reached
our Nike stores, or based on feedback from big-box
retail partners.
Then that data is autonomously aggregated and
transformed for output into a PowerBI dashboard that
can be refreshed at any point to provide real-time insight
on shipment performance in the distribution center, in our
retail stores, or retail partners.
These data visualizations are used to trace potential
problems or areas we can use to kick off process
improvement and quality assurance projects.
PEX Network: How has the Global Shipping
Performance tool helped your team ensure quality
throughout the company’s supply chain network across
various countries?
CH: It provides statistically significant and standardized
visibility into the performance of our shipments across the
network. Prior to the tool’s deployment, different teams
within the organization measured performance differently
and from different data sources.
By standardizing the process, automating the data
feeds and reporting flows, we were able to gather a
more real-time and representative view of shipment
performance to course-correct where necessary and as
quickly as possible.
The platform is integrated in our quality assurance
processes so we use what we see to determine projects
we can initiate to increase shipment performance.
PEX Network: How does the tool fit within wider
process excellence initiatives across Nike’s supply
chain network?
CH: Process excellence begins with data, whether it is
qualitative or quantitative. For the Lean and Six Sigma
community, it is all about the voice of the company. If we
have data that represents the voice of the customer, then
that helps determine what gaps may exist in providing
the best customer experience.
Since we now have this information and at a much larger
scale, we can figure out ways to drive process excellence
initiatives within our supply chain.
Industry trendsSuccess storiesSurvey analysis Expert insights Industry trends
32 The PEX Report 2022
How Deutsche Telekom is optimizing P2P with AI and machine learningPeter Tasev, SVP P2P and head of finance digitalization at Deutsche Telekom, explains how a multidisciplinary internal team created an AI software to overcome a top challenge in the P2P process
Deutsche Telekom Service Europe, the shared service
center which oversees the telecommunications
company’s internal transaction tasks in several
departments including procure-to-pay (P2P), was able to
master the accounting tasks but still faced a challenge
in high workload for non-purchase orders (POs) related
invoices. This meant invoices where no tax or general
ledger account information was available, causing them
to taker a lot of time to manually process.
In Germany, one million supplier invoices are processed
by Deutsche Telekom every year. 100,000 are non-
POs related and lack certain information. These come
from both existing and new suppliers, such as energy
companies, government institutions and for purposes
such as taxes and penalties. Deutsche Telekom uses three
different entry channels for its invoices: paper, electronic
data interchange (EDI) and SAP Ariba.
Fabian Stadler, data science manager at the company
said: “To overcome the challenge of processing non-
POs, a multidisciplinary team of accountants, process
specialists and data scientists built in-house artificial
intelligence (AI) software SmartFI. Enriched by optical
character recognition (OCR) and a machine learning
(ML) algorithm to identify patterns in the data provided
by those non-PO invoices coming from all three entry
channels, the software has an accuracy level of 99.2
per cent for tax codes and general ledger account
predictions. It is also able to check if the invoices comply
with German VAT law, determine the account they are
sent by, and perform additional checks sometimes
required from country to country and supplier to supplier.
To ensure data quality and compliance, a threshold value
was implemented in the software to ensure that only
invoices answering a certain level of confidence could
Industry trendsSuccess storiesSurvey analysis Expert insights Industry trends
33 The PEX Report 2022
be booked automatically by the AI software. For the
other invoices, it recommends at least the most probable
values to the accountants.
Deutsche Telekom is currently working to improve SmartFI.
Peter Tasev, SVP P2P and head of finance digitalization
at the company explains: “I have a team of a couple of
dozen data scientists who set up the data models to train
the ML algorithms and take out some manual tasks from
that process within a year. Now, we are introducing new
functionalities continuously in six-week cycles.”
Since implementing the solution, employees who used to
process the non-PO invoices manually are now able to
focus on value-adding activities such as increasing the
quality of invoice postings and overseeing the processes,
as Tasev explains.
“The biggest result is the optimized capacity for
improving the end-to-end P2P process.” he says.
“We are transforming the accounting organization
to focus on continuous improvement rather than
reducing backlog.”
These employees are being requalified to oversee the
automated process for these non-PO invoices.
“We need to continuously monitor the process and
find ways to automate manual activities,” Tasev notes.
“Employees now spot anomalies and issues within the
process and they resolve them.”
With this shift in focus, Tasev sees accounting becoming
a partner to the wider business, as opposed to only
posting invoices.
“It is not just about transactional activities, it is about
improving the process which is generating insight out of
the transactional data,” he says. “We can feedback the
information we have in the payment area in procurement
and use it for defining our negotiation strategy and select
the vendors we want to work with.”
While handling non-PO invoices is one process type
within the end-to-end P2P process, Tasev explains that
there are “other process steps in P2P that consume a lot
of manual workforce” in the overall value flow.
By using process mining, Tasev has a very good
overview of the end-to-end process and areas that
involve a lot of manual interaction. The company may
currently be at an 85 per cent rate of automation in P2P,
but Tasev still sees the need to continuously monitor
numerous manual activities across the process and find
ways to automate them.
“We have all the data in one system that is standardized
and structured and we can apply our technology
framework, the ML technology, for other process steps,”
he notes.
Tasev has recently been running a big data-driven
process excellence project to review all of the
manual activities and understand which ones can be
grouped so they can be automated using his existing
framework. Over the next two years, Tasev says he
hopes to achieve an automation rate above 90 per
cent once he has identified the next big use case
for automation.
How Deutsche Telekom is optimizing P2P with AI and machine learning
“The biggest result is the optimized capacity for improving the end-to-end P2P process. We are transforming the accounting organization to focus on continuous improvement rather than reducing backlog.”
Peter TasevSVP P2P and head of finance digitalization at
Deutsche Telekom
Industry trendsSuccess storiesSurvey analysis Expert insights Industry trends
34 The PEX Report 2022
How Front Signs drove success when on the brink of collapseDiscover how a sign manufacturing and printing start-up shifted its operations and purpose to ensure survival during the pandemic
When the Covid-19 pandemic struck and lockdowns were
enforced across the globe, many organizations were
forced to pivot business offerings to survive. Front Signs,
a sign manufacturing and printing company, was hit hard
by the pandemic. Orders were declining to the point of
making the tough decision to either halt production or
begin laying off employees, as it was deemed impossible
to continue operating as-is from a financial standpoint.
After analyzing the situation and assessing organizational
capabilities, the start-up decided to shift its
manufacturing focus in order to maintain the level
of business necessary for survival. Front Signs began
producing sneeze guards, face shields, masks and safety
signs, all of which were in high demand at the height of
the pandemic.
The organization recognized this as an opportunity
to continue operating in what was a tough period.
Fortunately, according to Narine Daveyan, online
marketing strategist at Front Signs, the business did not
need to make any drastic process or operational changes.
“We were equipped with the materials and equipment
needed for the manufacturing shift, so there was not a
global process change in our case,” Daveyan notes.
Once the logistics of the switch had been planned
out, the next big challenge was implementing a new
marketing strategy. Aside from giving priority to the
promotion of safety signs and new market research, Front
Signs launched a “you buy, you donate” campaign. The
goal was to continue production while contributing to the
fight against Covid-19 by donating to hospitals with a
personal protective equipment (PPE) shortage.
The company’s marketing strategy had already been
planned before the Covid-19 pandemic, and updating
it in such a short time was a significant challenge.
Daveyan explains that this required flexibility from
every department but the shared goal of ensuring the
business’s survival and bigger purpose of helping to fight
Covid-19, ensured the team remained motivated and
inspired throughout the switch.
The new products and organizational mission were
well-received by customers, making this a win for the
company, not just from a production but also from
a marketing and customer experience standpoint,
explains Daveyan.
“Our main achievement was that we were able to use our
resources and remain self-sufficient, keeping the business
going and our staff fully employed, with sales covering
production costs,” remarks Daveyan.
Such a successful shift of business operations can offer
inspiration to many organizations who may have been
detrimentally affected by the Covid-19 pandemic or any
other unforeseen crisis. Understanding the resources they
possess and bringing together under a shared purpose of
ensuring business continuity or contributing to a worthy
cause offers organizations the opportunity to reinvent
business offerings and drive success even in the most
unlikely scenarios.
Industry trendsSuccess storiesSurvey analysis Expert insights Industry trends
35 The PEX Report 2022
Nintex’s CEO on why relying on a single process automation platform leads to failure and his
recommendations on five critical steps for process automation success
Low-code/no-code: The future of enterprise software explained by Creatio’s CEO
How Veritas’s process management initiative with Signavio enabled its digital transformation
Mavim on powering digital transformation with BPM, low-code and no-code
Expertise from our industry partners
Success storiesSurvey analysis Expert insights Industry trends
36 The PEX Report 2022
Why relying on a single process automation platform leads to failureNintex CEO Eric Johnson discusses best practices for successful process automation, from picking the right processes to selecting multiple vendors
As the digital economy takes hold across the globe,
companies in every industry are recognizing the
enormous business value they can gain by automating
processes to accelerate operations, slash costs and drive
better business outcomes.
The range and scope of these projects vary wildly,
from mission-critical processes that cut across multiple
functional units and require high-end developers and
sophisticated technology, to very simple linear processes
that can usually be handled with wizard-driven solutions.
Unfortunately, for some companies, the successes they
have had with a particular automation project have
convinced them that the solution that worked so well
for one mission-critical initiative should be made the
standard across the entire company, regardless of the
scope or complexity of the process involved.
As I look at the vast experiences my company, Nintex,
has had with more than 10,000 customers and tens of
thousands of projects, I can say with great confidence
that the all-in-one approach to process automation
simply does not work. But as bad as “doesn’t work”
can be, it is even worse than that: those failed projects
burn up money, time, opportunities and often good
relationships with customers or key partners who had to
endure bad experiences with your company because of
those failed initiatives.
Automation solutions are designed for very specific
purposes, which is particularly true for companies
spending many millions of dollars and several years to
craft mission-critical solutions that involve dozens or even
hundreds of sub-processes.
That level of sophistication and technical depth simply
does not translate to a smaller-scale or even simple
processes that need to be automated. In fact, it is sheer
overkill and will result in wasted time and money, as well
as frustrated users and related stakeholders.
But in today’s high-change world, most companies
are facing intense pressure to move, change, innovate,
automate, optimize and transform as rapidly as
possible. In that context, it is understandable that
some business leaders might feel that since a certain
automation vendor did a great job in one department,
they should be used across the company for all our
high-urgency projects.
The magic number is between three and five
As I look at our deep experiences with
thousands of organizations in every major
industry, the ideal mix for mid-sized and
large enterprises is three to five automation
vendors. For example, certain niche
automation providers are exceptionally
strong for building consumer-grade mobile
applications and others are uniquely strong in
document automation.
Simply stated, one process automation vendor
just will not work, while 10 is too many.
Industry trendsExpert insights Success storiesSurvey analysis
Five critical steps for your process automation success
As you set out on your own journey to jump into the digital
economy and get your processes automated, here are
five steps to guide you in making the optimal decisions for
the specific needs of your company.
Start off with a high-level, three-step perspective.
Firstly, reimagine the processes you will need to
create in your digital future; secondly, automate
those and all sub-processes around them; finally,
relentlessly optimize those processes to drive the
best outcomes.
Always look for the easiest and lowest-cost solution
provided it solves your problem and delivers the
desired business outcome. Ensure that you are
considering both initial time to design and ongoing
application maintenance when making this decision.
Key to this will be who you are targeting to be
able to build these applications: is it professional
developers, operations professionals or power
users, or the average knowledge worker? Knowing
who will do the work is a critical consideration.
Strive to automate as much as possible and to do
so as quickly and inexpensively as possible. You
also need to ensure the solutions fully align with
what your users want and need, not only today, but
also in your digital future.
Do not get distracted by vendors who promise to
blow you away with wall-to-wall RPA, AI, APIs or
other fancy lingo. While those technologies are
fantastic for some processes, they are dead-wrong
for others.
Will the CEO of the automation vendor give you
their personal commitment to see your project
through to a fully successful outcome? If not, is that
a vendor on which you are willing to bet the future
of your company? Strong executive support, high
peer-review site ratings, high net promoter scores
and a willingness to provide customer references
are all good signs.
Today’s business environment is putting enormous
pressure on companies to move rapidly and aggressively
into the digital economy and an essential element in that
is process automation.
As you begin or extend that journey, remember that
not all processes are the same, designer personas are
very different and no single vendor can possibly deliver
all the great outcomes you deserve for each of your
automation projects.
1
2
3
4
5
Industry trendsExpert insights Success storiesSurvey analysis
38 The PEX Report 2022
Low-code/no-code:The future of enterprise softwareCreatio CEO and founder Katherine Kostereva outlines how low-code/no-code can help companies provide hyper-personalized experiences for their customers
As we move into the future, expand our horizons and
develop new ways of delivering value to customers, the
tools and approaches we use will change over time. In
the past, large and mid-size enterprises used to rely
on their IT organizations to provide them with business
applications and help with automating processes
and operations. Now, as IT project backlogs have
significantly increased, the traditional way of
managing digital transformation and deploying
software is unable to keep pace with ever-growing
customer needs and expectations.
With customers in all key industries expecting hyper-
personalized and accessible service, with the ability
to innovate becoming “business as usual” practice,
organizations must find a better way to deliver on
automation projects. It is no surprise that low-code/
no-code have been among the most disruptive
technological trends for 2021, representing a new business
paradigm that can increase organizational capacity and
provide a competitive edge.
The promise of low-code/no-code lies in its ability
to enable non-technical people, so-called citizen
developers, to develop and deploy business applications
without deep technical skills. Democratization of software
is coming and it is important to get it right.
The key benefits of low-code/no-code tools include
the ability to resolve IT resources hurdles, accelerate
the development cycle and improve time-to-market.
Organizations that adopt such an approach can reduce
the tactical dependency of IT for development, boost
collaboration internally and empower business users to
deliver process automation on their own.
According to the recent report from Creatio, The state of
low-code/no-code 2021, respondents from our survey
indicated that the top two reasons for utilizing low-code/
no-code tools were their ability to accelerate time-to-
market and reduce applications development costs.
Constantin Mares, executive director of an OTP bank
subsidiary and user of Creatio, who spoke at our Low-
Code Marathon in June 2021, said: “The new approach
helped us rethink the way we go to market. We have
increased the self-sufficiency of the team and now are
able to deploy applications faster than ever before. We
have changed as an organization and we are not
going back.”
Gartner’s research supports this view, with 50 per cent
of medium-to-large enterprises revealing they will
adopt a low-code approach in some form by 2023.
It is evident that low-code/no-code companies are
becoming the norm.
What is even more exciting is that these benefits are
realized by all parties involved, IT, operations and
business teams. Each category can find its own reason
to invest in citizen development and new technology.
Despite some concerns that IT would not support the
new approach, we see more and more forward-thinking
technology leaders encouraging business teams to take
control of their automation projects and build strong
partnerships with IT.
Industry trendsExpert insights Success storiesSurvey analysis
Such an approach allows IT to repurpose its resources,
increase collaboration with business and drive
innovations. Of course, IT professionals need to provide
the needed support to govern, integrate and administer
such applications to make sure they comply with the
company’s standards and procedures.
The benefits to business teams are also evident, as
they gain more freedom and the ability to inherit critical
capabilities immediately, without the struggle of going
through a painful change request process. Any business
user can become a software creator without spending
years learning how to code. More importantly, they can
apply these skills to make their job more intelligent and
automated, freeing up more time for creativity and
meaningful tasks.
Operational leaders, as big-picture thinkers, would find
incredible potential in driving excellence and process
improvement. When process automation becomes as
easy as drawing a diagram, you can better connect
teams, remove bottlenecks and deliver a lot of value
to your internal clients. There is always a sophisticated
process behind excellent customer experience but now,
creating these sophisticated processes becomes much
easier and a fun task to tackle.
As the effect of low-code/no-code solutions
begins to snowball, enterprise technology stacks will
become increasingly composable, meaning knowledge
workers of any company can combine “building blocks”
of software without a need for formal training or
technical experience.
This way, they are not reinventing the wheel, but are
rather using ready-to-go capabilities and positioning
them in the right order. Composability is a fundamental
part of the low-code approach and is a great enabler
for efficient and frictionless development. As such, low-
code/no-code tools can greatly accelerate software
development up to 10 times, according to Forrester.
Hopefully, you are convinced that no-code is a new
way of automation and thinking. Gartner found that 65
per cent of enterprise software will be built on top of
such platforms by 2024. I strongly believe this will help
organizations create no-code companies and deliver
more value to their customers, partners and employees.
It is definitely the enterprise market disruption we are
seeing and Creatio is thrilled to play a significant part in
this market change.
Low-code/no-code: The future of enterprise software
Industry trendsExpert insights Success storiesSurvey analysis
40 The PEX Report 2022
How Veritas’s processmanagement initiative enabledits digital transformationBrandon Gerig, former process design team manager at data management service provider Veritas, discusses how the company’s global process management initiative streamlined process knowledge for more than 1,600 employees across six different operating sites globally
Veritas Technologies LLC was founded in 2016 after
demerging from Symantec. It specializes in data
protection and multi-cloud data management for
enterprise customers globally. Veritas services 86 per cent
of Fortune 500 companies and employs more than 7,500
people globally.
In this exclusive interview, Gerig explains the drivers
behind the company’s process management initiative
and what it has achieved since its introduction.
PEX Network: Can you please tell us about your
position at Veritas? What would you say is the
company’s operating philosophy and the way you
approach your work?
Brandon Gerig: I worked with the Veritas support and
services team. We fixed whatever was broken and we
catered to more than 1,600 employees across six major
support sites.
Veritas operates under the credo of unlocking truth held
within information. At the core of what the company does
is turn raw information into viable, actionable data. As
such, I approached work holistically, ensuring we looked
at processes from beginning to end. We needed to
understand the upstream, downstream and cross-stream
effects of any changes we are implementing.
PEX Network: What challenges were you are faced with
in your daily work?
BG: In being a global support organization, one of the key
challenges I faced daily was the consistency of processes
across our sites. Adding to the complexity of the work
performed by our support engineers, it could be quite
daunting to ensure that all knowledge workers followed
the same process for each customer interaction.
PEX Network: The stability of your processes is a
fundamental cornerstone of your success and that of
your customers. What was the reason behind starting a
process improvement initiative in 2016?
BG: We faced enormous struggles with business
stakeholders at each of our six unique support sites
because they were working from their own ‘best
practices’, which often contradicted or conflicted with
the other support sites globally. There were also multiple
process repositories and we were using Microsoft Visio
and a sea of PDFs.
We were drowning in processes and documentation.
Signavio’s software allowed us to focus more on strategic
initiatives, rather than continually following stakeholder
documentation, changing the entire landscape of our
process program. I cannot overstate the power of visual
process depictions.
Industry trendsExpert insights Success storiesSurvey analysis
Through Signavio, we were able to reduce our repositories
from nine to one, and we were also able to take over
more than 800 PDF documents and visualize them. The
result is that we ended up with just 75 PDF documents
and around 65 business process model and notation
(BPMN) visualizations.
PEX Network: Who was the key driver behind your
process transformation initiative?
BG: My director and my team were the drivers of this
change. The director put out the vision, I found Signavio
and we then implemented it which was one of our best
business decisions.
PEX Network: What goals do you want to achieve with
the initiative?
BG: Signavio saved us from some costly decisions
being made. The technology fixed problems before we
even got started and the overview it provided us has
been pivotal.
Since implementing our program with Signavio, we
were able to hit our consistency goals and our strategic
process drivers. The learning curve to get more than 1,600
employees globally to use and interact with the Signavio
solution took a 15-minute training video. We were also
able to map out proposed projects and present them to
our leadership team quickly, logically and concisely.
PEX Network: Has process management become a part
of company culture?
BG: I was never in a conversation at work where the word
‘process’ was not used. We continually looked at how we
could be doing things better for our customers and our
internal stakeholders.
PEX Network: Did you reach the goals you set?
BG: We were able to reach our goals and Signavio
provided the stabilization we so desperately needed to
allow us to focus on strategic initiatives, and changed the
fundamental utilization of process at Veritas.
How Veritas’s process management initiative enabledits digital transformation
Industry trendsExpert insights Success storiesSurvey analysis
42 The PEX Report 2022
Powering digital transformation with BPM, low-code and no-codeEdwin Jongsma, VP of Americas at Mavim discusses how combining BPM and low-code platforms can help organizations power digital transformation by digitizing complex business applications quickly and with no coding
Every company has a variety of software tools they use
to ensure their business functions properly and there is
organization within the back end of the IT technologies.
Many of these tools, however, can be costly and have a
slow time-to-value.
As the need for fast-paced technology applications
evolved, the concept of low-code development emerged
as an alternative solution, with the Covid-19 pandemic
advancing that pace. As low-code projects become
bigger and take on more complex responsibilities, there
comes a need for business process management (BPM),
with low-code platforms here to stay.
Low-code and ERP
Over the years, we have learned from the world of
enterprise resource planning (ERP) that aligning with the
business users at the process management level is critical
to overall success. ERP processes are complicated and
process design decisions can cause cost overruns that
often only become visible when it is too late. It is all about
transparent alignment with the customer in the design
phase. The key is to align with customers at the business
process level in a language they understand, in order to
manage scope, mitigate risks, contain cost and increase
user adoption and customer satisfaction.
As low-code enterprise business applications become
increasingly complicated, similar rules apply and what’s
more, low-code projects are adjacent to existing ERP
systems. Being able to build these solutions in-house
ultimately saves companies from spending extra on point
solutions, but when processes cross a certain complexity
threshold, the need for business process modelling and
governance grows in importance.
Advantages of low-code development
There are plenty of low-hanging fruit solutions that can
be quickly created without having to write code. Even
complex applications can start simple and then be
upgraded to something more robust and scalable when
the need arises. Although low-code is built for simplicity
as a tool for business users (citizen development), the
reality is that more complex applications still require
support from IT. Modelling applications at the business
process level allows the business users to seamlessly work
together with the architects from IT and produce rich
applications faster and cheaper.
BPM provides a visual language that bridges the gap
between business and IT. It allows for a standardized
way of working with the offshore teams of IT and system
integrator partners.
As technology has evolved, so have development
methodologies as seen in Microsoft Power Apps, one
of the low-code and no-code platforms available
on the market. It is a data platform providing a suite
of apps, services and connectors that offers a rapid
enterprise application development environment to
build apps using multiple applications: canvas apps,
model-driven apps, hybrid apps or apps without
front end like Power Automate tool which automates
processes and workflows.
Industry trendsExpert insights Success storiesSurvey analysis
Model-driven apps provide a predefined, out of the box
user interface (UI) framework and allow for the fastest
development, while providing very rich functionalities
such as create, read, update, delete operations (CRUD),
search and filtering. Users spend less time on the UI and
can, therefore, be more productive on a project. Model-
driven apps have a built-in UI for business process flows
that guide the users of the applications through multiple
steps to reach an end goal.
Many large enterprise-level organizations have thousands
of Excel applications and migrating some of those to a
platform like Power Apps will make the data available in a
database and lead to the creation of a modern scalable
web-based UI with a robust security structure.
BPM as a tool for business alignment
BPM can be used to govern the creation of complex
business process flow UI applications and provide the
tools to support the migration from Excel to low-code
platforms. Business processes are the main component
in starting to define a solution for implementations and
represent the functional language that is necessary for
alignment within a business. In order to describe future
solutions, current processes in the organization must be
understood by all stakeholders thoroughly, which can be
done with process mining.
Because these processes are connected to the
operational model, the actions are shown in real time,
which allows for continuous improvement by keeping
processes and implementation in sync, and creates a
visual roadmap from the “as is” to your “to be” future
vision. This allows you to start with a standardized
approach with the possibility to add your industry models
as you build and redefine your roadmap.
BPM becomes more than visual models in combination
with scalable low-code platforms. While traditionally
it has emphasized operational efficiency through
standardization, with the advent of low-code platforms,
it can also be used to govern the rapid pace of digital
transformation. Also, BPM can support the automation of
DevOps (work items and instructions), testing and support
the process related to user adoption.
The future of BPM and beyond
Low-code, in combination with BPM, allows for faster
and interactive digital transformation. By using BPM
for governance, companies can reduce risk, avoid cost
overruns and miscommunication. Companies that do this
consistently are building a digital twin of an organization
(DTO), or virtual copy of your organization.
This not only helps you to decide what is causing
problems and what needs to be fixed, but also shows you
how it can be molded into something better. DTO is
a superset of BPM for your entire organization, while
helping to prioritize which applications have the highest
need to be built.
Powering digital transformation with BPM, low-code and no-code
Industry trendsExpert insights Success storiesSurvey analysis
If you are interested in becoming a PEX Network contributor, please get in touch with our editor
Alice Clochet at [email protected]
If you want to be positioned as a thought leader to PEX Network’s community, get in touch
with our head of partnerships Ed Wells at [email protected]
EDITORIAL CALENDAR: June 2021 - December 2022
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JULY 2021
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JANUARY 2022
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Record To Report
AUGUST 2021
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NOVEMBER 2021
PEX Live: Digital Mortgage Process 2022
Intelligent Automation Report 2022
Finance Process Automation Report
Webinar: Industry Insights In IA
Insights In Low-Code
FEBRUARY 2022
PEX Live: Workflow Automation 2022
BPM Report 2022
Webinar: Diving Into The State Of BPM
Insights In EA And DPA
MAY 2022
The PEX Report 2023
OPEX in Manufacturing Report
Webinar: Key Findings from The PEX Report 2023
Insights In OPEX For Financial Services
AUGUST 2022
Process Mining
Digital Process Automation Report
Webinar: Powering The Process Mining Revolution
Top 10 Process Simulation Applications
NOVEMBER 2022
PEX Live: BPM 2021
Order-To-Cash Report
Mortgage Processing
Finance Process Automation
SEPTEMBER 2021
PEX Live: Finance Process Automation 2021
PEX Live: OPEX Week 2021
PEX Trends And Predictions 2022
DECEMBER 2021
PEX Live: Process Mining 2022
Change Management Report
Hyperautomation In PEX Update
Insights In Digital Mortgage Processing
MARCH 2022
PEX Live: Procure-To-Pay 2022
PEX Live: IA And RPA 2022
Mortgage Process Report
PEX In APAC Regional Update
Top 10 Tips For Enhancing CX Processes
JUNE 2022
PEX Live: BPM 2022
Low-Code Report
OPEX Training Update
Top 10 Tips For Implementing a P2P Solution
SEPTEMBER 2022
PEX Live: Finance Process Automation 2022
PEX Live: OPEX Week 2022
2023 Trends And Predictions Report
Agile Support And Development Update
How To Enhance Global Process Ownership
DECEMBER 2022
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