Top 11 operational excellence trends in 2023

PEX Network has compiled insights from a range of experts on the top process trends they expect in 2023.

The year 2023 is set to be marked by global inflation, expected to hit 6.5 percent in 2023 and resulting market disruptions, on top of advances in technology that can benefit businesses to optimize their processes.

This list offers insights from experts from the likes of Sanofi Business Services, LyondellBasell, SEG Automotive and Payoneer on the top focus for organizations and the technologies that will help them overcome challenges in an uncertain economic environment.

A renewed focus on processes

Organizations will have a renewed focus on processes in 2023.

“Business processes have been underestimated and not given enough attention in many companies so far as the key focus was technology such as robotic process automation (RPA) and process mining.

“While technology drives competitive advantage it is created and should be considered as the enabler for business processes efficiency. Currently I am observing organizations focusing and launching global initiatives with the aim to standardize and improve business processes.

“Operational excellence with processes in mind becomes increasingly frequent and important for companies. This is the foundation for any further technology scaling and efficiency benefits. Therefore, I expect the process-focused approach to be a growing mind-set in organizations in 2023.”

Anna Alechno, intelligent automation lead global at IT global business services at JTI (Japan Tobacco International)

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“Business process management (BPM) as a management discipline is experiencing a resurgence beyond the “hype cycle”. This is because it is an approach to manage organizations holistically at the enterprise level where the BPM knowledge areas, skills and competencies have evolved into a multidisciplinary leadership role and practice.

“There will be a return to process fundamentals paired with advanced technology enablers for true transformation which focuses on improving the customer experience and will be led and facilitated by the C-suites and governing boards of companies.”

Tony Benedict, president of the Association of BPM Professionals International

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“I would expect more integration of process improvement efforts and automation or RPA goals instead of having separated objectives and pipelines.”

Nino Monge, director of operational excellence at Equifax

Watch Monge’s full session from PEX Live: OPEX in Financial Services 2022

“There will be naturally an ongoing trend to seek further process improvements and automations. At the same time there will be increasing focus on business continuity planning which for the last two years has had a totally different dimension.

"Organizations had solid plans on paper but reality check proved there is a major homework to do on business disruptions mitigation.”

Maciej Waszkiewicz, order-to-cash, global supply chain and customer service director at JTI (Japan Tobacco International)

The critical role of process automation, AI and citizen development

“There will be a focus on hyper technology to solve operational problems. Due to economic trends, a focus on cost and speed will be immense.”

Nadeem Saeed, corporate vice-president, quality excellence at Verizon

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“I see 2023 consolidating the post-pandemic trends we have been observing this year in terms of business process digitization: eliminating all unnecessary touchpoints, transforming from an activity and functional focus to ‘as-a-service’ focus and making customer experience the north star of every business organization.

“Key themes will be around touchless interaction, real-time personalization, mobile and social engagement and customer-driven process design.

“Tax authorities in several countries will also dictate the agenda by introducing new fully digitized invoice flows and that has to be embedded in any process excellence roadmap.”

Enrico Dispenza, global process owner order-to-cash at LyondellBasell

Read this report which contained Dispenza’s insights: Boosting efficiency in order-to-cash with intelligent automation

"We will increasingly see organizations further quantize their business processes to reduce citizen development barriers and enable their citizen and semi-pro developer communities to digitize processes at a faster pace."
Rajesh Rao, head of automation CoE at Nokia

Read this interview from Rao: How Nokia achieved significant asset turnover gains with intelligent automation

“Based on achievements and highlights in 2022, I expect that artificial intelligence (AI) processes and capabilities will become increasingly available for companies of all sizes. Its adoption will become much easier, scalable and beneficial for them.”

Yulia Neroslavski, RPA domain lead at Payoneer

Read this interview from Neroslavski: “Focus on low-hanging fruits in intelligent automation initiatives,” says automation expert

“Organizations will look to increase their automation spending in 2023 to simplify their business operations and tackle economic challenges. Three key automation themes will drive the simplification process: robot resilience, process orchestration and AI-infused automation. As a result of these automation themes, there will be scrutiny of technical debt caused by a patchwork of existing automation, functional and process silos and AI hypes.

“AI will be at the center of every conversation. For example, how do we deliver more complex automation using AI to augment human intelligence?

“In 2022, there were several AI breakthroughs including Midjourney, DALL-E and ChatGPT. Organizations must look to balance the benefits of AI against [potential] AI ethic[al issues] through a responsible AI lens.

“Lastly, the benefits of automation have been proven times without number from Q1 2022 through to Q4 2022. Forward-thinking organizations must deploy automation effectively to tackle inflation, looming recession and other economic challenges in 2023.”

Tolani Jaiye-Tikolo, RPA lead at AIB

The importance of data and analytics

“A key trend I expect and hope to see to be more mature in 2023 is process simulation. Current platforms offer limited possibilities mainly on throughput analysis. Turning insights into foresights will be the next natural step for rapid and sustainable process improvement.”

Vladimiro Ferreira, head of automation center of excellence (CoE) and innovation manager at SEG Automotive

Take a look at this panel Ferreira participated in at PEX Live: Digital Process Automation 2022: Strategies for rolling out automation at scale in large organizations

“In 2023 I expect a rise in the combination of process design and process mining to build data-driven continuous improvement. Data in continuous improvement will be king.”

Nikolay Goldovich, head of data, process, automation of the intelligence CoE at Sanofi Business Services

Read Goldovich’s case study in PEX Report 2023: Global state of process excellence

What other trends do you expect to see in 2023? Let us know in the comments below.