PEX Network’s weekly news bulletin rounds up the latest research, reports and publications in operational excellence (OPEX), digital transformation, artificial intelligence (AI) and automation, business process management (BPM), process mining and process intelligence and more.
This week includes:
- Digital transformation anxiety hampers business innovation
- Unveiling the causes of waiting time in business processes
- Generative AI will transform over 40 percent of work activity
- Capability and maturity models aid BPM
- APQC to present new research at All Access: BPM 2024
Digital transformation anxiety hampers business innovation
Researchers from universities in Taiwan published a new study exploring the novel construct of “digital transformation anxiety” and its effect on digital innovation performance. The study conducted a questionnaire survey among Taiwanese manufacturing and service companies, with a total of 130 valid responses collected and analyzed.
“Digital transformation anxiety leads companies to adopt unnecessarily conservative practices, preventing them from flexibly responding to technological advances,” the researchers wrote. “This insight highlights the negative effect of such anxiety on absorptive capacity and dynamic capability, extending the application of path dependency theory to companies.” The findings underscore the value of enhancing dynamic capability and reallocating resources to foster digital innovation.
Unveiling the causes of waiting time in business processes
A new research paper outlined a process mining approach for identifying causes of waiting times and assessing their impact on process cycle time efficiency (CTE). “Waiting times in a business process often arise when a case transitions from one activity to another. Accordingly, analyzing the causes of waiting times in activity transitions can help analysts identify opportunities for reducing the cycle time of a process,” according to the authors.
The researchers attributed the waiting time of activity transitions to one of five causes: batching, resource contention, prioritization, resource unavailability and extraneous factors. “Then, we outline how these five causes of waiting time can be discovered from an event log. Lastly, our approach measures the impact of each waiting time cause on the CTE of a process to help analysts prioritize opportunities to reduce these waiting times.”
Generative AI will transform over 40 percent of work activity
Most business functions and more than 40 percent of all US work activity can be augmented, automated or reinvented with generative AI, according to a new article published in Harvard Business Review. The changes are expected to have the largest impact on the legal, banking, insurance and capital-market sectors, followed by retail, travel, health and energy.
“For organizations and their employees, this looming shift has massive implications,” the researchers, from Accenture, wrote. “In the future many of us will find that our professional success depends on our ability to elicit the best possible output from large language models (LLMs) like ChatGPT – and to learn and grow along with them.” To excel in this new era of AI-human collaboration, most people will need one or more of what the authors called “fusion skills” – these are intelligent interrogation, judgment integration and reciprocal apprenticing.
“The future of business will be driven not by generative AI alone but by the people who know how to use it most effectively,” the authors concluded.
Capability and maturity models aid BPM
A new chapter published in the Business Process Management and Digital Transformation handbook introduced the most important capability and maturity models and their roles in BPM adoption. The chapter also outlined general criticisms linked to these models, offering promising avenues to secure their future use in the era of digital transformation.
“The capability and maturity models in BPM provide a framework for assessing and improving how an organization designs, implements and manages its business processes,” the authors wrote. “As such, these models can provide a valuable tool for organizations seeking to transform their operations through digital technologies.”
APQC to present new research at All Access: BPM 2024
The American Productivity & Quality Center (APQC) will be presenting new, process-focused research at All Access: BPM 2024, PEX Network’s upcoming free webinar series (taking place September 10 – 11). Madison Lundquist, principal research lead, process and performance management at APQC, will reveal and discuss findings on the key elements of team structures, effective measurement techniques, essential process roles and the integration of change management to support process efforts.
Key highlights will include:
- Best practices for fostering collaboration and accountability.
- Techniques for continuous improvement and performance tracking.
- Overview of critical roles within process management teams.
- Strategies for managing resistance and driving adoption.
- How technology supports process optimization and innovation.
[inlinead-1]