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A year or so ago, I wrote a short opinion piece entitled “Productivity, Processes, and AI – Why Should We Care?” which seemed to resonate with an extraordinarily large number of business leaders and other thoughtful individuals in our on-line community.

In particular, my suggestion that as business leaders we need to be “obsessive about productivity,” especially in the current economic climate, provoked a collective virtual “thumbs up.”

I posited that “the best way to decide how to use them [AI tools], other than as individual props, involves seeing past the background hype and taking a fresh look at our processes.”

Since then of course the world has turned and our reliance on what we perceive to be AI has increased, but it has also become even more apparent that having a clear view of our processes is the somewhat unglamorous key to understanding where the automation and AI opportunities are.

As a CIO friend of mine commented recently, “prioritisation and process re-engineering are required” to get maximum value out of any approach to AI implementation.

On a related topic, some of you have been curious about the rationale behind our partnership with Aptum-X, whose powerful process modelling tool is specifically aimed at providing 4-dimensional clarity, running “what if” scenarios, and suggesting automation opportunities. Why would a strategy consultancy like Atlantic Cedar also be interested in helping clients to baseline processes?

Well, I would go as far to say that the relationships between strategy, process, data, and now also AI, is such that each one informs the other to the extent that considering one of those elements without at least some attention to all of the others is at best incomplete and potentially neglectful.

A recent article by Aptum-X founder, Tim Connolly, demonstrates the importance of having a clear view of the current process model in order to ensure its evolution in line with business strategy, and how it can be used to enable successful top-line growth, cost reduction, and capability building. It’s worth taking a moment to check it out.

As we all know, strategy is meaningless unless it’s executable and whilst the first question is always “Why?” it should immediately be followed by “How?”

Personally, I can’t recall ever being as excited as I am now about the convergence of technology, people, and processes in the pursuit of business value. It’s daunting, overwhelming even, but I really do think that the way forward is clear. Do get in touch at info@atlanticcedar.com if you want to chat further. As another friend of mine is fond of saying - only good will come of it.