Exploring the Cognitive Transformation of Business Process Management

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Rethinking BPM in a Cognitive World:
Transforming How We Learn and Perform
Business Processes
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Table of Contents
Introduction................................................................................................................................2
1. The Context........................................................................................................................3
a. Business process three classes........................................................................................3
1. Transactional intensive Processes............................................................................3
2. Judgement intensive Process...................................................................................3
3. Strategy and Design support Process.......................................................................4
b. Cognitive Computing Overview.....................................................................................4
2. Towards the framework for the cognitive Business Process Management (BPM)...........5
a. Four Pillars......................................................................................................................5
b. Cognitive in the Today’s BPM (Business Process Management) Marketplace.............5
3. Abstraction for the Cognitively Enabled BPM..................................................................6
a. Key Building Blocks.......................................................................................................6
b. Cycle (Plan-Act-Learn) for the Cognitively Enabled process........................................6
4. Towards the Cognitive Learning of the Business Process.................................................6
5. Towards Enablement of Cognitive Process.......................................................................7
a. Classical Business Process Management Setting............................................................7
b. Plan-Act-Learn Setting....................................................................................................8
6. Key steps for the Cognitive BPM Research.......................................................................9
Conclusion................................................................................................................................10
References................................................................................................................................11
List of Figures
Figure 1: 3 classes of the business process................................................................................4
Figure 2: Business Process Life Cycle.......................................................................................5
Figure 3: Cognitive BPM conceptual framework......................................................................6
Figure 4: Cycle (Plan-Act-Cycle) for the Cognitively Enabled process....................................7
Figure 5: Computing At The Scale............................................................................................8
Figure 6: Cognitive is the emerging as the new computing paradigm.....................................10
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Introduction
BPM (Business Project Management) always remains the central and foundational element
for the running organizations today. Business process management is the discipline in the
management of the operations in which the peoples use the different types of the methods for
discovering, analyse, model, improve, measure, automate and optimize the business process.
This report is about reviewing the conference paper presented by the Richard and Hamid on
the “Rethinking about the BPM in the Cognitive World”. I will provide an explanation of
how the business process management will be impacted by the advances in the Cognitive
Computing. And also seen the emerging family of the technology that is the uses of the NLP
(Natural Processing Language) in Cognitive Computing.
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1. The Context
This is the section in which we discover the overall context of the impact of cognitive radio
computing on business process management. From the case study provided we found three
classes of the BPM (business process management) and also the coming trends in the
cognitive computing that are directly relevant to the business project management.
Figure 1: 3 classes of the business process
a. Business process three classes
Business process classified into the three processes one is the strategy and the design support,
second classes are the judgement intensive process and the third one is the transactional
intensive process. The brief description of the types of business process is as follows:
1. Transactional intensive Processes
This type of the process is generally well defined and are also implemented many times.
Examples of the process having the week to week payroll, origination or the mortgage
processing, accounts receivable and the supply chain management. BPO (business process
outsourcing) is another example of the transactional intensive process.
2. Judgement intensive Process
Judgement intensive process is the process which is actually human-driven work operational
which requires many different judgements including the organizational, complex information
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and system. Example of such a process includes the new sales relationship management, for
the IT large scale managing the project management, or another onboarding engagement or
the activities for investigating fraudulent.
3. Strategy and Design support Process
Strategy and design support process is the process which includes the collaborative work at
open-ended. Examples of such process are a merger at early stages, acquisition exploration
and the transformation explorations for the business models.
Figure 2: Business Process Life Cycle
b. Cognitive Computing Overview
Many companies like the IBM, Hewlett Packard, KPMG and Deloitte are providing a vision
for what actually Cognitive Computing is, and how it will going to influence the world and
the industries.
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For this paper, we are interested in actually how cognitive computing considered the
technologies in its umbrella. The technologies which are considered by the cognitive system
are the NLP (natural language processing), ML (machine learning), and the reasoning chains.
These capabilities are available in two ways one is as traditional in the hose functionalities as
well as the clouds hosted services like the SaaS (software as a service).
2. Towards the framework for the cognitive Business Process
Management (BPM)
This is the section which provides the information regarding the different ways in which
cognitive computing in the coming year will go to transform the BPM.
a. Four Pillars
The figure shown below shows the new types of information which includes by the Cognitive
Computing that is the unstructured data, IoT (internet of things) data, sensors and the smart
devices. Cognitive Computing improves and leverages the human to machine collaboration
and the human to human collaboration. Next BPM layers show that it is capable in Case
Management and traditional BPM. And the last four pillars of the cognitive BPM are the
Enablement of the cognitive process, cognitive process learning, cognitive decision supports
and the cognitive interaction with the different process.
Figure 3: Cognitive BPM conceptual framework
b. Cognitive in the Today’s BPM (Business Process Management)
Marketplace
There are generally three classes of the Robotic Process Automation first one is the Basic
process automation, the second one is the Enhanced Process Automation, and the third comes
the cognitive/Autonomic. For examples, Ignio product from the Digitate, Amelia providing
from IPsoft and many other capabilities of the cognitive computing. The website of the
Wipro Holmes explains that the solutions that are actually applying Cognitive Computing in
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the areas like the IT Help Desk, Retails purchasing compliance and assistance, prescription
fulfilment.
3. Abstraction for the Cognitively Enabled BPM
As we have discussed in the upper section that it is important for the BPM paradigm for
taking the full advantage of Cognitive Computing as well as Cognitive Computing will also
going to help the new paradigm. There are basically two points of the divergence for the
Cognitive Computing the first one is the “Knowledge at the scale” and the seconds on is the
definition of the abstraction that will enable the systematic process for the support of the full
spectrum from the structured data to the unstructured data.
a. Key Building Blocks
Following are some of the building blocks for the cognitive enabled business process:
 Knowledge including the Constraints
 Goals or the Subgoals
 Agents like the Machine and the Humans
 Decisions
 Actions
 Events
 Plan
b. Cycle (Plan-Act-Learn) for the Cognitively Enabled process
Very highly flexible model is required by the cognitive enabled BPM that will never support
systematic reporting and monitoring, explanation and provenance, audits and repeatability.
The cognitive enabled BPM is based on the cycle called the plan-act-learn cycle. This triad
one part is focused on the deciding and planning portions for the process which is actually
carried by the machines or the humans. Shown below figure is for the cycle of the cognitive
enabled process in which dashed line denotes the optional pathways.
Figure 4: Cycle (Plan-Act-Cycle) for the Cognitively Enabled process
4. Towards the Cognitive Learning of the Business Process
Business process management is essentials as there is generally four-factor which is affecting
the modern organization they are the Turbulence, interdependence, time and the technology.
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Cognitive learning is very beneficial for the business process. It is the style of the learning
which encourages learners to use their brain very effectively. This type of learning is
essential for the business process as it pushes the organization to engages in the learning
process, learning thinking and help in remembering the things easier and more easier.
The three processes or the dimensions of the learning are considered from the structured data
(data which are in organised format), from the unstructured data (data which are not in the
organised format but unorganised) i.e the digital exhaust, and from the purpose-built
documents.
Many different types of techniques are developing from the digital exhaust from the learning
process and primarily mail. The use of the techniques that is the NLP on the email is the well-
travelled field and different types of the tool are now available that will analyse the email to
assign the different personal assistance like the Google Now, Amazon echo and the Microsoft
Cortana.
Figure 5: Computing At The Scale
5. Towards Enablement of Cognitive Process
Enablement of the cognitive process is the way that how the cognitive computing took
broadly will boost the original process that will carry out the operations of the business,
considered at the process modelling levels. Cognitive computing will have an impact on both
of the techniques like on classical BPM (and the case management) and also on the processes
which follow the Plan-Act-learn model.
a. Classical Business Process Management Setting
Suppose that the learning automated which described in the above section that there are many
different types of techniques are developing from the digital exhaust from the learning
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process and primarily mail. The use of the techniques that is the NLP on the email is the well-
travelled field and different types of the tool are now available that will analyse the email to
assign the different personal assistance like the Google Now, Amazon echo and the Microsoft
Cortana. And suppose this is used in the implicit process of the information in order to
develop the process model which is deployable.
This type of requirements is needed for doing envision of the whole framework and the
system for the enablement of cognitive learning and the deployments of the classical BPM
and process like the case management process.
b. Plan-Act-Learn Setting
Towards the enablement of the cognitive process, the next impact is on the Plan-Act-Learn
setting. It is the setting or the cognitive enabled BPM is based on the cycle called the plan-
act-learn cycle. This triad one part is focused on the deciding and planning portions for the
process which is actually carried by the machines or the humans. In such a setting it is very
essential for the cognitive agents that they should understand the abilities of whole resources
available also including the agents i.e both the humans and automated.
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6. Key steps for the Cognitive BPM Research
The paper presented by the Hull and Nezhad laid out the framework for understanding the
process like how the Cognitive Computing will have impact on the practice of the BPM overs
the several next years and also focused on the emerging perspective for the cognitive process
of the abstraction, enablement of the cognitive process and learning of the cognitive process.
The finding from this paper are relevant to the Judgement intensively, spectrum business
process, to design and strategy process and from the transactional intensive process.
This Review paper have describes the many different research challenges that Cognitive
Computing has brings to the BPM (Business Process Management). We conclude this by
reiterating the very important point of the research themes which are central to the BPM
community. The Key steps for the cognitive BPM research are flexibility, Plan-Act-Learn
process cycle and explain of the manual and testing adjustment for the business process.
Figure 6: Cognitive is the emerging as the new computing paradigm
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Conclusion
I concluded from the paper presented by Richard and Hamid in the 14th International
Conference that it is now necessary to rethink the business process management in the
cognitive world. I have provided an explanation of how the business process management
will be impacted by the advances in the Cognitive Computing. And also seen the emerging
family of the technology that is the uses of the NLP (Natural Processing Language) in
Cognitive Computing.
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References
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 Hull, R. and Nezhad, H.R.M., 2016, September. Rethinking BPM in a cognitive
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Conference on Business Process Management (pp. 3-19). Springer, Cham.
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