Process orchestration: The unsung automation hero

When you think about process automation, you might naturally think of a company like Amazon. From ordering, to warehouse automation, to delivery, to returns -- end-to-end business processes flow seamlessly, like magic. When you’re building from scratch as a startup, this level of process automation is easier to achieve than if you’re contending with legacy systems.

But today, 70 percent of global companies list legacy modernization as a top strategic business priority. That means automating all of their processes from scratch isn’t always an option. Ripping and replacing legacy systems is disruptive and costly. That’s where process orchestration comes in.

Simply put, process orchestration coordinates the various moving parts (or endpoints) of a business process, and sometimes even ties multiple processes together. Process orchestration can help you work with the people, systems and devices you already have -- while achieving even the most ambitious goals around end-to-end process automation.

Battling disconnected business processes

Many organizations automate processes already (or partially automate them, with some humans involved). Some of these processes are automated locally, or within a single software system, team, or device. However, most processes -- even if they sound simple -- follow a  more complex logic.

Think about an automobile insurance claim settlement process. If you get in a car accident, you might call your insurance agent to inform them of what happened. From there, you might email them some photos, before an underwriter travels to the site to take photos themselves. Next, a different team at the insurance company enters the back office data into a legacy software application before the claim is processed over the course of the next few weeks. You may then have to upload a detail about the car accident through a mobile app (like a police report, for example), which is processed through an entirely different system than the original legacy application.

Even this example, which is oversimplified at best, sounds complicated (not to mention, it’s a poor customer experience). True end-to-end processes span many people (often working in different teams or departments), software systems (e.g. legacy systems, SaaS, homegrown software)  and physical devices. Each of these contribute work to fulfill an end-to-end process, and can be thought of as a "process endpoint."

Without process orchestration, all of these process endpoints are disconnected. This results in a disparate set of local tasks and automations, which leads to challenges such as:

• Broken end-to-end automation: Since local automations are not integrated with one another, the end-to-end process is not fully automated.
• Lack of understanding: The end-to-end process is not fully visible and key metrics are hard to track.
• Lack of flexibility: Changing the process is difficult since it leads to potential changes in many different systems.

Overcoming these challenges with process orchestration not only increases the degree of automation in your organization, it also makes your customer experience better, leads to higher cost efficiencies, and makes life easier for your employees.

Getting started with process orchestration

In most organizations, process orchestration should look like a lifecycle, rather than a one-and-done effort. At the beginning of your lifecycle, you may be focused on gaining clarity on how your processes are running (or should be running). What people, systems, and devices are you working with? If processes are not automated, you might make an inventory of where to start. The best course of action is to start small with a pilot or lighthouse project as a proof of concept (PoC).

An ideal PoC team should include a moderator to keep the effort on track, a developer or enterprise architect to implement the PoC in practice, and an analyst to present the business case to a wide variety of stakeholders. After these stakeholders are convinced of the feasibility of an orchestration project, the PoC team may assume a larger role in planning the order of orchestration projects, executing them and/or tying them together with end-to-end process orchestration technology, and measuring their success.

It’s important to note that breaking a larger process orchestration project into smaller, more manageable pieces is not the same as automating in silos. Many organizations make the mistake of adopting their own departmental automation technologies, and don’t communicate their results with the rest of the organization. There’s no pilot project, or team managing the rollout. As a result, it’s tough to understand how processes are operating from end-to-end, let alone how to improve them.

Your organization might need to orchestrate process endpoints such as legacy systems, microservices, RPA bots, APIs, AI/ML tools, IoT devices, human tasks and more. Viewing each of these endpoints in a silo would miss out on the ability to make them work together seamlessly across the organization. Using process orchestration, you can tie together these process endpoints component by component, until the time and resources can be dedicated to rewriting legacy applications (and subsequently orchestrating those modern software components). Automation doesn’t need to be disruptive to your operations or the customer experience.

To sum up, process orchestration technology makes the most sense when your business processes span a diverse set of process endpoints, and are described by a more complex logic than just a simple sequence of steps. Taking advantage of process orchestration can help your team make the most out of automation -- and achieve Amazon levels of efficiency.

Photo Credit: NicoElNino/Shutterstock

Jakob Freund is CEO, Camunda.