International User Groups Conference 2024 | Josèphe Blondaut | Software AG

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Josèphe Blondaut

Head of ARIS Product Marketing

Software AG

Creating timeless software: How Software AG has remained relevant in the new age of AI

The year Software AG was founded provided two watershed moments in the future growth and direction of the technology industry.It was 1969, and IBM Corp. announced in June that it would begin pricing its software and services separately from its hardware, laying the groundwork for an emergence of the modern software consulting industry. One month later, U.S. astronauts walked on the moon, a validation that technology could achieve what was once unthinkable

play_circle_outline Unveiling ARIS AI Companion: Empowering Process Mining and Modeling with New Generative AI Capabilities

play_circle_outline The expanded audience for ARIS and its impact on marketing

play_circle_outline Evolution of process modeling and mining from manual to automated methods

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Josèphe Blondaut | Software AG

Josèphe Blondaut

Head of ARIS Product Marketing Software AG

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>> Welcome back to Software AG's 2024 International Users Groups Conference... Users Groups, plural... here in Dublin. We're talking with Josèphe Blondaut. Did I get that right?

Josèphe Blondaut

>> It was perfect. Thank you. Nice to see you.

>> Nice to see you too. Head of ARIS product marketing. ARIS, of course, the process mining and process modeling product that is really the flagship of the Software AG portfolio right now. You've been with ARIS for a long time. ARIS was the star of the show at yesterday's keynote where we saw the new generative AI capabilities being applied first to process mining, later to process modeling, and a lot of excitement in the audience about these features. How are you going to take this to the market?

Josèphe Blondaut

>> Thanks for the question. We have a lot of activities planned already for the go-to-market of these gen AI functionality. It's called the ARIS AI Companion, and we started yesterday, as you just mentioned. So starting yesterday to communicate this new capabilities to our customer, to the people that know ARIS already, then will get direct benefit of that. That's the first stage. Today we had a press release to announce that to the broader market and to the press. And I think in a few minutes I will have the first social media post coming out. So there's a big campaign planned around that to communicate that. And of course, we will reuse the usual marketing channels that we have anyhow, so it's about webinars, it's about short snippets, short video to explain how it works. It's about creating some papers to explain the usage of AI in ARIS and how to do it right. And it's probably a lot, also, about talking to our customers in dedicated user group because this one is the international user group, but we have many other ones around the world and that's really key that we talk to our customers there.

>> .

Josèphe Blondaut

>> We have newsletter and we will leverage this content for our salespeople, for our service people and our partners so they can go out and talk to the people and show the benefit of the Gen-AI capabilities of ARIS.

>> So you have all the basics covered. I do want to ask though, one of the capabilities of these new generative AI features is that software agencies is expanding the audience for ARIS. The more people in the organization will now be able to participate in the process mining, process modeling. How does that change the way you market? Is this a broader audience for you?

Josèphe Blondaut

>> No, it's not really a broader audience because the point with ARIS with process modeling and process mining is it has seen as an expert topic in the past years. You would have people model the processes. These were the experts, but there was always a point where you had a broader audience because you needed to communicate these processes. When you think about processes, it's not only about defining the way you work, it's about executing the way you work. And this is basically everyone on the organization. So we have really big customers. Everyone is using ARIS in the organization, but for informational purposes, for more training. When you come into the company, you knew you get a process and you get to learn how you do your job. That's one thing. And the only difference, I would say the target group extends a little bit, but it's more like what does the target group, what do these people in the company do with ARIS? They use ARIS already, but now they are more empowered because they can own their own as questions to the systems, try to optimize the system, what they did maybe more manually or based on collaboration. So I would say same people, just a different capability.

>> What do businesses not know about their processes?

Josèphe Blondaut

>> I think they don't know what they don't know. If they're not looking at the business processes, if they're not looking at the operations, they don't get the visibility they need into the processes, into the organization. They don't get the visibility where to optimize. They don't understand where can we shorten a process, where do we have a lot of process variations? You define the standard, you have a standards and then maybe you find out, "Oh, in France they do it completely differently." And if they don't analyze that with process management and process mining, then they don't know that they should improve and that they lose time in some process areas, for example.

>> Talk about the evolution of process mining. Your first involvement with ARIS was 24 years ago and a lot has changed in that time. Contrast the way businesses would model processes at the turn of the last century and the way they do it now with technology.

Josèphe Blondaut

>> You make me feel old, but still, I answer your question.

>> I promise you I'm older.

Josèphe Blondaut

>> That may be. This is really exciting because I started as an SAP consultant, so I was not always the ARIS lady. And at the time, we were, of course, looking at the operations of the company. Of course, the companies wanted to get the visibility and understand how they're going to work, but how we did that was really different. Because it was more manual, of course we had ARIS, so we added software to model the processes, no problem. But we did it all manually. In the end, a project, an optimization project in a company would look like this: you were traveling three months around the world, you will be visiting each and every department, each and every location in this company, and you were discussing with people. So you had a lot of workshops asking the people, "How do you do your job? If you want to create a customer order, how do you do that?" And you would model, "Okay, the first step is this one, the second step is this one." When you finish, you talk to this department and then you put that into that IT system and so forth. At the end you will review that with the people and there will be a point of time, quite long time after, where you would roughly know how the organization is working. You even haven't started to optimize anything. Now, with process mining, with RPA, with AI, you can get some kind of a starting point. You get the 80% solution, I would say, in days or hours and you-

>> Because so much is automated already that you're able to derive from it.

Josèphe Blondaut

>> Exactly. And it's all automated already, so you take process mining, you plug into the IT system and you get already 80% of the process how it is running and then you just refine that. But you have a base so you are much faster. And then when you start looking at this process, how it works right now and you want to optimize that, you don't even need to look at the process. You asked AI, "Where can I optimize? Where do I have process bottlenecks? Where do I have system breaks?" And you get already a starting point to improve your processes, your operation, so that leads you to success much faster. And the second point is, you start faster, but you can also improve faster because you have some kind of a continuous loop where you can even check, okay, you set up a process, you optimize this process, people know about the process, they execute the process. And then you have an automatic control compliance checking, for example, that gives you insights, "You know what? These and these and these people are doing it a different way or maybe in France it's running differently." So you start again, you inform the people, you do new trainings so you can optimize the process faster.

>> So what customers tell you? They bring in ARIS, they go through all the exercises, they spend a year working on process improvement. What do they tell you about what they learn in that process?

Josèphe Blondaut

>> I think they learn a lot of things, that's for sure. They learn how to transform. I would say they learn two big things. They learn how to test and fail, and they learn a lot about communication and change management because processes, process management, process mining, of course, it is technology, but in the end, the process is, in many cases, people business. So you have to communicate with the people, you have to take the people with you. You have to manage the change in the organization so that people execute the processes the right way, whatever system you have in the back. Change management is a key topic. That's one thing. And the second thing is I said learn to fail, and I'm not kidding, and fail fast. You put a new process in place, you analyze, you do your very best, but there will be some pitfalls. So you need to really look at this process very often to improve that again and again and again. When I say fail, it's not a big fail, but it's like, "Okay, the process is not running exactly the right way this way. We are going to change that, roll that out again, inform the people again so that we are improving continuously." I would say these two topics are really key to process management. These are very soft topics, so not software related, but they are really key. And adding a third one, well, they really learn that processes are at the center of their operations in the end and that this is key to their success.

>> Ultimately, process improvement comes down to people. It comes down to people being willing to change the way they do things which can challenge power, silos, fiefdoms. How do organizations prepare culturally for starting the process improvement process?

Josèphe Blondaut

>> I'm sorry, I didn't get that. Can you repeat that? Because of the background noise.

>> How do organizations prepare culturally for process improvement?

Josèphe Blondaut

>> Yeah, it really depends on the organization size. That's one thing, but then normally, they set up some center of excellence. They have groups of people that will be working on the processes. They have a central team that is managing this project, that is communicating around the project, setting deadlines. But very much important, they are having people into the different department, into the different, hopefully not silos, but areas which will represent processes which will be responsible for the processes in that specific department. And it can mean only communicating with the colleagues, "Oh, look, you can use ARIS there and there you can get your information. And you know what, we are working on new processes and we're going to execute that in SAP or whatever." It can be only communicating, but it can be also a role of a person that's really manage that the processes are always up-to-date, that they communicate and then the people work the right way. So also, there you have some central expert people, but you have all this crowd of people that you need to manage it. For that, you need people in each and every area of the company.

>> So you need champions, really, around the company.

Josèphe Blondaut

>> Exactly. ARIS champions.

Josèphe Blondaut

>> Organizations that are successful with process modeling, how do you find their culture changes? How do they change?

Josèphe Blondaut

>> You mean after they have started?

>> After they've successfully remodeled their processes and gone through the cultural change that's necessary, how are those companies different?

Josèphe Blondaut

>> They succeed. No, really, I'm not kidding, because processes is really at the heart of the organization. It's the DNA of the organization. In the end, a company that looks at the processes, that looks at the operation will gain some kind of a learning success culture and people will start talking about the way they're working. They will stop saying, "We've always done that way." No, they will change this mindset and they will start thinking about, "Okay, how can we improve and what is the next big thing that we can improve on? And what we heard from customers that this and that is not working." And instead of looking maybe for a small solution in the IT system, they will think about the whole process, the whole customer journey. So it's really about learning to learn, create a culture of optimization and a culture of overall thinking and not thinking only in specific silo you're working in.

>> One initiative that most organizations have now, large organizations have now revolves around sustainability, corporate social responsibility. You are a certified sustainability manager from Cambridge University. What changes does sustainability and sustainability initiatives cause in enterprise processes?

Josèphe Blondaut

>> Well, it caused a lot. That's a very nice question. Thanks for that. Often, organizations don't see that, but sustainability projects, sustainability initiative, or sustainability strategy and sustainability success in our organization is all linked to the processes because it's not enough to have the board say, "Oh, we are going to reduce our carbon footprint by 20%." So what? You need the people.

>> You have to make that happen.

Josèphe Blondaut

>> You hae to make that happen. And that's exactly the point. And with processes, with process management, you can change that because you can define your strategy, but then you can go the next steps and look at the processes where you have the most emissions, let's say, and improve these processes. So look at where you create a lot of carbon emissions or you use too much water or paper, whatever, and you can improve these processes. You can communicate this processes. Always the same story, just a different topic. Communicate the processes, you execute on these processes, people are working a different way, and at the end you can then measure, "Aha! We did that. We improved our carbon emission by 20%, let's say, and then with that, we reached our goal." So looking at sustainability in the operations is making it tangible. It's not a big strategic plan where you say, "We're going to plan that." No, you just do that and then in the end, you are able to prove that. And only from an accounting perspective like KPIs, carbon reductions, whatever, it's also you can prove that you are compliant for all the regulations that we see around. The company at the end can say, "Okay, we did change our processes, we had this goal and we are complying to this ESG rule," whatever they called in the different countries. So you can really prove at the end and make sure people work the right way.

>> The final question, executive watching this video right now who doesn't think about process mining, who's never considered overhauling processes, what message would you have for that person?

Josèphe Blondaut

>> Measure first. Yeah, I would tell them measure first. Before you take a decision, before you change the strategic direction of the company, measure how the processes are running. Not only measure the financial KPIs, they do that anyhow, but measure how you are working. Look at the optimization potential that you have in your operations. And in many cases, it's huge gains of efficiency. It's huge gains of money, of time, and it increases your customer satisfaction in the end. So it's all in your processes.

>> Josèphe Blondaut, head of ARIS product marketing, you are a delight to talk to. Your energy is catching, and thank you very much for joining us here on theCUBE.

Josèphe Blondaut

>> Thanks for having me and have a great time here at IUG.

>> We'll be back from Dublin.

Josèphe Blondaut | Software AG

search

>> Welcome back to Software AG's 2024 International Users Groups Conference... Users Groups, plural... here in Dublin. We're talking with Josèphe Blondaut. Did I get that right?

Josèphe Blondaut

>> It was perfect. Thank you. Nice to see you.

>> Nice to see you too. Head of ARIS product marketing. ARIS, of course, the process mining and process modeling product that is really the flagship of the Software AG portfolio right now. You've been with ARIS for a long time. ARIS was the star of the show at yesterday's keynote where we saw the new generative AI capabilities being applied first to process mining, later to process modeling, and a lot of excitement in the audience about these features. How are you going to take this to the market?

Josèphe Blondaut

>> Thanks for the question. We have a lot of activities planned already for the go-to-market of these gen AI functionality. It's called the ARIS AI Companion, and we started yesterday, as you just mentioned. So starting yesterday to communicate this new capabilities to our customer, to the people that know ARIS already, then will get direct benefit of that. That's the first stage. Today we had a press release to announce that to the broader market and to the press. And I think in a few minutes I will have the first social media post coming out. So there's a big campaign planned around that to communicate that. And of course, we will reuse the usual marketing channels that we have anyhow, so it's about webinars, it's about short snippets, short video to explain how it works. It's about creating some papers to explain the usage of AI in ARIS and how to do it right. And it's probably a lot, also, about talking to our customers in dedicated user group because this one is the international user group, but we have many other ones around the world and that's really key that we talk to our customers there.

>> .

Josèphe Blondaut

>> We have newsletter and we will leverage this content for our salespeople, for our service people and our partners so they can go out and talk to the people and show the benefit of the Gen-AI capabilities of ARIS.

>> So you have all the basics covered. I do want to ask though, one of the capabilities of these new generative AI features is that software agencies is expanding the audience for ARIS. The more people in the organization will now be able to participate in the process mining, process modeling. How does that change the way you market? Is this a broader audience for you?

Josèphe Blondaut

>> No, it's not really a broader audience because the point with ARIS with process modeling and process mining is it has seen as an expert topic in the past years. You would have people model the processes. These were the experts, but there was always a point where you had a broader audience because you needed to communicate these processes. When you think about processes, it's not only about defining the way you work, it's about executing the way you work. And this is basically everyone on the organization. So we have really big customers. Everyone is using ARIS in the organization, but for informational purposes, for more training. When you come into the company, you knew you get a process and you get to learn how you do your job. That's one thing. And the only difference, I would say the target group extends a little bit, but it's more like what does the target group, what do these people in the company do with ARIS? They use ARIS already, but now they are more empowered because they can own their own as questions to the systems, try to optimize the system, what they did maybe more manually or based on collaboration. So I would say same people, just a different capability.

>> What do businesses not know about their processes?

Josèphe Blondaut

>> I think they don't know what they don't know. If they're not looking at the business processes, if they're not looking at the operations, they don't get the visibility they need into the processes, into the organization. They don't get the visibility where to optimize. They don't understand where can we shorten a process, where do we have a lot of process variations? You define the standard, you have a standards and then maybe you find out, "Oh, in France they do it completely differently." And if they don't analyze that with process management and process mining, then they don't know that they should improve and that they lose time in some process areas, for example.

>> Talk about the evolution of process mining. Your first involvement with ARIS was 24 years ago and a lot has changed in that time. Contrast the way businesses would model processes at the turn of the last century and the way they do it now with technology.

Josèphe Blondaut

>> You make me feel old, but still, I answer your question.

>> I promise you I'm older.

Josèphe Blondaut

>> That may be. This is really exciting because I started as an SAP consultant, so I was not always the ARIS lady. And at the time, we were, of course, looking at the operations of the company. Of course, the companies wanted to get the visibility and understand how they're going to work, but how we did that was really different. Because it was more manual, of course we had ARIS, so we added software to model the processes, no problem. But we did it all manually. In the end, a project, an optimization project in a company would look like this: you were traveling three months around the world, you will be visiting each and every department, each and every location in this company, and you were discussing with people. So you had a lot of workshops asking the people, "How do you do your job? If you want to create a customer order, how do you do that?" And you would model, "Okay, the first step is this one, the second step is this one." When you finish, you talk to this department and then you put that into that IT system and so forth. At the end you will review that with the people and there will be a point of time, quite long time after, where you would roughly know how the organization is working. You even haven't started to optimize anything. Now, with process mining, with RPA, with AI, you can get some kind of a starting point. You get the 80% solution, I would say, in days or hours and you-

>> Because so much is automated already that you're able to derive from it.

Josèphe Blondaut

>> Exactly. And it's all automated already, so you take process mining, you plug into the IT system and you get already 80% of the process how it is running and then you just refine that. But you have a base so you are much faster. And then when you start looking at this process, how it works right now and you want to optimize that, you don't even need to look at the process. You asked AI, "Where can I optimize? Where do I have process bottlenecks? Where do I have system breaks?" And you get already a starting point to improve your processes, your operation, so that leads you to success much faster. And the second point is, you start faster, but you can also improve faster because you have some kind of a continuous loop where you can even check, okay, you set up a process, you optimize this process, people know about the process, they execute the process. And then you have an automatic control compliance checking, for example, that gives you insights, "You know what? These and these and these people are doing it a different way or maybe in France it's running differently." So you start again, you inform the people, you do new trainings so you can optimize the process faster.

>> So what customers tell you? They bring in ARIS, they go through all the exercises, they spend a year working on process improvement. What do they tell you about what they learn in that process?

Josèphe Blondaut

>> I think they learn a lot of things, that's for sure. They learn how to transform. I would say they learn two big things. They learn how to test and fail, and they learn a lot about communication and change management because processes, process management, process mining, of course, it is technology, but in the end, the process is, in many cases, people business. So you have to communicate with the people, you have to take the people with you. You have to manage the change in the organization so that people execute the processes the right way, whatever system you have in the back. Change management is a key topic. That's one thing. And the second thing is I said learn to fail, and I'm not kidding, and fail fast. You put a new process in place, you analyze, you do your very best, but there will be some pitfalls. So you need to really look at this process very often to improve that again and again and again. When I say fail, it's not a big fail, but it's like, "Okay, the process is not running exactly the right way this way. We are going to change that, roll that out again, inform the people again so that we are improving continuously." I would say these two topics are really key to process management. These are very soft topics, so not software related, but they are really key. And adding a third one, well, they really learn that processes are at the center of their operations in the end and that this is key to their success.

>> Ultimately, process improvement comes down to people. It comes down to people being willing to change the way they do things which can challenge power, silos, fiefdoms. How do organizations prepare culturally for starting the process improvement process?

Josèphe Blondaut

>> I'm sorry, I didn't get that. Can you repeat that? Because of the background noise.

>> How do organizations prepare culturally for process improvement?

Josèphe Blondaut

>> Yeah, it really depends on the organization size. That's one thing, but then normally, they set up some center of excellence. They have groups of people that will be working on the processes. They have a central team that is managing this project, that is communicating around the project, setting deadlines. But very much important, they are having people into the different department, into the different, hopefully not silos, but areas which will represent processes which will be responsible for the processes in that specific department. And it can mean only communicating with the colleagues, "Oh, look, you can use ARIS there and there you can get your information. And you know what, we are working on new processes and we're going to execute that in SAP or whatever." It can be only communicating, but it can be also a role of a person that's really manage that the processes are always up-to-date, that they communicate and then the people work the right way. So also, there you have some central expert people, but you have all this crowd of people that you need to manage it. For that, you need people in each and every area of the company.

>> So you need champions, really, around the company.

Josèphe Blondaut

>> Exactly. ARIS champions.

Josèphe Blondaut

>> Organizations that are successful with process modeling, how do you find their culture changes? How do they change?

Josèphe Blondaut

>> You mean after they have started?

>> After they've successfully remodeled their processes and gone through the cultural change that's necessary, how are those companies different?

Josèphe Blondaut

>> They succeed. No, really, I'm not kidding, because processes is really at the heart of the organization. It's the DNA of the organization. In the end, a company that looks at the processes, that looks at the operation will gain some kind of a learning success culture and people will start talking about the way they're working. They will stop saying, "We've always done that way." No, they will change this mindset and they will start thinking about, "Okay, how can we improve and what is the next big thing that we can improve on? And what we heard from customers that this and that is not working." And instead of looking maybe for a small solution in the IT system, they will think about the whole process, the whole customer journey. So it's really about learning to learn, create a culture of optimization and a culture of overall thinking and not thinking only in specific silo you're working in.

>> One initiative that most organizations have now, large organizations have now revolves around sustainability, corporate social responsibility. You are a certified sustainability manager from Cambridge University. What changes does sustainability and sustainability initiatives cause in enterprise processes?

Josèphe Blondaut

>> Well, it caused a lot. That's a very nice question. Thanks for that. Often, organizations don't see that, but sustainability projects, sustainability initiative, or sustainability strategy and sustainability success in our organization is all linked to the processes because it's not enough to have the board say, "Oh, we are going to reduce our carbon footprint by 20%." So what? You need the people.

>> You have to make that happen.

Josèphe Blondaut

>> You hae to make that happen. And that's exactly the point. And with processes, with process management, you can change that because you can define your strategy, but then you can go the next steps and look at the processes where you have the most emissions, let's say, and improve these processes. So look at where you create a lot of carbon emissions or you use too much water or paper, whatever, and you can improve these processes. You can communicate this processes. Always the same story, just a different topic. Communicate the processes, you execute on these processes, people are working a different way, and at the end you can then measure, "Aha! We did that. We improved our carbon emission by 20%, let's say, and then with that, we reached our goal." So looking at sustainability in the operations is making it tangible. It's not a big strategic plan where you say, "We're going to plan that." No, you just do that and then in the end, you are able to prove that. And only from an accounting perspective like KPIs, carbon reductions, whatever, it's also you can prove that you are compliant for all the regulations that we see around. The company at the end can say, "Okay, we did change our processes, we had this goal and we are complying to this ESG rule," whatever they called in the different countries. So you can really prove at the end and make sure people work the right way.

>> The final question, executive watching this video right now who doesn't think about process mining, who's never considered overhauling processes, what message would you have for that person?

Josèphe Blondaut

>> Measure first. Yeah, I would tell them measure first. Before you take a decision, before you change the strategic direction of the company, measure how the processes are running. Not only measure the financial KPIs, they do that anyhow, but measure how you are working. Look at the optimization potential that you have in your operations. And in many cases, it's huge gains of efficiency. It's huge gains of money, of time, and it increases your customer satisfaction in the end. So it's all in your processes.

>> Josèphe Blondaut, head of ARIS product marketing, you are a delight to talk to. Your energy is catching, and thank you very much for joining us here on theCUBE.

Josèphe Blondaut

>> Thanks for having me and have a great time here at IUG.

>> We'll be back from Dublin.