According to research, up to 70% of medium to large business owners in the US said they’re worried about the increasing complexity of workflows. Process orchestration is the relatively new field of software that takes a bigger picture look, and can help manage everything across siloed business departments with ease. AI-powered process orchestration looks like the future, and you need to know about it.
Have you ever spent hours assembling a document, only to find the people who need it can’t access it for some obscure software reason? How about wasted hours working out how to port over datasets between two systems, instead of doing the important analysis? Ever introduced a new system, only to find it doesn’t work well with other platforms in different parts of the business?
Process orchestration can bring together all your businesses disparate sections, letting teams communicate and collaborate more easily between each other so they can focus on doing what they were hired to do.
Orchestration Enables Intuitive Collaboration
The history of process orchestration is not a hugely long one, as the term has only become widespread since the advent of computer processes in the world of work.
But the idea of orchestrating various independent processes into a harmonious whole is much older.
Here’s one way to understand it. Imagine putting together an orchestra. Sure, you could assemble 100 classical musicians in Central Park for an impromptu performance – and it might come out sounding allright. But it probably won’t.
For a top-tier piece of music an audience will remember for a long time, you need more than just talented individual musicians. Process orchestration is somewhat like having a conductor, an audio engineer and a stage crew all rolled into one.
If each separate musician – or worker in your business – independently tries to operate as part of the unit, it might work.
But if you organize them together, find a venue, and automate collaboration so each can concentrate on their own work while contributing to the whole? Well, the result is a beautiful harmony that creates something special.
Why Workflows Are Becoming More Complicated
Work specialization has been a revolution for humanity. Since the vast majority of people no longer need to be general agricultural laborers, the modern worker is normally very specialized in what they do.
As work becomes more automated and software based, each specialized class of worker can, and usually now do, have their own software systems. Getting all these disparate systems to play nice together can be a challenge.
Other factors influencing the increasing complexity of modern work flows are:
- Global teams across time zones, languages and working styles
- Hybrid work, meaning everything has to be digitized and accessible via the cloud for workers out of office
- Vast amounts of data collection for modern businesses
- The pace of tech change – especially in AI – can lead to older systems falling out sync
How AI Is Changing the Way Orchestration Works
In the early days of software systems in business, orchestration relied mostly on rule-based logic. You could set conditions, such as “If A happens, trigger B”, and the system would carry out those instructions.
That kind of automation is still useful. But it’s not exactly orchestration potentiated as it is today. As businesses have become more complex, so too has the need for systems that can adapt, learn, and even anticipate.
AI-powered orchestration can do all of that and more. As these dynamic tools learn on the job – not only from your job, but all their jobs – they can help detect potential problems before they become an issue.
For example, in a global workforce, one team might finish making changes to a system while another team on a different system is halfway across the world sleeping. Then, when the two systems meet, the update might cause unexpected problems.
With an AI orchestrator, teams would be made aware and able to fix the problem before anyone was affected. Which is not to say that humans can’t spot problems via orchestration. But an AI can analyze reams of data and code far faster than almost any humans can.
It’s Not Flashy, But It Is Revolutionary
Other advantages AI lends to orchestration include:
- 24/7 availability and monitoring
- Simple, everyday language based communication and problem solving
- Enact changes at lightning speed, across the entire business tech stack, from one place
- Processes can be refined without needing to contact IT or tech support every time
While orchestrating background processes won’t itself make your businesses’ innovative headline product or write your next creative marketing campaign, it will enable the people who do those things to work much more efficiently. Both with each other and the tools they use,
Sure, your business will function without it. But the potential to fix a complex problem many business leaders are very concerned about is there. What will you do with it?
