Episode 129 – IBM and Cognitive Process Reengineering

In this episode, I was joined by Jonathan Wright of IBM. Jonathan is the Global Head of Cognitive Process Reengineering at IBM Global Business Services. I last spoke to IBM on Episode 72 with Jeanette Barlow where we discussed the impacts of COVID-19 and opportunities that have arisen from them. Jonathan and I discuss how companies will be moving forward after COVID, what cognitive process reengineering is, and how AI can help companies come out of the negative impacts of COVID.

Key Takeaways

• Cognitive process reengineering is the core consulting arm of IBM and looks at re-imagining how businesses do work. They do this by using the latest technologies like AI and blockchain. While they work with all different aspects of the business, they have been focusing more on the supply chain as that has proven to be one of the hottest areas of a business during the pandemic.
• IBM recently released a report that found that 70% of surveyed supply chain executives say they will be utilizing AI or intelligent automation to help support demand planning and forecast within the next three years. Jonathan explains what is driving this adoption of AI and how it will help companies to get a better hold of their demand planning and forecasting. He brings up an interesting point of how (pre-COVID) everything was fairly stable so there was not necessarily a high need to worry about volatility. In contrast, the pandemic caused high volatility that many were not prepared for. Adopting AI or intelligent automation can help to manage and prepare for these disruptions to your supply chain.
• Jonathan discusses the need for being able to increase your focus on value-added tasks instead of mundane tasks. As we look at the increased demand and how to handle it we need to look at how to automate and make mundane tasks easier. While we often talk about these mundane tasks on the work floor, Jonathan mentions being able to look at analytic work in a better way as well. He discusses IBM’s technology and how you can ask for information from an office virtual assistant similar to voice assistants now found in many homes. This helps to give you data at your fingertips in an immediate way instead of going through multiple reports or having to generate spreadsheets to get the information you need to make a decision. This can greatly increase the speed at which decisions are made.

Listen to the episode below and let us know if you will be looking to AI for help in the comments.