What's Your Baseline? Enterprise Architecture & Business Process Management Demystified

Process Mining has been the “hot thing” for a few years, but momentum has stalled as organizations work on rolling it out. Gartner classified it as "early mainstream," yet only about 20% of people in talks confirm actually running projects. However, a new evolution is emerging: Causal Process Mining. Instead of focusing solely on timestamp sequences, this approach analyzes cause-and-effect relations to discover not just what is happening, but why.In this episode, we sit down with Lukas Pfahlsberger (CEO) and Jan Mendling (Humboldt University Professor), co-founders of Noreja. They explain how their tool uses AI, knowledge graphs, and context like documents to shift away from traditional event logs and uncover root causes.In this episode of the podcast we talk about:The Evolution of Process Mining: Started in the 1990s and expanded around 2000 via Wil van der Aalst, originally focusing on simple, linear processes with single objects.The Complexity Gap: Classical techniques struggle with complex enterprise workflows (like order-to-cash) where objects split, converge, or diverge across systems.Moving Beyond Correlation: Causal process mining uses a priori knowledge to validate actual triggers rather than assuming correlation equals causation.Multi-Source Causal Modeling: Noreja builds models using database schemata (keys/cardinalities), AI/LLMs to validate logical steps, and domain knowledge.Skipping the Flat-File Headache: Direct connection to source systems avoids discarding rich database semantics and saves time spent on manual ETL data pipelines.Streamlined Onboarding: Connecting via database/API allows users to select core tables and automatically generate an initial entity graph.Perspectives Over Rigid Views: Users define custom "perspectives" by choosing specific starting objects, letting AI pinpoint root causes within scoped views.Lowering Barriers to Entry: Companies can immediately spot where data quality issues reside and measure their exact operational impact.AI Context & Token Efficiency: Graph databases structure processes cleanly for LLMs, saving token costs and avoiding messy "spaghetti diagrams."Maintaining Dynamic Context: Connecting SOPs and procedural versions lets organizations verify compliance against evolving business rules.Process Frontier Agents: Autonomous background agents manage context by scanning repositories, archiving outdated files, and organizing knowledge.Cost-Efficient Local LLMs: Using local open-weight models (like Gemma) during off-hours reduces API costs while handling heavy context tasks.Compressing the BPM Lifecycle: Combining AI insights and rapid artifact generation aims to shrink 12-month BPM cycles into 2-to-3-day workshops.Proving ROI: SAP research shows an average 1:20 return on process improvement projects, which accelerates as decision velocity improves.Next Steps & Resources: Explore Noreja’s whitepapers, blog, or demo environment on their website or reach out via LinkedIn.Connect with Lukas and Jan via LinkedIn and their website.Please reach out to us by either sending an email to ⁠⁠[email protected]⁠⁠ or signing up for our newsletter and reading articles about process and architecture on our Substack… Go and subscribe at ⁠whatsyourbaseline.substack.com⁠.And if you like to support “the little podcast that could,” become a Patron at ⁠⁠https://www.patreon.com/c/whatsyourbaseline⁠⁠. We appreciate you!

Since everybody speaks about the wonders of AI (at least it feels like that), it is prudent to remind people that you still need to understand what you are doing and where you want to deploy it. And we are happy to have found an expert in this topic.Bassam AlKharashi is a Saudi entrepreneur, business transformation leader, and AI strategist with more than 30 years of experience across technology, BPM, enterprise architecture, innovation, and entrepreneurship.His background in process management has been a constant foundation: he has helped develop the process-management profession in the region and authored and co-authored books on process management and innovation. His interest in AI goes back to his graduate studies in computer engineering at Case Western Reserve University in the early 1990s, where his work included neural networks.Today, Bassam is the Founder and CEO of Nuhaa AI, helping organizations move from isolated AI experiments toward governed, production-grade AI transformation. His current work explores how AI changes business processes, enterprise architecture, and organizational design and how BPM can evolve as organizations become AI-native.In this episode of the ⁠podcast,⁠ we talk about:— AI as a Driver for Growth, Not Just Speed: Use AI to unlock new capabilities and market growth, not merely as a faster replacement for rule-based automation.— AI Agents are Digital Colleagues, Not Job Replacements: Agents work side-by-side with humans, multiplying productivity 10x to 20x.— The Necessity of an Enterprise Intelligence Layer: Non-generic outputs require AI trained on an organization's deep context: processes, sector knowledge, regulations, and competitor data.— Avoiding "Copy-Paste" Generic AI Outputs: Public AI prompts produce interchangeable reports; enterprise AI relies on company-specific intelligence.— Design Processes Backwards from the North Star: Start with the desired outcome and work backward, rather than shaving off incremental steps.— Setting Operational Guardrails: Define non-negotiables, such as budget, headcount, or compliance bounds, so AI solutions stay within constraints.— The Token Cost as an Agent "Salary": Tokens are the salary of AI agents; deployed for growth, like sales proposals at scale, the ROI far outweighs the cost.— Inquisitive Questioning Uncovers Real Goals: Finding the true North Star takes persistent questioning beyond "doing things faster."— Event-Driven AI Triggering via Sensors: Emails, system logs, or IoT sensors can trigger workflows that do research and prep work proactively.— Reverse-Engineering Enterprise Knowledge: Without documentation, organizations can use AI to research regulators, competitors, and unstructured data to bootstrap baselines.— Rethinking Traditional Methodologies: Lean and Six Sigma must evolve because AI agents don't follow static step-by-step logic.— Upskilling Employees Over Avoiding Tech: Change management means encouraging employees to ask better questions and learn new AI tools.— Central Intelligence vs. Domain-Specific Needs: Legal or Finance may need specialized tools, but a unified knowledge layer prevents silos.— Prompt & Context Engineering as Process Design: Modern BPM design relies on prompt and context engineering to guide AI agents.— Engage with Digital Twins: Bassam highlights personal and executive digital twins (such as his own) that let stakeholders interact asynchronously with AI personas.Please reach out to us by either sending an email to ⁠[email protected]⁠ or signing up for our newsletter and reading articles about process and architecture on our Substack… Go and subscribe at ⁠whatsyourbaseline.substack.com⁠.And if you like to support “the little podcast that could,” become a Patron at ⁠https://www.patreon.com/c/whatsyourbaseline⁠. We appreciate you!

It feels as if we have a little streak going on here—guests who question the current operating mode of process teams today beyond just optimizing the existing process landscape. But then what?It is about using "process" to create new value. That's where "Progressive BPM" comes in, created by this week's guest, Volker Stiehl.Volker is Professor of Business Information Systems at Technische Hochschule Ingolstadt and initiator of Progressive BPM. With his "Processes First" principle, he shows how companies turn innovative ideas into executable digital business models. As the faculty’s Startup Commissioner, he also supports new ventures, following twelve years at Siemens and twelve years at SAP.In this episode of the ⁠podcast,⁠ we talk about:Introduction to Progressive BPM: Inspired by progressive rock, Progressive BPM emphasizes creativity, new ideas, and forward-looking digital transformation over traditional optimization.The Process Paradox: Despite being fundamental to products and services, BPM often remains a niche interest rather than a strategic imperative.Digitize vs. Digitalization vs. Digital Transformation: Digitize replaces analog materials with digital ones; digitalization focuses on efficiency and cost savings; digital transformation leverages IT to create new solutions customers pay for.Classical BPM vs. Progressive BPM: Classical BPM focuses on continuous optimization and bottom-line savings, whereas Progressive BPM targets top-line growth and new market opportunities.Overcoming the AI Distraction: Instead of spending 98% of time tracking AI trends without execution, Progressive BPM uses AI as a catalyst to drive insights into action through processes.The Abstraction Problem: Organizations often treat processes abstractly, missing the opportunity to understand the core engine driving the business.Starting Point 1 – The Greenfield Approach: Addresses an unsolved customer problem—like retirement planning—through an automated end-to-end process.Starting Point 2 – The Inside-Out Approach: Turns valuable internal process expertise into external offerings for other companies (e.g., SAP scaling internal translation workflows).Starting Point 3 – The AI Rebuild: Rethinks broader end-to-end processes into scalable services rather than just replacing individual steps with AI automation.Turning Static Knowledge into Executable Processes: Converting expert domain knowledge into executable processes creates unique, monetizable assets protected from simple AI scraping.B2C Potential for Process Models: Progressive BPM extends beyond enterprise scenarios to consumer domain processes, such as interactive workflows for growing plants.Corporate Culture and Startup Spinoffs: Establishing spin-off startups allows teams to de-risk early ventures and build entrepreneurial momentum outside rigid corporate IT.Open Standards Over Proprietary Tools: Relies on open-source standards like BPMN and DMN rather than locking core operations into proprietary platforms.Domain Processes vs. Integration Processes: Separates core domain logic from technical integration tasks to build adaptable process architectures.Connecting with the What's Your Baseline? Community: Connect with Volker Stiehl on ⁠LinkedIn or via ⁠email⁠, and catch Roland and Volker at the process management event in Stuttgart (Sep. 30 and Oct. 1).Please reach out by sending an email to ⁠[email protected]⁠ or subscribing to our newsletter on Substack at ⁠whatsyourbaseline.substack.com⁠.To support "the little podcast that could," become a Patron at ⁠https://www.patreon.com/c/whatsyourbaseline⁠. We appreciate you :-)

One of the major concerns in our discipline is that in an era of instant gratification and "easy button" demands from clients, the core fundamentals are easily forgotten.Our guest today, Roger Tregear, shares this concern and wrote a book about it: Elements. In it, he details the 20 elements that constitute a good Business Process Management (BPM) practice, and I highly recommend downloading and reading it.Roger’s career centers on consulting, writing, and speaking about process management. He helps organizations improve performance by designing and activating "perpetual improvement machines" through active process-based management.In this episode of the podcast, we discuss:Engineering and Telecom Origins: Roger shares his professional background, moving from electrical engineering and early data communications at ICL into strategic telecommunications consulting.The "Aha!" Moment with ARIS: In late 2000, Professor Michael Roseman introduced the ARIS tool to Roger, providing the formal language and framework for cross-functional concepts he had been exploring for years.Bonsai as a Process Discipline: Outside of BPM, Roger nurtures bonsai trees—a hobby requiring a daily, seasonal, and multi-year process framework rooted in patience and long-term planning.Why AI Cannot Replace Process Understanding: AI tools and automation cannot fix broken or misunderstood workflows. Without a foundational process structure, deploying AI agents only accelerates unpredictable outcomes.The Primacy of Cross-Functional Processes: While traditional organizations manage vertically via org charts, actual value, strategy execution, and customer experiences occur horizontally across functional silos.Management vs. Hope: Every organization operates via processes by default. The only strategic choice is whether leadership chooses to actively manage those processes or rely on hope.The "M" in BPM Stands for Management: The ultimate purpose of BPM is not modeling or documentation, but improving organizational performance in a tangible, measurable way.Defining Core Processes from Strategic Intent: Rather than relying on generic templates like "Order-to-Cash," core process architectures should be built by analyzing the organization's explicit strategic promises to its customers and stakeholders.Overcoming Executive Resistance to "Busy Work": To prevent leadership from dismissing BPM as an endless flowcharting exercise, teams must set clear guardrails, focus on high-impact areas, and avoid building bloated internal bottlenecks.Pruning the Architecture (Starting Small): Building a working three-level process architecture takes only a few weeks. Implementation should immediately focus on piloting three manageable, high-priority processes rather than attempting to govern hundreds at once.Targeting Process KPIs (PKPIs): Effective process governance requires distinguishing vertical functional metrics from horizontal Process Key Performance Indicators that measure how the overall workflow satisfies key stakeholder expectations.Focusing on High-Impact Processes: Organizations should avoid modeling every process to the lowest level. Deeper analysis and governance should be applied strictly to the top 20–30 high-impact processes driving major outcomes or risks.Process Transformation is Social: Successful BPM implementation depends less on tooling and technical diagrams and more on engaging operational staff, earning buy-in, managing human change, and empowering teams.You can find Roger on LinkedIn here: https://www.linkedin.com/in/rogertregear/.Please reach out to us by either sending an email to ⁠[email protected]⁠ or signing up for our newsletter and reading articles about process and architecture on our Substack … Go and subscribe at ⁠whatsyourbaseline.substack.com⁠.And if you like to support “the little podcast that could,” become a Patron at ⁠https://www.patreon.com/c/whatsyourbaseline⁠. We appreciate you!

It is about time—we took a (very) long summer break filled with travel, a new webinar series, and new and updated apps from What's Your Baseline? :-) Oh, and crossing that 75,000 download mark and celebrating our fifth anniversary—all in this month!But now we are back in the saddle, as they say, and we are starting Season 11 with a conversation between J-M and Roland, in which we dive into our shared painful experiences of process programs who have failed in on or another way. And the graphic below will give you the seven main reasons that we've seen in an overview. But without further ado, in this week's episode of the podcast we are talking about:BPMOS Updates: Roland highlights the release of new BPMOS apps and use cases covering learning and enablement, SDLC from requirement to implementation, planning and procedure factory exercises, and tool selection. The Root of All Evil: The hosts establish that practice failures almost always stem from people making poor decisions, setting up major categories like strategy, structure, governance, technology, and process. Financial Institution Redux: J-M shares a story about a major North American financial institution that struggled with employee happiness initiatives because "too many cooks in the kitchen" forced 30 different capabilities instead of a core MVP. Winning Through Jealousy: To fix the financial institution's fractured program, the team focused on making a single lead stakeholder look exceptionally successful using clear dashboards and KPIs to spark community engagement. The 10-Second Login Disaster: Roland shares a horror story of a healthcare company that bought thousands of software licenses, only to see a 10% login rate with average sessions lasting 10 to 15 seconds due to a total lack of use case definition. Vendor Accountability: The software vendor experience proved that overselling without clear internal commitment or matching use cases leads straight to corporate blacklists and shelfware. Airline System Silos: J-M recounts working with an international airline where a major ERP re-implementation was restricted to a strict "project bubble," causing massive scoping failures when touching unmapped system interfaces. The Business Therapist: Navigating severe adversarial relationships between vendors and corporate clients requires consultants with high emotional intelligence to act as mediators and keep the project alive. Process Mining Roadblocks: Roland details a financial institution that loved process mining initial proofs-of-concept but ultimately stalled out because rigid 8-to-10-week data request cycles choked agility.Top-Down Power: The lesson from the process mining hurdle is that bottom-up enthusiasm is great, but getting data and capabilities moving requires the backing of executive “big guns."The Lifer Employee Challenge: Working with decades-long corpor“lifers” who reject new methodologies requires understanding their unique values and reaching out early to secure true buy-in.Whiteboards vs. Repositories: The hosts lament seeing critical organizational processes mapped solely on office sticky notes, physical whiteboards, or locked filing cabinets rather than a digital twin repository.Summary of Failure Pillars: The episode wraps up by reiterating the core pillars of failure: strategy, people alignment, technology choices, process sustainment, structural design, governance, and value achievement.Please reach out to us by either sending an email to [email protected] or signing up for our newsletter and reading articles about process and architecture on our Substack … Go and subscribe at whatsyourbaseline.substack.com.And if you like to support “the little podcast that could,” become a Patron at https://www.patreon.com/c/whatsyourbaseline. We appreciate you!