Identifying Opportunities for Artificial Intelligence in Business Process Management

Wurm, Bastian; Zimmermann, Tobias; Badakhshan, Peyman; Naqvi, Syeda Noor Zehra

Abstract

Artificial intelligence (AI) has tremendous potential for business applications, yet its practical use in Business Process Management (BPM) remains underexplored. Current research on the link between AI and BPM is often either purely conceptual or narrowly focused on specific technologies, leaving a gap in empirical evidence regarding its holistic application. This study addresses this gap by investigating how AI can be used across the entire BPM lifecycle. We conducted nine semi-structured interviews with industry experts at the intersection of AI and BPM, analyzing the data against the established BPM lifecycle framework. Our findings identify significant opportunities in each phase, such as using AI to discover processes from unstructured data, generating redesign suggestions, and enabling autonomous process monitoring. A key insight is that AI can help overcome persistent BPM challenges like siloed knowledge and resource-intensive manual analysis. The study also reveals overarching strategic shifts, including the democratization of BPM by making tools more accessible to business users and a paradigm shift towards agent-based, outcome-focused process management.