Cutting through the chaos: What is Process Excellence and how it’s key for AI-readiness

One game-changing insight 

95% say that well-defined business processes are crucial for hitting transformation targets, while 84% identify operational chaos as the silent killer of change.

This comes from conversations with 600 business and operations leaders across five continents and every major industry. 

And while these organizations continuously invest in automation and digital solutions, most feel like they’re simply rolling the dice and hoping to win. But why is that? Why is the transformation journey still riddled with risk and disappointment? 

Want the short answer? It’s because their foundations lack proper business processes – ones that actually keep up. 

Despite most organizations being eager to grow and scale, they still lack the operational readiness, visibility, and alignment that’s required for meaningful transformation – especially in a world that’s quickly moving forward with AI. This results in siloed tools, competing priorities, wasted investments, and most significantly, a widening gap between leaders and laggards. 

So, why is process excellence so important? It’s the key to business growth and the next greatest business differentiator – no matter the market, industry, or business model. 

What makes a successful transformation? 

 Transformation is key to business growth. Our research shows the following: 

• 31% of business leaders expect their organizations to transform at scale using automation and AI over the next two years.
• 78% predict major transformation programs will reshape business units, workflows, and business models around digital tools and AI. 

It’s obvious the strategic intent is there, but the successful execution is missing. Only a fraction of these organizations will be successful, and the cost of failure is rising with operational setbacks, customer churn, regulatory risks, and lost market share. 

What are the key takeaways from the research? 

Despite almost total agreement on the importance of process excellence, the research shows that most organizations are on the journey but have not quite arrived at their final destination: 

• Only 17% rate themselves at the top “AI-powered” level of maturity
• About 29% operate with a truly “connected” process environment
• Almost 24% admit to high levels of process fragmentation or chaos
• Just 43% treat business processes as a strategic asset – while most view them as a necessary evil, an administrative task, or an IT problem 

Many organizations believe that size, industry, or geography shapes their transformation journey, but the data would suggest otherwise. 

What exactly does this mean? 

1. Visibility unlocks transformation 
   85% agree that business transformation fails without clear, end-to-end process visibility. Those with real-time views of processes are far more likely to succeed with both automation and AI.
2. Alignment is rare, but the risk is high 
   Fewer than half (49%) align their processes with tech, compliance, and critical value drivers. This gap impacts decision speed, regulatory compliance, and the ability to innovate.
3. Tool overload is stalling improvement 
   Most organizations juggle multiple BPM, workflow, and RPA tools, but poor integration undermines process visibility and prohibits cross-team collaboration.
4. GRC is still an afterthought 
   Almost a quarter (24%) of organizations do not consistently involve risk/compliance teams in process design – limiting their adaptability to regulation or security threats.
5. Agentic AI is coming fast, but few are ready 
   61% plan to integrate AI agents into their businesses in the next two years, but only 48% say their processes are ready for it. 
   87% stress that only structured, governed processes will enable these new AI models to be effective. 

How to achieve AI-readiness with Process Excellence 

• Embed process excellence into strategy, not treating it as a compliance function
• Build centralized, easily updatable process repositories (“a single source of truth”)
• Invest not just in digital tools, but also in governance structures, skill-building, and accountability
• Embed GRC from day one – enabling rapid, yet safe adaptation to risk and regulatory change
• Prepare, iterate, and standardize before going big with AI or automation pilots 

What are the experts saying? 

Alexander Trail, Senior Account Executive, Northern Europe, GBTEC 

“It’s easy for business and operations leaders to be wowed by potential savings from new automation tools, but there are no guarantees – unless you have the right process foundations in place. Automation programs that aren’t aligned to process management are essentially flying blind. Leaders end up dealing with competing business cases for new automation tools and solutions based on siloed views of the organization. 

Automation will only ever be as good as the underlying processes on which it is built. It may not be as glamorous or exciting as selecting and implementing new automation tools, but process mapping is just as important. If you have fully documented processes across each department and the organization as a whole, you can be far more strategic in how you automate. Leaders can see where the greatest efficiencies can be achieved and make investment decisions accordingly.” 

Scott Leddy, Vice President, North America, GBTEC 

“Standardization is essential for successful automation and agentic AI deployment. If 15 departments are doing things 15 different ways, you can’t train an AI agent on the optimal way to perform a task. Instead, the AI receives conflicting inputs, undermining its performance and reliability. 

The starting point for a process-based approach to agentic AI transformation is to understand the current state first, document any variances, and work towards standardization. Then you can identify what tasks AI agents are going to handle and what they shouldn't touch, what data they will reference, and what documents they are going to create. Without this framework, agents can get confused and hallucinate, and that’s when you run into operational problems and severe risk. 

Enabling AI integration within process management itself can be hugely powerful. For instance, AI can digest complex documents or procedural instructions and turn them into process maps within seconds. Instead of starting with a blank piece of paper, 

you’re leveraging existing documentation to get an 80% ready process model, which you can easily refine. AI dramatically shortens the time required to model and document processes. You can iterate faster and, ultimately, achieve your transformation goals sooner.”