Intelligently dealing with Artificial Intelligence, that’s how you do it

Creative brainstorming with your customer until late in the evening, eating pizza in between and, above all, convincing the same customer of the possibilities offered by artificial intelligence. That doesn’t really sound like a typical IT job. Yet for Vincent van der Bijl, consultant at BPM Company, it is one of the many opportunities that working at BPM Company offers him.

Vincent’s background is in the financial sector, but the IT world has always attracted him. He taught himself programming during his studies and gradually came to realize that his passion lies in innovative technology. A passion that brought him to BPM Company. Here he now works with the low code software from Pega. “This is not just programming, but puzzling, configuring and programming all in one. Looking for the right building blocks until you have found the best solution,” explains Vincent.

Immediately applicable artificial intelligence

The strength of Pega is their BPM software, but in recent years they have also increasingly focused on innovative techniques. Directly applicable artificial intelligence (AI) is a good example of this. Vincent was therefore very enthusiastic when he was able to carry out an AI project for a customer: “I had to work hard for that first. My perseverance was rewarded and after only a few months at BPM Company I got that chance. I really appreciate that trust and the freedom that I get in this project.”

Step one in this project was to understand the company. Familiarize yourself with their processes, data and of course the current Pega application. Then it got really interesting. How do you ensure that, together with the customer, you create an AI use case that has direct added value? And what is everyone behind? The latter is crucial to make such a project a success. After getting acquainted with the business, a brainstorming session was therefore organized with the management. “That was really cool to do,” Vincent says. “Because the management team was present, I was not only able to convince them of the opportunities of AI, but also to secure the project. It was nice to see that their enthusiasm grew during the evening. They became so enthusiastic that we continued until late in the evening with a pizza to get all the ideas on the table.”

Choose from 160 ideas

This session resulted in 160 ideas, all of which solved an existing customer problem. An important condition, because only in this way can you directly add value with artificial intelligence. Now, of course, implementing 160 ideas is not realistic.

The trick was therefore to arrive at a use case that adds as much value as possible with as little effort as possible. That is why all ideas were tested on two points: business value and technical feasibility. The test for business value lay with the customer, Vincent took care of the technical feasibility. Three conditions were important here. First of all, the required data had to be available, the scenario had to fit within the current Pega application and – not unimportantly – the idea also had to be technically feasible.

And this is exactly where the project is now. The review has been completed and the winner is chosen from all use cases. Then it is time for the next phase: actually implementing the case. All in all, an innovative project that is illustrative of working at BPM Company. Vincent: “It is wonderful to work at the intersection of business and technology, with projects that contain everything: freedom, responsibility and innovativeness. That means that I have not regretted my choice for BPM Company for a day.”