Some ideas originate from our expertise and some from experience. Our concept for Skan was a combination of the two paradigms. Skan is rooted in our expertise of the digital and cognitive technologies and our experience at the cutting edge of work automation and digital transformation.
Manish and I are friends, classmates, colleagues, and entrepreneurs – a journey over two decades. Recently, one of our entrepreneurial endeavors –a mobility and digital experience platform – was acquired by a large firm with deep roots in process transformation and outsourcing.
As newly minted executives of the acquired entity, Manish and I have worked on several mission-critical projects and programs in the digital transformation space at global multinational firms. A significant part of our work involved using digital tools such as RPA, Chatbots to optimize, transform, and automate human work.
We would begin these digital transformation projects under the sunny Silicon Valley sky only to have them end in a downpour of anemic KPIs and low measurable results.
So, we began to wonder: Why is it so hard to achieve digital transformation? What is so special about enterprise business processes that makes them so hard to automate and transform effectively?
This problem brought us to a straightforward observation: human beings know more than they can tell (Polanyi’s Paradox) in the context of understanding the nuances of business processes.
As much as 90 percent of our interactions, decision-making, and experiences are nonverbal. If people cannot verbally express all aspects of a process, it presents seemingly insurmountable challenges in programming software to support digital transformation. And not just digital transformation.
As an analogy, when asked about food preferences, most people will state they prefer healthy food, but when their receipts are examined, a different pattern of food choices often emerges.
Human interview-based business process discovery is much the same way: slow, expensive, shallow, and inaccurate. We posited that business process transformation projects falter and ultimately fail because a superficial knowledge of business processes leaves a fragile foundation for any digital transformation.
Manish and I came to understand that just as humans could not observe microorganisms before the microscope or the moons of Jupiter before the telescope, so too was a new way of perceiving human business processes needed.
Our "AHA!" moment: Revealing the Invisible Enterprise.
We wondered, is there a way to allow us to see the entire business process and enterprise? Could we create a digital product that would automate process analysis and discovery? The answer is: yes, and the product is Skan.AI.
We know that you know your business very well, but there is another layer of the company that is hidden that operates at the same time as the business you have guided and led: The Invisible Enterprise. It consists of thousands upon thousands of digital actions and interactions which go on unseen, unrecognized, and unassessed every day.
We founded Skan.AI and created our technology to unveil the unseen, unheard, and potentially crucial parts of your business using the skills that software and machines possess.
Skan.AI enables you to perceive clearly. It will make invisible parts of your enterprise visible so that you can make a measurable, quantifiable, essential change.
Skan CPX (cognitive process eXtraction) combines machine learning, graph theory, and data science to gather minute, ad hoc digital traces as people in your enterprise work.
Then, Skan CPX deploys advanced neural nets which recognize applications, tasks, and human interactions.
The resulting data can be turned into a meta-model of human work. Skan.AI can generate a living digital twin of business processes at scale, across your enterprise.
Skan.AI unveils and reveals your hidden business processes. You will see the Invisible Enterprise. Once you see the complete process, you can use the model to drive digital transformation, including:
Skan.AI is the next evolution of process mining/discovery software that observes the digital exhaust across your enterprise and builds a meta-model of the shared human - digital continuum.
Skan.AI creates process digital twins that capture every nuance - including details easily missed by human observers - of the work of all of the people involved in a project, a department, and all together, your enterprise as a whole.
Skan.AI is not a "spy tool" intended to track all employee behavior. It is a flexible tool to map, model, and manage business processes.
Skan tooling is designed to be lightweight, unobtrusive, and does not require any API -level access to any of your systems, data, or applications.
Skan.AI uses computer vision to digitally observe human interactions while at work. Then, Skan.AI uses trained neural nets to recognize applications, screens, and tasks. Skan.AI uses proprietary machine learning technology that enables rapid retraining ideas when changes occur in systems or processes.
Probably not: that's why we have developed deep neural nets for Skan.AI that remove noise and reveal real intent. The neural nets are trained on vast data sets to ensure accurate depiction of work actions and events.
Skan.AI can create a digital twin of human digital interactions. Use this digital process twin to simulate future process design, plan capacity, create documentation, conduct training, and re-engineering and direct automation.
No. Because it can observe business processes continuously, it offers precision learning opportunities, supervisory control, and continuous compliance. It helps you to revolutionize how you train, monitor, and supervise your teams. Skan.AI observes and recognizes opportunities for improvement in business processes. It can easily be used to monitor, offer real-time intervention, and real-time training. Work does not need to stop for retraining -- Skan.AI can aid in training and continuous improvement as work continues.
Join us on this exciting journey – as customers, collaborators, associates, and partners. Please drop a line, and we can explore possibilities.
By Avinash Misra and Manish Garg are co-founders of Skan.AI.
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