Harnessing the full

potential of AI:
What operations leaders need
to know in 2025
 From the desk
of the CTO
As we enter a new era in the age of AI, a few The path forward is not in
things have become clear: implementing disconnected AI
solutions. There’s a better way. In this
• Productivity hack-focused generative AI report, we’ll examine how AI can work
features are now commonplace. in tandem with workflow automation
Every business will be using generative AI for to revolutionize enterprise operations.
text generation and summarization – these It’s my belief that this combination
things are now table stakes. of technologies is what’s needed to
unlock exponential value in this next
• Task-level automation alone isn’t enough. era of AI innovation. I hope you’ll read
Disconnected AI solutions may drive on to learn more.
incremental gains, but real value is only
unlocked when business processes are Sincerely,
reimagined and optimized from end to end.

• Generative AI isn’t the only AI.

Sometimes large language models are the
right fit, but other times a problem requires
DON SCHUERMAN
predictive AI or decisioning AI to infuse logic
CTO & VP, Product
into a process. Strategy & Market

2 HARNESSING THE FULL POTENTIAL OF AI

DRIVING COMPETITIVE ADVANTAGE TRANSFORMING LEGACY APPLICATIONS
IN THE AGE OF AI WITH AI AND AUTOMATION

For those who lead enterprise For many organizations, legacy systems are a
operations, the pressure to innovate drain on progress; they’re excessively costly to
has never been higher. The domains maintain, they introduce risk, and they make
in your sphere of responsibility – the it difficult to adapt in fast-moving markets.
customer journey, the orchestration
of business processes, the employee For decades, companies have felt they had
experience – are constantly in flux. no choice but to live with the technical
Customers expect to be able to solve debt, or they applied temporary solutions
their problems instantly. Employees like robotic process automation to stop the
expect expert guidance and best-in- bleeding without addressing the source of the
class work management tools. Yet problem.
business processes are outdated and
disconnected. And costs continue to rise. One of the most immediately impactful uses
of generative AI is in the service of easing
While some companies may attempt and accelerating the process of legacy
to use generative AI to patch these transformation. With a workflow design tool
issues, the technology alone cannot powered by generative AI, companies can
drive the kinds of profound changes dramatically accelerate the rate at which they
needed to resolve these types of redesign and retire legacy systems.
complex operational challenges. Only
an approach that combines the newest
technologies of this era – generative AI,
predictive AI, and AI decisioning – with
end-to-end workflow automation can
drive true competitive advantage in
enterprise operations.

3 HARNESSING THE FULL POTENTIAL OF AI:

 Legacy transformation with 5 steps to transformation
AI-powered workflow design Below is one approach to using generative AI to accelerate
legacy transformation:
When a business process requires updating, the path to transformation can be
slow, expensive, and difficult. Often, reimagining a legacy process is the most
Define the business problem you want to solve.
painful part, requiring intense collaboration among various stakeholders and 1
dragging on for weeks or even months.
Discover existing processes and data in your legacy
2
Until everyone is on the same page, the transformation process can get stuck, and applications, leveraging AI to rapidly interpret existing
this is where AI can be invaluable. process models, data designs, and more.

Using an AI-powered workflow design tool with built-in knowledge of industry best Generate an optimal workflow design using AI to
practices can shave critical time off the design process and align stakeholders on 3
synthesize existing systems with established industry best
the best way to modernize the application. practices. Discuss the output with your collaborators and
determine where adjustments are needed.

Design your new workflow using the generated

4
components as a starting place. Discuss the stages and
steps you should add, replace, or reorder. Review and edit
suggestions of the data objects, fields, and systems you’ll
need to incorporate. Consider the roles who’ll need to
access the workflow.

Import your workflow into your workflow

5
automation platform and run the application to get
a sense of how it works.

Create a sample AI workflow for any business

process now.

4 HARNESSING THE FULL POTENTIAL OF AI

 Leveraging AI to meet
To put this into practice, think about ways to
leverage a variety of AI techniques in tandem
to guide employees and make it easier for

customer and employee customers to self-serve.

expectations To start, examine your existing customer and

employee journeys and look for places where
there are opportunities to:
In the age of AI, customer and employee expectations have soared.
• Suggest the next best action for employees.
Customers now expect your front- and back-office to connect Statistical AI algorithms drive automation
seamlessly for fully frictionless experiences. And employees expect and learn from completed work. Use these
the same from your internal systems, along with next-generation algorithms to get insight into potential issues
tools to help them work faster and smarter. before they happen and embed alerts or
suggestions right into your employee portal.
Generative AI technologies like chatbots and auto-summarization
widgets may seem like a natural fit here. But our advice is to pause • Prioritize the right employee work.
before letting that army of disconnected AI bots loose. Adaptive learning algorithms linked to your
key business KPIs can be leveraged in the
Instead, we think savvy leaders should consider an approach service of better prioritization, creating routing
with more staying power: deploying generative AI in tandem frameworks that ensure the most pressing
with statistical AI and customer journey-focused workflows. This work gets done first.
orchestrated approach has the benefit of elevating customer
journeys and employee experiences to new heights, delivering the • Make information consumption easier.
business-differentiating operations you aspire to put in place. Leverage generative AI assistants to distill
documents, text, and data, getting the info
employees need right into their hands the
moment they need it.

• Help customers resolve their problems

through self-service.
Leverage AI-infused front-end channels to
drive self-service access to your workflows
across channels, including your website, chat
functionality, email interactions, phone calls,
and more.
5 HARNESSING THE FULL POTENTIAL OF AI:
 Combatting inefficiency: Technology executives state
efficiency gains are top motivation
Why AI alone can’t drive results for implementing AI
In a recent Pega survey, we asked technology executives why they
wanted to implement AI. The top response? To increase efficiency.

Nearly every business can benefit from more efficient processes, 41%
19% 18%
but deploying disconnected AI solutions is a weak strategy. At best,
it might bring incremental gains, but at worst, it could throw you
off course, causing you to over-focus on the AI tool rather than the
problem you’re trying to solve, and pigeonholing you onto a path that
might not be optimal for your business.

So, what is the answer? To truly drive efficiencies across your Improving Improving Providing better
operations, AI and workflow automation need to work together. efficiency innovation customer experience

6 HARNESSING THE FULL POTENTIAL OF AI:

4 entry points to Efficiency boosters
implementing workflow
automation and AI
The ability to... Predict the future of a case

Is a case going to miss its SLA? Will a case need to be escalated? Are you likely to write off the transaction after
AI is not a silver bullet. No single AI tool on its own will significantly doing a bunch of unnecessary work? Statistical AI algorithms learn from completed work and can drive insights
impact an organization’s operations. much earlier on in the customer journey, allowing you to have the foresight to see a critical problem up ahead.
Embedding these predictions into your workflows lets you take action to get work back on track.
Instead, think in terms of leveraging multiple AI techniques and
embedding them into your end-to-end automated workflows.
The ability to... Make decisions without slowdowns
To start, think of the following four areas as efficiency boosters.
The need to make a decision often slows down a case’s momentum. For decisions that can be automated, adaptive
Ask yourself: Where in my business processes would the learning algorithms can work in concert with decision modeling to bring rules and AI together, making decisions at
availability of these abilities drive impactful gains? scale and progressing cases forward more efficiently than before.

The ability to... Get work to the right place automatically

When work comes in, it needs to be categorized to get to the right team or system. By leveraging natural language
processing (NLP) and generative AI to understand what a task or case is about – distilling the customer intent – you
can proactively route it to the best place, shaving precious time off each case lifecycle.

The ability to... Instantly understand information

The flow of information through your organization is constant. There are strong efficiency gains to be realized
from reading, understanding, and synthesizing information faster. With generative AI embedded into your
systems, your employees can distill documents, text, and data into easy-to-consume summaries and move
processes along faster.

7 HARNESSING THE FULL POTENTIAL OF AI:

 CASE STUDY

AI-led transformation at Deutsche Telekom

Deutsche Telekom’s SVP of Design A turning point in the initiative
Authorities, Daniel Wenzel, told came when the team adopted an
audiences at PegaWorldiNspire 2024 AI-powered approach. Using Pega
about what had once seemed to him GenAI BlueprintTM, Daniel and his
like an impossible task: the need to stakeholders were able to get back on
modernize over 800 separate business track, using the AI-powered workflow
processes in Deutsche Telekom’s HR designer’s ability to foster business
services department. and IT collaboration to expedite the
design process and agree on what the
The biggest bottleneck in this reimagined business processes should
transformation process was the need look like.
to align business and IT stakeholders.
According to Daniel, the two groups As a result, a stalled legacy
didn’t speak the same language, which transformation effort got back on track,
led to an inability to stay on schedule. putting Daniel and his team on schedule
to deliver the reimagined workflows by
the original project end date.

8 HARNESSING THE FULL POTENTIAL OF AI:

 Charting a path
forward with AI and
workflow automation
As you consider how to integrate AI into your business
ecosystem, we urge you to think in terms of the
transformative rather than the incremental.

How can AI be the impetus for meaningful change in your

operations? How can the desire to use it be a forcing
function for a needed pivot away from legacy systems and
toward modernization?

One thing is clear: There are very real gains to be made

from the intelligent use of AI in the enterprise. This is
undoubtedly the AI and workflow automation moment; the
only question now is which businesses will choose to rise
and meet it.

Get started with AI-led transformation now

9 HARNESSING THE FULL POTENTIAL OF AI

Pega is The Enterprise Transformation CompanyTM that helps
organizations Build for Change® with enterprise AI decisioning
and workflow automation. Many of the world’s most influential
businesses rely on our platform to solve their most pressing
challenges, from personalizing engagement to automating service
to streamlining operations. Since 1983, we’ve built our scalable and
flexible architecture to help enterprises meet today’s customer
demands while continuously transforming for tomorrow.