By using advanced technologies within pattern recognition, machine learning and computer aided decision support systems, as well as new IoT devices, software can make automated decisions on behalf of the user, or provide guidance to allow users to make intelligent decisions based on smart patterns. This is achieved through self-learning software that assumes actions based on previous or similar scenarios and uses that to pre-populate and self-drive.
Interaction with the software is minimized to only involve people when human intelligence and experience is critical to resolving a business issue or to drive business processes in the right direction. If user interaction is required, a UI will be provided in its simplest form to accommodate that, on the users preferred device of choice, intelligently adapted to the situation.
Incredible value can be derived by limiting the amount of manual input required by users so they can focus on serving customers. This is the future of business software.
What is self-driving enterprise software really about?
In a nut shell self-driving enterprise software is literally about creating software with which the user does not need to interact, or at least interaction is minimized. The reality is that the majority of the interactions users have with their enterprise software is administrative. It’s not about doing their job well or running their business but simply maintaining the mechanics of sending invoices, doing bookkeeping or filing expense reports.
All these mechanic interactions can be tracked, analyzed and fed into algorithms so the software can learn typical usage patterns within a specific context whether that’s procurement, invoicing, bookkeeping or expenses. Through pattern recognition and statistical analysis the software can “learn” typical user actions in specific situations and automate the expected action in the future.
Analyzing past interactions will allow us to construct more semi-intelligent solutions. Solutions that dynamically alter behavior based on previous interactions, decisions and user actions. There are a number of different aspects to self-driving software.
Adaptive UI
The fundamental idea of adaptive UI is, as the name suggests, UI that intelligently adapts to the user based on previous interactions. In today’s enterprise software, forms or screens typically contain many fields that need to be filled out by the user. Some fields are linked with other fields, and there are even hard dependencies meaning that if a certain field has a specific value, others need to be populated exactly right for the system to accept the data as a whole. As a causal user simply entering a purchase order it can be a horrifying experience – regardless of how nice the UI looks. The adaptive UI records everything the user is doing, when he or she is doing it and in what order. If a user always populates a specific number of fields with the same values it can do that automatically. Even better, if some fields are always left untouched – they can be removed dynamically from the UI to make it less ‘noisy’ or confusing. By removing un-used fields, and populating everything automatically based on previous interactions – the system can complete the task on the user’s behalf. For example, if someone orders A4 binders on every second Monday from the same vendor, the system might as well just do it.
Workflow
Normally business processes require user interaction for approvals. A manager needs to approve a request for a new laptop from one of his reports for example. If the manager in question always approves requests within certain criteria, most commonly the price, the system can give that approval and notify the manager it’s been done.
Historical and Current Data
What I’ve discussed above is all based on historical data; however, using aggregation of historical and current data – like your present location software has the ability to automatically populate travel expenses, field service work reports, and even suggest additional maintenance work do be done as part of a field service visit.
Some examples of where self-driving ERP will add significant value:
Expense Reports
Expense reporting is a great example of an administrative task that lends itself to self-driving software. In the future systems will automatically create line items in an expense report based on the scanning of a receipt. By extracting the address the system can gauge what the item is and based on the time know if it’s breakfast, lunch or dinner. Essentially populating the complete line. Rather than having to store the receipt, go into the system and enter expense type, date, amount, all the user has to do is photograph the receipt.
Field Service
Within field service, systems can schedule maintenance visits for equipment based on the previous maintenance of similar equipment at other customers. Also, if a visit is already planned, it may prove more economical to – pro-actively – service other equipment while already on-site.
The future is here
Previously analyzing massive amounts of data was expensive due to the amount of data storage and computational power required. However, due to ever decreasing prices on storage and CPU, running advanced algorithms becomes more accessible enabling inclusion of semi-intelligent agents into a vast majority of the functionality within enterprise software. Customers will benefit from being able to focus on running their businesses and serving their clients rather than the tedious mechanics of maintaining the ERP.
This is why we focus on developing enterprise software that allows customers to focus on their business instead of focusing on the software, by making it completely self-driving. We’re already starting to deliver this in our software.
Claus Jepsen 
Very interesting post! Looking forward to hear about and maybe see some of the deliveries doing this in real life. Moving one step further I think there are a number of challenges (also interesting, in my opinion). One is the balance between making life easier for users and at the same time let them feel in charge of the actions taken. And that goes especially for workflow actions that are hard (and even impossible) to undo, like for example invoice approvals. Because even if the system is making automatic actions, I assume it is acting on behalf of a specific user meaning that this user is still responsible.
Looking forward to read more about this topic!