Seeing the Work You Shouldn’t Be Doing: Process Intelligence, Hidden Factories and the Future of CI with Paul Rudge

In this episode, Liam O’Neill speaks with Paul Rudge, Process Intelligence Manager at RS Group, where he is helping to bring together nearly two decades of continuous improvement experience with a new generation of process intelligence capability.Paul has spent most of his career in Lean and Six Sigma roles, working hands-on with teams to drive improvement across complex operational environments. More recently, his focus has shifted towards using data and process mining to understand how work actually happens at scale, particularly in the context of RS Group’s SAP S/4HANA transformation.This is a practical and grounded conversation about what really changes when you move from traditional continuous improvement to a more data-led, process intelligence approach, and why greater visibility does not automatically make improvement easier.They discuss:Why process intelligence can be “almost too powerful” at first, and how insight overload can slow you down rather than speed you upThe shift from improving hundreds of small things to focusing on a handful of changes that genuinely move the needleWhy most organisations underestimate the scale of variation in their processes, and what happens when you finally make that visibleThe concept of the “hidden factory” and how process intelligence exposes the rework, manual touches and workarounds that traditional reporting never showsWhy years of well-intentioned customisation can make processes worse, and how standardisation can be a counterintuitive improvementThe gap between what people think the process is and what is actually happening in realityHow process intelligence supports ERP transformation by revealing complexity, reducing variation and identifying unnecessary work before migrationWhy governance only works when accountability and visibility are in place together, and how making processes visible can drive behaviour change on its ownThe importance of validating data with subject matter experts, and why even the best tools can produce misleading conclusionsWhere AI is starting to add value in process and CI work, and why it still depends heavily on human judgement and critical thinkingWhy continuous improvement as a discipline has been slower than expected to adopt AI, despite its potentialPaul brings a pragmatic perspective shaped by years of experience delivering change in real organisations. If you are working in continuous improvement, process management, transformation or ERP delivery and trying to make sense of how process intelligence and AI fit into that world, this episode will give you a clear and honest view.Host: Liam O’Neill, Managing Director at bpmdGuest: Paul Rudge, Process Intelligence Manager at RS Group