Companies need a new path into the AI future

Dr. Krüger: We are facing a fundamental change. AI will accelerate software development considerably while taking on more and more of the work for which people currently have to operate numerous applications. This changes both how software is produced and its economic value.

The requirements of a business, however, remain. A purchase order must be formally recorded, an invoice posted correctly and an employee hired in accordance with the relevant requirements. This calls for business functions, persistently stored data, traceable process states, permissions and clear responsibilities. Added to this are the company’s knowledge, its specific rules and the many exceptions that shape day-to-day operations. The architecture of the future must connect all these elements with the capabilities of AI. On this foundation, a company can operate with increasing autonomy.

Dr. Krüger: With Beyond, Newwork has created a common technological foundation for precisely this purpose. Beyond connects reliable business functions and persistent data with AI that can understand relationships, plan tasks and carry out work. Our Digital Workforce operates within this environment, using the company’s processes, knowledge and rules.

This is particularly important when handling exceptions. A process rarely follows an idealised pattern throughout. Documents are missing, information is contradictory, responsibilities change, and decisions depend on the specific business context. AI must be able to understand these situations and handle them within clearly defined authority. Wherever a human decision is required, it is obtained and documented within the process. The result is an enterprise architecture in which human and AI work are carried out and managed together.

Dr. Krüger: Yes. Our ambition is “The Enterprise System for Human and AI Work”. To achieve this, Workplace, Office, Collaboration, Business Solutions and Digital Workforce belong together. AI that takes on enterprise work needs access to the business functions and information that make up that work.

That is why the breadth of Newwork is part of the technological concept. We are creating the environment in which a company can increasingly have AI carry out its work, including the business functionality and domain knowledge this requires.

Dr. Krüger: Yes, of course. We developed these business applications ourselves within our own Newwork environment. This is also necessary because otherwise the AI would not have the full business context. If it is to take on enterprise work, it must understand how the different functions interact, which rules apply and which business functions it can execute.

A customer order, for example, is connected to availability, delivery, invoicing and payment. AI must understand these relationships and be able to work with the associated data and process states. Our business suite provides the necessary domain foundation: the business functions, authoritative data and rules that govern how the company operates. Together with Beyond, this creates an environment in which AI can carry out work across the boundaries of individual applications. The breadth of our applications is therefore an essential part of our strategy.

Dr. Krüger: The number of specialised solutions will continue to grow because AI makes it considerably easier to develop new functionality. This creates a major opportunity: domain expertise can be translated into usable applications more quickly, and companies can create solutions for tasks that were previously barely economical to automate.

For executive boards, this raises an architectural question. Procurement, HR, Finance and administration access shared data and work across interconnected processes. If every new application brings its own data environment, permissions and process controls, each individual task solved adds to the complexity of the overall system. Newwork provides the common foundation on which this diversity of business functionality can develop and work together within the company. The very ease with which new applications can be created increases the value of a reliable enterprise platform.

What does such a platform provide beyond the individual business function? You refer to what are known as non-functional requirements.

Dr. Krüger: These include identity and permissions, data protection, tenant isolation, logging, availability, backups, monitoring and controlled change management. Then there is the governance of AI: which data may an agent access, which actions may it perform, when does it need approval, and how can its actions be traced afterwards? These requirements must be enforced during operations.

Procurement makes this very tangible. An agent must know which supplier information it may use. It must formally record purchase orders, respect spending limits and approvals, and document its actions in a traceable way. Newwork connects the business task with the platform services and control mechanisms it requires. The customer gains a common operating and security architecture that can be reused for further applications.

Dr. Krüger: AI makes it easier to write an application. Responsibility for its operation, security and integration into the company remains. If every department developed its own technical foundation, the same demanding tasks would have to be solved repeatedly and maintained over time. Specialised providers can also meet these requirements; however, as the number of independent products grows, the company has to organise how they work together.

With Create and Every Code, Newwork offers an environment in which companies can develop their own applications and capabilities on an existing enterprise foundation. New solutions draw on shared services for identity, data, processes and governance. This allows specific business requirements to be implemented more quickly, while operations and control remain embedded in an architecture that can be managed across the enterprise. The individual solution remains adaptable; its technical foundation is shared.

Dr. Krüger: A capable specialist solution can be integrated through Connect. Newwork makes it possible to incorporate its results and functions into a broader enterprise process and to govern the connected actions within the shared workflow. The data and permissions granted to an external solution are explicitly defined.

The New Work Transformation Engine can take these applications and in-house developments into account when analysing the landscape. Their tasks, data flows and dependencies become visible in the New Work Transformation Codex. This provides a basis for deciding which specialist solution to retain, which functionality is best developed within Newwork and where parallel structures can be simplified. The customer can benefit from specialist providers’ innovation while retaining control over the overall architecture of its work.

Dr. Krüger: The starting point can be a single process. With Newwork Connect, we integrate existing systems and enable the Digital Workforce to operate within that landscape. Customers can initially continue running their current applications while already benefiting from the new way of working.

Onboarding is one example: Newwork coordinates the necessary steps across HR, IT and the relevant business department, processes documents, tracks open tasks and performs authorised actions in the connected systems. This gives the customer first-hand experience of what AI can achieve in day-to-day operations. Building on this experience, the customer can bring further processes onto the platform and then decide which existing applications are still needed.

Dr. Krüger: We start with the knowledge needed for a transformation. In a system landscape that has evolved over time, the first step is to understand how the company actually works: which processes exist? Which variations and exceptions are there? How are data, applications and rules connected? A substantial part of traditional projects consists of assembling this knowledge through interviews, workshops and manual analysis.

We are developing the New Work Transformation Engine for this task. It uses AI to map the process and system landscape, analyse the available information and bring it together into a coherent model of the enterprise. Much of the analytical work is thereby automated and can continue throughout the transformation.

Dr. Krüger: The New Work Transformation Codex. It brings together the current enterprise structure and its future design: processes, business functions, systems, data, roles, rules and their dependencies. The Codex also describes which elements will be retained, which will be integrated and which can gradually be taken over by Newwork.

This creates a concrete blueprint for the transformation. The company can see where it makes sense to begin, what prerequisites need to be met and how the next steps build on one another. The Codex evolves during implementation and remains connected to actual progress.

Dr. Krüger: We begin with a clearly defined process that delivers a tangible benefit. This could be onboarding or offboarding, processing supplier invoices, a customer service process or an administrative procedure. Newwork takes over that workflow while the rest of the system landscape continues to operate.

With each process successfully taken over, the customer gains experience. At the same time, we learn how further workflows can be implemented on the same platform. A company can therefore change its architecture step by step without drawing the entire organisation into a comprehensive changeover project at once.

Dr. Krüger: It applies to established enterprise landscapes as a whole. These may include SAP, Oracle or Salesforce, as well as specialist systems in public administration and custom-built applications. Our starting question is what work is being done in the organisation and how that work should be organised in the future.

For very old or relatively simple applications, complete replacement may make sense. For large core systems, a sequence of individual steps is often more appropriate. Connect, the New Work Transformation Engine and Newwork’s development tools provide different paths on a common platform.

Dr. Krüger: Yes, fundamentally. As long as an alternative is barely conceivable, investments are planned within the existing vendor’s architecture. The next migration then appears to be the predetermined path, even if it ties up enormous resources.

Newwork opens up an additional strategic option. The executive board can align the company’s future architecture with the capabilities of AI and begin the transition through concrete processes. Once this alternative is visibly working in the company’s own operations, the perspective on long-term dependence on existing systems changes as well. The decision becomes a choice the company can actively shape again.

Dr. Krüger: Exactly. Beyond creates the technological foundation for enterprise work in the age of AI. The New Work Transformation Engine maps the existing enterprise environment and designs the path into this new architecture. Connect enables a starting point within the existing landscape, and the Digital Workforce takes over the work step by step.

These capabilities belong together. A company needs a compelling architecture for its future and a practical path to get there. It also needs a common foundation on which new AI solutions and in-house developments can be operated securely and connected to the rest of the company’s work.

Newwork brings these tasks together in an Enterprise System for Human and AI Work. The system can grow with each new capability while the customer continues to manage its work as a whole.