Four Ways Artificial Intelligence will Transform the Future of Project Management - Introduction

Introduction -

Capital Projects are described as a Billion dollar engine for growth and change in the Asset-intensive Industries, where these Projects have become an area of focus across major Energy and EPC Companies.   Projects are executed to build the vital assets for the Energy and EPC Value Chain, including the initial Asset Construction / Acquisition / Installation through the Asset handover to Operations & Maintenance 

For Asset-intensive companies, Capital Planning and Capital Project execution is a high value area identified by industry analysts for process improvements in key areas to manage costs.  These Asset-intensive Companies can improve their Capital Planning effectiveness with improved operational visibility to their Capital Project Portfolios, and Intelligent Project Management.   

According to McKinsey’s 2017 AI Survey of early adopters, early evidence suggests that AI can deliver real value to serious adopters and can be a powerful force for disruption.  In their survey, early AI adopters that combine strong digital capability with proactive strategies have higher profit margins and expect the performance gap with other firms to widen in the future.  More recently, Cloud has set it sites on AI and ML technologies that can be applied across ERP Cloud Applications.   

Digital Transformation via ERP-connected Project Intelligence

The Project Intelligence AI/ML focus areas below are key opportunity areas for delivering transformational Projects AI/ML applications :

• Projects Machine Learning: Analyzing Projects with similar Tasks & Asset assignments 

• Align Project Schedules with Purchasing and Project Suppliers timelines 

• Risk Management: Project Exceptions Identification to Identify Project Task Exception Conditions Faster

• Predictive Analytics: Analyze Project Change Orders and Related Project Risks  

Other Projects AI/ML opportunity areas for future consideration include the use of Drones to Analyze Project Progress. 

In this Whitepaper, we will explore specific Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning Opportunity areas to deliver Project Intelligence on an ERP-connected Projects Platform.  Project Intelligence AI & ML offer beneficial capabilities to assist Project Managers in identifying potential exception conditions in their projects, and help project managers respond before projects reach a critical state.   

ERP-Connected Projects significantly expand the real potential for AI and ML applications that can be implemented for Project Intelligence, by providing an ideal Project Intelligence AI/ML platform to leverage the interconnected nature of ERP Applications across Procurement, Financials, and Inventory/SCM areas.  

Many of these AI/ML capabilities simply would not be possible using standalone Project Management tools.  ERP-connected Project execution significantly expands the potential for Projects AI/ML applications to deliver more intelligent Project execution.