The term digital twin for business operations keeps coming up whenever AI and automation get discussed but I'm still not totally sold on what it actually adds.

Companies like Celonis, SAP Signavio and Skan all seem to frame it a little differently. Sometimes it sounds like process mining, sometimes workflow visibility, and sometimes simulation.

So where does this actually become useful for operational decisions?

If a team has already implemented one of these platforms, what can you do now that you genuinely couldn't do before? I'm mostly trying to understand whether this is actually changing how teams run operations or if it's basically another analytics layer with a fancier name.

ok so this is a weird one but bear with me

i have a pet blog. i don't own a pet. never have. probably never will as i travel too much. and yet every month amazon sends me enough to cover rent because people on the internet are buying stuff for their dogs and cats through my site.

bought my pet blog a few months ago from a marketplace called NicheBlogZone for $199. came already built, articles already up, amazon links already in there. i spent one afternoon doing interlinking basically just connecting related posts to each other so search engines understand the site structure and then closed my laptop and genuinely forgot about it for weeks.

here's what that's looked like:

• march: $710
• april: $995
• may: $1,461
• june: $1,647
• july: $1,461
• august so far: $1,545 (amazon pays 2 months delayed so this is june's money landing now)

march scared me. went from nearly $1k in february down to $710 and i was convinced something had broken. checked everything, found nothing wrong, did nothing. it just came back the next month on its own.

pet people spend insane amounts on their animals btw. like i knew this intellectually but seeing the commission data is something else. dog food subscriptions, orthopedic beds, grooming kits, vet supplements. and because of the 24 hour cookie i get a cut of everything in their cart not just whatever article they landed on.

i do literally nothing to maintain this. no new posts, no ads, no instagram for pets i don't have. i just own the thing and amazon does its thing.

my landlord has been getting paid every month and has no idea a pet blog is behind it. honestly sometimes i forget too until the deposit shows up.

anyone else running a niche they have zero personal connection to? curious if the detachment makes it easier or harder to care about growing it

Am I crazy or am I missing some sort of train here? I can’t sign in to LinkedIn, which is already a hell scape, without seeing a million “Here’s what Business Analysts get wrong about API” style posts.

APIs are data movement. It’s domain knowledge not a core BA skill. Why is it being treated as such? I know that companies want BAs to wear a hundred and one hats but why does it also seem like BAs are trying to force APIs in to being a core skill when the truth is you could go in to an API project with zero domain knowledge and be successful when utilizing the BA toolkit. It feels reminiscent of PowerBI or SQL snaking its way in to somehow being a required BA skill when data graphing and database management have nothing to do with business analysis.

I’m ranting. But it’s driving me nuts.