How Digital Twins Conquer The Process World

Digital twins are nothing new.

They are, to make it short, a digital image of something real, which can be changed by modeling in order to see the effects of various deviations.

Digital twins are mainly used in an industrial environment – for example to analyze the functioning of machines, engines or wind turbines.

How digital twins connect with process management

Back in 2018, Gartner introduced the concept of "Digital Twin of an Organization" (DTO), connecting digital twins for the first time with business processes.

Process owners are now able to see how people work, which systems and processes they come across and how daily work is regulated throughout departments in their organizations. Continuously captured information in real time is thus the basis of DTOs. And based on this, various scenarios can be modeled, selected, implemented, and planned in the future.

Exactly these criteria make digital twins so interesting for daily process design.

Let's have a deeper look!

Digital twins create added value along the entire lifecycle of processes. But when do DTOs make sense for process design in a company setting?

If you want to enhance digital transformation in your company, if you are not sure how a specific process should look like or if you want to examine different process possibilities to increase process performance – DTOs are definitely a good choice!

They are also helpful if certain process prototypes need to be tested before being implemented or if you suffer from broken processes that need to be analyzed and optimized using real process data.

Suitable for all process phases?

Digital twins generate significant value in all process phases.

Process design and modeling

Digital twins already make sense in your very early stage of process analysis, as they help to evaluate the feasibility and reasonableness of future processes as well as existing workflows through modeling and simulation.

For this purpose, specific models are created which depict and simulate the processes as realistically as possible - with the goal to create transparency for target and actual processes.

In addition, an analysis provides an important basis for different optimization measures.

Execution of processes

In this phase, digital twins enable practical testing of different process variants using process prototypes.

Using a low-code process execution platform, process models can be converted into digital prototypes with little effort to obtain an even better view of the process performance of the different process variants.

By this, process owners can select the simplest and most cost-effective workflow and implement it as a target process.

Process monitoring & optimization

In combination with process mining technology, digital twins go even one step further.

By extracting real data from underlying IT systems, they provide a digital image of processes in real time, i.e. bottlenecks can be uncovered and optimized on this data basis.

Benefits of Digital Twins

DTOs help organizations to become more efficient throughout the entire process lifecycle.

Using a BPM solution that creates digital twins across all process stages enables companies to cast a glance into the future and shape it effectively. Therefore, the digital image of a process serves as an important decision-making tool for the entire digital transformation journey of businesses. In all phases of the process lifecycle – from the analysis of the currently running, to the simulation and forecasting of future processes and events, up to the construction of process prototypes – digital twins provide the necessary information and data for a profitable holistic process transformation.

Digital process twins create new opportunities for process owners and decision-makers to

• strategically consider and evaluate processes
• calculate process costs or other required resources
• identify possible risks
• determine effective optimization measures

It goes without saying that possible negative effects caused by decisions can be avoided because they have already been run through with the help of digital twins.

Synergies to BPM? Definitely!

The concept of digital twins significantly supports the realignment or digital reinvention of existing operating models.

And since they are continuously fed with existing data, they always learn new skills and capabilities and thus continuously deliver new insights for product improvements or process optimization.

Thus, the combination of digital twins with the Internet-of-things (IoT) technology offers ideal optimization opportunities to make ongoing operations more effective, improve products or processes and increase overall efficiency.

Would you like to dive even deeper into the topic of digital twins?

Then make sure to download your personal copy of Gartner's recent report, "Quick Answer: What Is a Digital Twin?", published in May 2022, and find out how the leading market research firm defines the term digital twin.