Omitted Activities: Shining a Light on the Absence

We’re nearing the end of the year, but there’s still time for more Feature Highlights! In September we talked about Hypothetical Activities, and while we took October to highlight some industry news in this slot instead, this time we’re continuing right along on its sister feature – Omitted Activities. These are activities that that should have occurred but didn’t. In other words, these are activities that were expected to happen but were skipped, whose absence might just be unexpected or may pose a compliance risk.

As usual, let’s look at some examples!

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Using the Feature

As with Hypotheticals, let’s start with the Causal Hypothesis of our test Dimension. In this case, it’s most important to look at the critical path of the process – the minimum path a single instance of it has to run to get from start to finish. If any activity on this path is missing, that activity is considered Omitted.

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Here, we see the Process View, filtered for instances with violations and with those violation paths turned on. In many of these cases, we will find Omitted Activities, but of course on the full case view, we don’t see any – this is because there’s at least one instance within this filtered set that has each activity.

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By selecting Variant #10, we can see a version of this process where the process seems to have terminated at the Invoice Sent step, and then jumped back to Add Offer Position. Here, since this is not an expected end, all of the activities after Invoice Sent are marked as Omitted. This could represent Open Cases, or it could mean that in these cases the order had to be manually edited after the customer received the invoice.

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Selecting Variant #58 shows us a very different case. Here, the orders began and terminated correctly, but while the second and third reminders were sent out, and the payments eventually received and booked, the first reminder was skipped! This is clearly an issue in the process and can create tensions in client satisfaction. To make matters worse, many steps here were done in the wrong order, with the third reminder being sent before the second.

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In the Case view, after expanding the instance into individual process paths, we can find even more interesting cases of Omitted Activities. Here, for example, we find a case that split into multiple Orders, but where one order was abandoned after the shipment preparation step, while another branch continued through to payment and delivery.

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Real-World Use Cases

Identifying Omitted Activities can be transformative for managers and business owners who need visibility into process inefficiencies or compliance concerns. Let's explore some concrete scenarios where this feature makes an impact:

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1. Enhancing Compliance and Minimizing Risk

• In industries with strict compliance requirements, like healthcare or financial services, ensuring all mandated steps occur is critical. For example, if a regulatory audit requires that every claim must go through a multi-step approval process, detecting missing approvals (Omitted Activities) can help identify potential compliance breaches before they lead to fines or sanctions.

2. Improving Customer Satisfaction

• Consider an order management process where reminders are sent to customers about overdue payments. If the first reminder was omitted but subsequent reminders were sent, this can lead to confusion and negatively impact the customer relationship. Identifying such omissions helps ensure consistency in customer communication, building trust and avoiding reputational damage.

3. Streamlining Order Fulfillment Processes

• In a supply chain environment, omitted steps might involve quality control checks. Suppose an order skips an intermediate quality inspection but moves forward to packaging. This omission could lead to defects being delivered to customers, harming both product quality and brand integrity. By flagging these omissions, businesses can intervene, correct issues, and ensure products consistently meet quality standards.

4. Identifying Opportunities for Automation

• In some processes, frequent omissions may indicate opportunities to automate manual tasks. For example, if invoicing steps are often missed, automating invoice generation could prevent these gaps, thereby reducing manual oversight requirements and speeding up cash flow.

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Conclusion

Omitted Activities provide crucial visibility into what isn't happening in your processes—the missing steps that can lead to inefficiencies, compliance risks, or diminished customer satisfaction. By highlighting these absences, Noreja Process Intelligence enables business owners and managers to take pre-emptive action, streamline operations, and ultimately improve the overall transparency of business processes.

When used alongside the Hypothetical Activities feature, the insights become even more powerful, offering a complete view of both what is happening and what should have happened. Together, these tools drive a more resilient and responsive organization—one that can adapt quickly, minimize operational risks, and continuously improve.

We encourage you to explore the Omitted Activities feature in your own processes and see where there might be opportunities to strengthen your workflow. If you’re interested in learning more, our team is always here to help.

Best,

Lukas

original link: Noreja Blog, auch auf Deutsch!