Process Mining - Key to Transformation and Automation

Business processes are complicated animals. They usually involve many employees executing individual tasks inside of multiple applications and siloed systems. The number of people and technologies involved in completing the process leads to a lack of visibility into the complete process. This combination makes it tough to understand how business processes run and to verify whether or not they are operating as intended.

In the US, the current approaches to business process design and modeling typically rely on subjective interviews and questionnaires to build a map of the current state of the processes and usually involve expensive consulting services. Process conformance checking is also costly and error-prone. Typical conformance checking uses audit sampling that depends on limited data to gauge process compliance. As a result, standard methods of process discovery and conformance checking miss the full picture.

Process mining is the alternative that provides a data-driven approach to business process discovery and conformance checking and overcomes the limitations of these historical approaches. Process mining is an analytical discipline like data mining for gathering real process data for the purpose of discovery, monitoring, and improving real processes. Process mining extracts process data from event logs available in today’s enterprise information systems such as SAP, Salesforce, Oracle.  It uses the event logs of host systems to automatically generate a dynamic representation of the current process that is accurate and includes all variations. This technology utilizes algorithms to create a digital twin of a process that highlights what is and what isn’t working, enabling a data-driven approach to problem-solving. The resulting model has no user bias, is built faster, and is less expensive. 

What are the benefits of process mining for automation?

Process mining generates guidance based on fact instead of opinion. This guidance is particularly helpful when applied to automation projects like RPA. As Bill Gates said: “The first rule of any technology used in a business is that automation applied to an efficient operation will magnify the efficiency. The second is that automation applied to an inefficient operation will magnify the inefficiency.”

Given the discovery and conformance checking capabilities that process mining provides, process mining enables and accelerates an automation strategy before and after implementation:

·      Prioritize projects and increase impact: Most organizations struggle to recognize ROI from automation projects because they don’t use a systematic approach to process and task selection. They inadvertently choose non-value-added steps for automation, resulting in reduced or unrealized ROI. Process mining eliminates this mistake by identifying which steps of the process can be automated immediately, which need preliminary enhancement, and which will be the most impactful when automated. That’s powerful.

·      Map and model current processes: Before beginning an automation project, process mining technology can discover and model the process, identify redundancies and inefficiencies, and detect non-compliant actions and variations. This pre-work can determine the best workflows and tasks to automate and capture the metrics needed to measure project ROI accurately. Some Process Mining software platforms even go beyond current state process assessment and simulate process behavior and ROI by executing detailed what-if analyses that minimize adoption risks.

·      Anticipate and prevent problems: One major, but often overlooked, benefit of process mining is the capability to monitor transactions as they occur. Advanced process mining technology utilizes machine learning algorithms to provide alerts when a possible process irregularity is spotted. What if accounts payable could be notified of a discount deadline approaching in 48 hours, and automatically prioritize the invoice for payment? Process mining technology makes this reality today.

Can process mining impact digital transformation initiatives?

Digital transformation initiatives built on minimal research will deliver minimal results. Companies that don’t fully understand their processes and what actions cause exceptions and rework will compound inefficiencies instead of removing them. Process mining uncovers all process exceptions and reveals the root causes. This initial process research allows organizations to build enhanced digital transformation roadmaps based on actual data and ultimately achieve more predictable outcomes.

Why is process mining in the news today?

Although process mining as a discipline has been in use for a decade, the growth of RPA and hyper-automation has increased its importance. Process mining provides direction to organizations concerning what should and should not be automated. Companies are also beginning to recognize multiple benefits for utilizing process mining to support daily operations and become more nimble and proactive to customer requirements.