PROCESS MINING IN TRANSFORMING BUSINESS

What is Business Process Mining?

Any business has huge processes in always-on mode managed by employees, consultants and vendors. However, every business requires continuous monitoring, management and improvement of these processes for the organization to function at its best efficiency and thereby giving optimal results or outcomes in the form of net revenues/profits, gross revenues/profits, savings (in terms of operations, recommendations by identifying loopholes or discontinuity or superfluous expenditure) and much more.

However, in today’s world of AI, automation and Data Science, one can easily utilize technologies for getting better, faster and enhanced results in terms of accuracy as well as customer experience. It helps avoid redundant efforts due to human errors in data analysis. So, business process mining is one such technology which can help us transform businesses by process improvements based on facts, considering historical data providing tangible results.

Process mining utilizes data from tools like ERP, CRM, Automation tools, etc. to give organizations insights into their current processes (basically how they are functioning presently) by providing the “digital footprint” of the actual process. For instance, below diagram shows the massive difference between ideal, probable and actual process. There may be an e-commerce giant which has simple steps for customer order process, however the actual process would involve many deviations and lagging, plus there would be multiple anticipated and unanticipated factors like holidays, employee falling sick, unforeseen events, etc. which will affect the time of delivery of product.

Additionally, if the business wants to change or improve their normal delivery process, they will require factual and clear understanding of their as-is process to understand what needs to change and why. Secondly, in case of any error if the business wants to find out the root cause of error and adopt rectifying solution, that would also be possible if the company has crystal clear view of their processes, including hidden processes which may not be visible generally or have not been even documented in the process documents of the organization.

For this process mining, tools provide clear understanding by providing a process map or “digital footprint” of business processes which can be further analyzed. This would help take informed decisions by business owners. Process mining tools also helps track and continuously monitor changes which have been adopted in the system already. Some tools also provide revenue benefits which is achieved by implementing recommended process models or improvements by process mining tools. This leaves no room for gut feeling or dynamic human decisions based on intuitions.

Benefits of Process Mining

Benefits of using process mining but not limited to are the following:

• Identifying bottlenecks and deviations while standardizing or automating existing processes as well as for implementing new process
• Continuous monitoring, measurement, improvements and optimization of processes
• Compliance and audit When it comes to compliance, generally organizations' have no clue about their overall compliance parameters and efficiency, however, process mining tools helps keep audit trails logs of every process in the company and this can be effectively utilized during audit or compliance issue.
• Cost According to recent UiPath white paper report on process mining and digital transformation, “The software company’s Director of Cloud Architecture put it this way: “We have actually achieved hard savings of approximately two million euros this year, exclusively using UiPath Process Mining for the O2C [order-to-cash] process alone.... The technology itself is great, so there is a lot of potential for savings, both hard savings and soft savings.”
• Speed creating and managing process documents manually is time-consuming and can be erroneous. Instead process mining can give insights into business processes in few minutes once the tool is effectively integrated in the environment.
• Better Customer experience Streamlining processes with efficiency, easily removing bottlenecks, improving process lead time, etc. provides better customer experience and working towards scaling the process improvements programs.
• Data driven decision making Process mining is purely based on facts and not hearsay or gut feeling. It utilizes factual data from business current state and gives insights into them for optimizations and areas of improvements in a scientific manner and not hit and trial method which makes this process more reliable than traditional manual ways.
• Transparency increased Data from process mining tool makes everything transparent and factual. This helps keep free flow of conversation and understanding of processes between different business owners as well as leadership. The data is not manipulated by individual and more precise, thorough as well as trustworthy. Decision making is done based on facts with the help of real-time event log data instead of just relying on experts’ words.

Usage of Process Mining

Process mining can transform businesses in various ways. It can be utilized by organizations irrespective of the fact whether your business is an established one with already structured processes or whether you have traditionally not been a process focused company. The former can utilize process mining for process improvement, re-engineering efforts, adoption of automation methods, freeing up employee time and instead utilizing their time in productive things like innovation and digital transformation projects, etc. While the later type of companies can use process mining for standardizing existing ways of working, avoiding unnecessary spent, managing audit logs for better compliance, etc. Both types eventually are trying to increase ROI by creating standardization in actual execution of processes, avoiding error and loss, and adding value to the business.

Few examples where process mining can be used for business transformation are:

• In early stages of businesses, one needs to get a view of how my company processes are actually working. Taking workshops and interviews from stakeholders and creating a diagram of process function manually is tiresome, time-taking and may have its own faults. Instead utilizing process mining tools will lead to better results and provide clearer view than manual efforts.
• Standardizing current process or when company are looking to create an alternate and efficient operating procedures process mining can be leveraged to get insight into current state of things from minute details to recommending alternate models and areas of improvement based on data.
• Monitoring processes and calculating value realization from process improvement There are humungous processes taking place every day in any organization but how can we identify which of these needs to be reformed or eliminated or can be automated. Doing so with traditional methods would be slow and not accurate. Process mining tools helps you decide this much faster by just few clicks and integration of existing tools in the organization.
• Employee Utilization Apart from removing chances of human error cost, process mining if utilized effectively can help free up employees and use them in more constructive things like strategic initiatives, giving them time to create plans for innovative ideas and implementation. With use of process mining, teams can identify repetitive tasks and work on their automation instead. Process mining can empower employees by allowing them to also identify bottlenecks and propose better ways of optimization once they learn to use process mining. This will motivate employees to add value to business strategy and provide valuable inputs making them feel more inclusive and part of decision-making process.
• Digital transformation – Process mining tools can help identify processes to deploy any new technology in future operating model. If you are thinking of deploying a new technology, process mining can help identify flaws in existing processes and find out where actually can this new technology be implemented for better outcomes. During the implementation phase, process mining tools can be useful to get insights into current processes as and when they are being implemented in real-time, this would help avoid errors during implementation.

Limitations of Process Mining

• Quality of data:?In order to get accurate results, the application should be integrated appropriately with process mining tools. Connectors should be effectively designed, keeping in mind practical usage and providing seamless outcomes. Data analysts should be able to utilize the data generated from process mining tools which will require training and skilled resources.
• Missing manual tasks:?Process mining generally uses event logs to create process flows however, there may be few tasks which are not recorded on logs and the tool is not able to capture such tasks thus it might give incomplete results. However, this could be solved by integrating task mining with process mining.?
• Updating outcomes with evolving processes:?Real time solutions are required since processes gets updated in organizations which requires updating the process mining output results including optimization, improvements results, etc.
• Handling complexity:?Larger the organization, larger is the complexity and volume of data. Complex processes pose challenges to the tool. So, organizations need to break down the process optimization tasks at multiple domains and teams. This requires better management by creating a centralized Centre Of Excellence team while giving responsibility to business owners at each level or team.
• Unacceptance amongst employees:?Employees and business owners might not like the idea of change initially. They are used to working in traditional ways of handling process workflows, etc. so, they need to be educated about the benefits of process mining as well as value realisation for business. Efficient transitioning will then be possible along with having a professional change management strategy and team.

Few examples of sectors where process mining is currently being used worldwide across industry includes Telecom (Vodafone), Automobile industry (BMW, Porsche, Ferrari), Healthcare, Consumer and Retail (Coca Cola, Loreal, Kellogg’s, Mars) Software Technology (Qualcomm, IBM, Service Now, Uber, Cisco), Oil & Gas (Exxon Mobil), Manufacturing (3M, Whirlpool, Bosch), etc.

Some of the process mining tools available in the market are Celonis, ARIS, UiPath, IBM, SAP Signavio Process Intelligence, Microsoft Power Automate Process Mining and much more.