The power of process mining
July 18, 2022
We’re all searching for a way to maximise our return on investment and make money. We create new products, offer new services, and revamp our image, all of which are costly and temporary fixes that require long-term expenditure. However, instead of investing money in outward-facing solutions, you could revolutionise your business by fixing the inefficiencies you can’t see — hidden behind the scenes. Process mining can help you do just that.
While process mining sounds like something your tech-headed cousin does in the basement, it’s a powerful business tool that can help you better understand how your company works and where it could be improved. In this blog, we’ll explore what process mining is and how it can benefit your business.
What is process mining?
In simple terms, process mining is a data-driven analysis technique that helps organisations improve the reliability and accuracy of their business processes. By tracing and mapping the sequence of activities within a workflow, process mining can help identify points of failure and areas for improvement.
It turns data into insights and creates a comprehensive overview of everything within your business, from customer service to resource procurement.
Process mining has evolved
For decades, process mapping with consulting firms has been a slog, requiring teams of people to sit around a whiteboard or spreadsheet for days on end. It was an uphill task, prone to human error and subjective in nature.
Process mining changes that. Now, we can leave painful, people-driven process mapping in the past. Powerful algorithms and advanced data transformation make discovering and optimising processes quick, automated, and accurate.
| Traditional process mapping | Process mining |
|---|---|
| Time-consuming | Near-instant |
| Resource-heavy | Resource-light |
| Only measures current results | Continuous and extensive data |
| Subjective | Objective |
How process mining works
It sounds complex, but it’s not. Process mining has three key steps. Extract, analyse and visualise. We start by obtaining data left behind in event logs from your IT systems. Systems generate event logs whenever an employee or another piece of software takes action.
Humans make errors, so we leave the analysis to AI. With the extracted data, software – like that provided by ServiceNow or Celonis – will look for patterns, correlations, and process bottlenecks that would otherwise be undetectable.
Finally, we generate a process map (think flow chart) to visualise the data in an easy-to-understand format. This helps us build a clearer picture of your organisation’s internal workings and identify where we can improve, remove, and automate.
The benefits of process mining
Process mining is a relatively new technology that’s quickly gaining popularity. In fact, according to Forrester, 83% of business decision-makers plan to increase the adoption of process optimisation in customer journey mapping. Process mining has become a powerful tool in the process optimisation toolkit because it can:
- Discover and monitor business processes at scale – It’s a robot. Unlike other lengthy and subjective process mapping workshops, it’ll map processes faster, accurately, and without bias.
- Harness data more effectively – Process mining offers objective, fact-based insights developed using actual data to audit, analyse, and improve your existing business processes.
- Identify bottlenecks and process inefficiencies – Event logs help us find inefficiencies that our eyes can’t. They measure time, flow, and even cost to help you find and fix process bottlenecks.
- Simplify compliance – Consistent monitoring helps identify variations and errors in process execution, performance deviations, and access compliance levels and risks.
Process mining works for every business
Organisations in a variety of industries can benefit from process mining. For example, manufacturers can use process mining to improve the quality and efficiency of their production processes, while banks can use it to streamline the customer onboarding process. Retailers can use it to monitor and improve their supply chains, and healthcare organisations can reduce patient wait times.
The future of process mining
Process mining is an already advanced tool for revolutionising the way we work, yet we continue to see empowering new features and applications emerge as it continues to evolve. For example, predictive process mining could forecast future process outcomes and enable organisations to take proactive measures to avoid potential issues.
Process mining is powerful. By automating process mapping and harnessing data more effectively, businesses can improve the accuracy and efficiency of their day-to-day routines. Whether you’re increasing productivity, improving compliance, automating business processes, or driving strategic initiatives like audits, digital transformation, supply chain resiliency, or system migrations — process mining can benefit you.
But, process mining is just one step to modernising your organisation. As the need for automation and transformation grows, we unlock potential and provide industry-leading support to our partners. Together, we can navigate the digital world and solve your business goals.