Process mining – leveraging data-driven opportunity discovery

As the digital landscape continues to evolve, process mining enables organizations to unlock hidden potential from data-driven insights – streamlining operations, enhancing customer satisfaction, and driving a competitive advantage.

“There’s gold in them thar hills.” Those were the words that prompted the gold rush in the US almost 200 years ago.

Today’s enterprises face a similar challenge, and a similar opportunity. This time, lying hidden in them thar hills are insights – information about operations and market trends and business outcomes and more, all buried under vast amounts of data.

Process mining and analytics can take advantage of event logs and process data to find the nuggets of knowledge on which informed decision-making and smart new ventures are based.

Understanding process mining

Process assessment interviews and workshops are costly and time-consuming, and the results can be skewed by internal politics and the status quo. That’s why today we use process mining and analytics instead.

This is a technique that extracts the as-is process from event logs and data recorded during operational processes. It enables organizations to visualize, analyze, and improve their processes based on real data rather than assumptions.

By analyzing the sequence of events, timestamps, and interdependencies between activities, process mining reveals inefficiencies, bottlenecks, and variations that may otherwise have gone unnoticed.

Figure 1. The traditional vs. process mining approach to improving processes

Unlocking hidden opportunities

Process mining doesn’t just highlight operational problems. It also identifies opportunities for improvement – for example, by streamlining current processes.

If the solution is set up properly, all relevant digital systems are connected to it and made available to the designated stakeholder across the organization.

With a few clicks, intelligent algorithms can pinpoint opportunities, from efficiency gains, cost cutting, and over top-line optimization to sustainability increases and emissions reductions.

These opportunities include the detection of patterns and correlations between process activities and outcomes, enabling organizations to reduce costs, improve customer satisfaction, and optimize revenue. By earmarking areas with the highest potential for improvement, organizations can prioritize their efforts and allocate resources effectively.

Figure 2. An organization can be understood as a city with a public transportation system in which customers, suppliers, and employees travel via subway trains

Many enterprises analyze and optimize within their organizational structures, such as by team, function, or region. However, the digital “subway map,” a visualization of the connection and interplay of processes and teams (see Figure 2), enables the analysis of respective cause and effect relationships, providing a systemic optimization instead of a fragmented one.

Enhancing data-driven decision-making

Let’s look in a little more detail at the ways in which process mining can deliver value.

A smart and comprehensive approach can include:

• A large portfolio of KPI value trees with up to five levels to fan out, for the automatic detection of root-causes:
  • Key sustainable indicators (KSIs)
  • Process performance indicators (PPIs)
  • Key risk indicator (KRIs)
• Key information throughout the hierarchy to focus on most relevant opportunities:
  • Strategic for the C-suite and other senior executives
  • Tactical for process and country owners
  • Operative for real-time process execution
• Benchmarks on KPIs, trends and targets, as well as activity duration:
  • Internal benchmarks for dimension comparison
  • External benchmarks for target setting
• An approach to streamlining and re-engineering processes to accelerate and prioritize findings.

Extending the reach of analysis

Not all processes are fully integrated into production systems, and some of them aren’t even digitalized. This compromises the value of analysis, which can only be at its optimum when it’s comprehensive.

With an integrating tool stack, all process steps can be uncovered, added to the analysis, and even digitalized. Task and desktop mining can be used to analyze software program usage, and for example the amount of manual copy paste activities that might ideally be automated.

Also, the analysis of manual and physical process steps such as customer interaction can be supported by motion mining or the use of artificial intelligence for image recognition, where digital footsteps and information are anonymously derived from gadgets such as bracelets, handheld devices, or cameras. Paper-based process steps can be quickly digitalized and brought into a structured format with intelligent object character recognition (ICR and OCR).

All these methods can be integrated into the process analysis tool, enabling near-real-time process analysis as well as process execution.

Taking process mining enterprise-wide

To take full advantage of process mining, organizations need to establish a framework for its adoption (see Figure 3). This means gathering and integrating process data from various sources, such as enterprise systems, databases, and application logs. It also means investing in specialized process mining tools and building a team with the skills needed to analyze and interpret the data.

Organizational culture has a major role to play too. Encouraging a data-driven mindset and fostering collaboration between process owners, analysts, and IT departments is crucial. This ensures that insights derived from process mining are translated into tangible actions and continuous process improvement.

Figure 3. The five dimensions of the target operating model are the foundation of a scalable process mining initiative

Taking stock

Process mining provides a significant opportunity for organizations to unlock the potential hidden within their operational processes. By taking full advantage of data-driven insights, organizations can streamline their operations, improve customer satisfaction, and gain a competitive edge.

As the digital landscape continues to evolve, process mining will increasingly be an essential strategic tool, helping organizations to identify and capitalize on new opportunities – and to thrive in a data-driven business environment.

There’s gold in them thar process mines.

This article is published in the new edition of our Innovation Nation magazine. Read more from our special feature on “Automation and the data-powered organization” and download the full magazine.