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4 Benefits of Using Process Mining in Finance

Kerri Hale, Senior Product Marketing Manager, Process Mining
October 11, 2022

Banks and financial institutions are highly regulated, where any noncompliance with strict rules and regulations can lead to heavy fines. Add to that skyrocketing customer expectations and it’s easy to see why finance is so competitive. Success in this environment requires accountability, coupled with process efficiency and the ability to optimize for continuous improvement. 

How do you get there? Process mining in finance is quickly becoming integral to success. 

 

Process mining is a more accurate, effective, and data-driven approach to the discovery phase of any business process management (BPM) discipline. It provides objective process discovery at scale, using data from your enterprise systems to map out your business workflows. A visual process model makes it easy to identify inefficiencies and bottlenecks that plague workflows in accounting, budgeting, compliance processes, and more. Quickly see where the problems are and what’s causing them so you can fix them, then monitor performance in real time to discover new optimization opportunities. 

[Inefficient processes can kill your business. Get a step-by-step guide to getting started in the Process Mining Guide

Wondering if process mining is the right tool for your organization? Here are four ways finance leaders can get value. 

1. Manage regulatory and compliance risks proactively.

Rules about interacting with and handling customer financial data change frequently, and compliance in finance is serious business. With so much at stake, it makes sense to be proactive.

Process mining can help ensure financial transactions and monetary flow processes are audit-ready, while enabling data-driven compliance checking for quick and automatic analysis. Financial institutions can easily visualize process flows in loan and mortgage services, checking and savings account transactions, and more to uncover variations and errors before process deviations pose serious risk.

2. Discover and investigate process bottlenecks and inefficiencies that cost money.

Is your loan approval process as seamless as possible? Process mining can help you increase process efficiency by analyzing event logs and comparing your current as-is process to a target, or ideal process model, enhanced with KPIs.

Through analysis of business processes, you can quickly identify bottlenecks and inefficiencies that delay progress and root out problems in workflows. Then, use root-cause analysis to uncover reasons behind them. Discovering repetitive steps and rework in the mortgage process for instance can help you streamline workflow, significantly reducing the time it takes to complete the process. 

3. Identify new automation opportunities, and further optimize existing automations.

Today, many bank processes are anchored in legacy systems, which tend to involve manual steps. Onboarding new customers, reviewing credit card applications, and even processing loans are common activities that often include manual workflows. Process mining can detect and highlight automation potential for ongoing improvement as part of a solid business process management strategy.

For processes that are already automated, process mining can drill deep into each activity and tasks within a process to uncover activities that can be optimized further. For example, Know Your Customer (KYC) checks, claims processing and anti-money laundering analysis are all areas that may be ripe for even more robotic process automation.

4. Boost customer satisfaction with seamless, hassle-free experiences.

With customer satisfaction at the top of any sound business strategy, process mining is a useful tool for monitoring process performance over time. Efficient processes that exceed expectations make customers happy, and easy, hassle-free experiences are remembered. 

You can monitor core processes in real time, arming businesses with actionable insights to optimize, paving the way for continuous improvement. Particularly in finance where competition is fierce, design seamless processes that provide customers with the answers they need quickly, and you’ll be rewarded. 

Whether you’re looking to streamline and remove friction from core processes, manage risk more effectively, or transform the customer experience, process mining in finance will help you drive agility and speed across your organization, paving the way for broader business process improvement and enterprise modernization.

Discover the 3 steps to optimized processes in our Process Mining Guide.