To improve processes, businesses need both qualitative and quantitative data. Too many companies rely on qualitative data alone, using anecdotal evidence and intuition. But without seeing the numbers, how can you know if you’re meeting key performance indicators (KPIs)? How can you know for sure that your real-world operational processes are setting you up to meet your goals?
Companies have turned to process mining software for the concrete, quantitative data they need to make decisions. Process mining tools provide deep insights into business processes using event log data to show actual process flows in the real world. Process mining solutions help companies identify what to stop, start, and continue in each process. Companies can use process mining techniques to see what’s working, what isn’t working, and where to improve. This post will cover key process mining benefits and how these solutions enhance your most complex processes.
What is process mining?
Process mining software uses the event log data present in your IT systems to create a process map of every step that takes place in core business processes. This includes who is involved, how long the process takes, and whether there are any deviations from the "normal" run of things.
For example, say you wanted to map your procure-to-pay process to determine where delays or other process inefficiencies occur. A process mining tool analyzes data from your procure-to-pay systems and workflows to uncover bottlenecks and inefficiencies. The tool may analyze critical data such as purchase order creation, invoice processing, and data syncing across multiple systems to find these bottlenecks.
And it does so in a visual, actionable way by creating process models for the entire process flow you want to optimize. This helps you redesign your processes to deliver business outcomes like stronger operational efficiency or better customer retention.
What are the benefits of process mining?
Business processes are the undercurrent of your organization. Changing them can disrupt people’s daily work. Process mining helps companies know that making these changes will improve process performance, in a few different ways:
1. Establishes the status of your as-is processes
Before making changes to a process, you’ll want to start with process discovery. According to the Harvard Business Review, "...understanding the current process is critical to knowing whether it is worth investing in improvements, where performance problems exist, and how much variation there is in the process across the organization." Process mining provides this data. With its insights, you can identify areas where optimization will have the largest impact on process performance.
2. Equips you to make data-based decisions
Though the people who work with the processes day in and day out have valuable expertise, they can’t provide a truly comprehensive view of all process steps. Process mining delivers accurate real-time insights into all that goes on in your processes.
3. Provides visual outputs
Process mining tools gather and interpret your process data and visually map it from start to finish. This visual format makes it easy to quickly identify the areas that need attention. You can also use process modeling capabilities to build out a future-state process visualization.
4. Enables continuous improvement
There are no restrictions on how often you apply process mining to your processes. You can do so to determine your as-is state, level-set during your process optimization project, and do a pulse check six months after you've implemented changes. Process mining is a continuous improvement exercise that will serve your organization far into the future.
In other words, process mining has advantages for companies making targeted improvement decisions. But beyond this, it also impacts your business performance by continuously making processes more efficient.
5. Saves money and time through more efficient processes
The process transparency you gain helps you identify bottlenecks, process loops, or other glaring issues in your processes, making process cycle times much faster. You can identify repetitive tasks within your processes that will benefit most from automation initiatives. The speed, accuracy, and auditability that technologies like robotic process automation (RPA) and enterprise artificial intelligence can deliver can result in significant cost savings and much faster time to market.
6. Improves customer experience and user satisfaction
Applying process mining technology to any customer journey process can have a far-reaching, positive impact on your business. Optimizing customer processes leads to less churn, more sales, and a clear competitive advantage. And when you automate repetitive, manual tasks, your employees’ time gets freed up for higher impact work.
7. Reduces risk and increases compliance
How can you be sure your business operations remain free from compliance issues and major risks? There is no 100% certainty when it comes to risk and compliance. But with quantitative process insights, you'll have a clearer picture of potential trouble spots. Once you know where issues are likely to occur, you can plug the gaps and save your business from penalties or fines.
What is an example of the benefits of process mining?
Let’s look at an example of how process mining benefited a real company. German energy and utility company Stadtwerke Bonn wanted to reduce operational costs by improving internal processes to increase customer satisfaction. To determine where to start, Stadtwerke Bonn launched a process mining initiative with Appian to review its meter-to-cash (M2C) operations.
The real-world process data highlighted several opportunities for improvement. For example, when recording a meter reading, the company often included a plausibility check. The data revealed they were conducting roughly 75% unnecessary plausibility checks that took up too much employee time and delayed customer communication.
With this problem identified and quantified, the team was able to take informed action and optimize the M2C system’s plausibility limits. They introduced process mining controls, implemented a data fabric to provide unified access to all IT systems, and increased the degree of automation in the process.
Thanks to the red flag raised by process mining, Stadtwerke Bonn achieved these results:
Speeding up plausibility checks and monitoring by seven days
Accelerating incoming/outgoing payments by seven days, improving liquidity along with customer satisfaction
Speeding up the processing of 2,300 cancellations by approximately two months
Who should invest in process mining technology?
Process mining may not be a good fit for all organizations. But for any company with broad, sweeping enterprise processes, it plays a vital role in improving performance.
So, how do you know if process mining software will deliver real business value? Ask the following questions to determine whether process mining will benefit your organization:
Are your business processes largely digitized? If so, you have plenty of data that can provide valuable insights into how well your processes run.
Do you operate in a market or environment that's highly customer-, constituent-, or patient-focused? If feedback from any of these groups—or from your own employees or other stakeholders—points to inefficiencies or a lack of satisfaction, process mining helps root out the sources of the problems.
Does your organization consist of multiple departments or geographies? If so, you may lack transparency across all your touchpoints. With so many interdependencies, inefficiencies are bound to creep in, so you need a tool to help you discover and eradicate them.
Are agility, flexibility, and adaptability top concerns in your organization? As the needs of the organization, your customers, and stakeholders change, your business processes and the technology that supports them also have to change. You need a way to continuously monitor your processes to take advantage of optimization opportunities as they present themselves.
Is managing risk a priority for your organization? Clear insight into what goes on in your processes is imperative for minimizing risk.
If you answered yes to any of these questions, then you could see tremendous benefit from investing in process mining software.
Is process mining worth it?
Without process mining, you may have a very strong business process management discipline and still lack sufficient insight into everything that goes on in your actual processes. This hampers your abilities to truly transform and improve your processes.
But when you are armed with the data-driven insight that process mining provides, you will identify and fix problem areas. This delivers real business benefits.
