The Business Case for Implementing Process Mining
Process mining is taking the world by storm as more and more enterprises become increasingly aware of the potential goldmine in the form of valuable data in their systems. Enterprises can only approach optimal efficiencies of scale and make critical business process improvements when they truly understand how their workflows work. With process mining, enterprises can unearth what is happening in their processes instead of operating under assumptions. They can then identify the root causes of bottlenecks in real-time, optimize their resources, and scale with total productivity and confidence. According to a recent global survey covering 24 countries, 63% of enterprises have already started implementing process mining, and 83% of enterprises already using process mining on a worldwide scale plan to expand their initiatives. Let us look at the reasons why an enterprise should be using process mining.
- Get a better grip on your Processes
- Make the most of available data
- Make data-driven decisions
- Continuous monitoring and improvement
- Increase efficiency and reduce risk
Most leaders believe they have a pretty good understanding of the processes in their organization. Processes are defined and documented so that every stakeholder involved is clear about their roles and responsibilities. However, there could be numerous interpretations of processes when evaluated carefully, especially since enterprises typically do not document business processes.
Therefore, looking at all available corporate system data relating to processes, you get 100% information coverage, and no activity escapes the eye. Process mining helps you understand what’s going on inside your enterprise.
Many large enterprises don’t realize that they are sitting on a data gold mine. They use plenty of disparate IT systems in their daily operations, and vast amounts of data are available in these systems.
Enterprises often use business intelligence tools to use this data, but it can be a hassle to access, primarily if the information is spread over different systems. Process mining tools can help you bridge this gap by combining data from multiple sources and presenting it in one intuitive solution.
Many decisions in organizations today are made based on assumptions and intuitions. That may be fine for mundane tasks or minor issues, but do you want to make an important decision or drive organizational change without the backing of the right set of data. Process mining tools increase data availability to enable data-driven decision-making. Process mining tools use raw data or event logs to extract the process sequence and close this gap. Once data is available, robust data visualization tools are needed to allow employees to quickly visualize and analyze the data, enabling rapid data-driven decision making and improvement.
Gaining insights into what is happening in your organization, while necessary, is equally critical to use these insights for continuous monitoring and improvement. That is where process mining is such a handy tool. By comparing your performance over time, process mining allows you to put these insights to good use. You can measure the effectiveness of your changes and, as a result, make your business transformation more successful. KPIs such as SLA, Resolution time, etc., are continuously monitored, allowing process owners to improve processes constantly. When you make changes to your operations, you can see what works and what doesn’t in real-time.
Every enterprise is unique and has its own set of ambitions and targets. Yet, for many large organizations, the issues they face often boil down to two overarching themes: efficiency and risk. Process mining helps identify bottlenecks and creates full transparency in your business processes. Thus, analyzing workflows with process mining is the ideal solution to address both efficiency and risk-related problems.
Process Mining as the Foundation of Digital Transformation
Enterprise processes are a crucial differentiator for any company. The workflows have never been more critical, such as customer order processing, invoicing, quality assurance, or risk management. To remove bottlenecks and automate optimization, enterprises must embrace digital transformation. Enterprises need to find ways to break down information silos and allow the free flow of information. Digital tools offer a solution to this problem. Digital tools also help the workforce by freeing them of repetitive, mundane tasks that plague their overall productivity and help them engage in value-added tasks.
Process mining tools help analyze event logs and other available data to build up a graphic representation of your workflows, which assists in locating process bottlenecks and highlighting duplicated areas of work.
Some of the critical capabilities of a process mining tool are:
- KPIs monitoring in real-time.
- Visualization of how processes contribute to business outcomes.
- Predictive Analysis
- Process Standardization
Process mining, therefore, acts as the keystone to enterprise digital transformation initiatives. It provides essential information needed to make sound business decisions. Through process mining tools, enterprises can visualize the impact on businesses when they run through the scenarios of changing the process. Enterprises subsequently can improve their existing processes and know what returns to expect from their investments. Process mining tools should be the foundation upon which enterprises should build all automation and transformation projects.
Global Chemical Manufacturer Saves Significantly by Optimizing Order to Cash (OTC) Using Process Mining
A Global Chemical Manufacturer with over USD 18 billion in revenue was facing a slow and complicated OTC process resulting in lost revenue, lost customers, reputation damage, and even compliance issues. The company implemented a Process Mining solution to help improve the end-to-end OTC cycle. By eliminating sales order changes, streamlining payments collections, and identifying the hidden potential of standardization, the organization realized $1.2 million in savings. The focus on data analysis included the below areas:
- Impact of changes on the delivery, overview per customer, sales group, material group
- Credit management activities, and impact on processes (case duration, delivery, customer, sales group, material group)
- Unusual cases: delivery before the order
As a result of utilizing the process mining tool, the organization was able to reduce transactional costs due to the elimination of sales order changes, streamline payments collection, and standardize processes, leading to a lower risk of operational issues.
Building your technology roadmap and taking the business from visibility to transformation is simplified by process mining. Enhancing visibility into data and workflows makes it easy to identify where and how to make necessary improvements to uncover new margin and revenue potential.