If you look behind the scenes of any successful business, you’ll see them maximizing productivity, making quick decisions, and optimizing business processes.
While companies in the past had to evaluate business processes manually, today’s technology makes process mining an effective way to analyze data and leverage it to enhance operational efficiency. According to PEX, 90% of organizations that have implemented process mining report positive results.
If you’re not optimizing business processes, you could miss out on growth. Our complete guide explains what process mining means and why it’s beneficial. We’ll also reveal how you can harness the power of data to prime your company for long-term success.
What is process mining?
Process mining is an effective way to extract event log data and use it to understand, monitor, and enhance business processes.
Process mining tools can create accurate representations of actual process execution by leveraging data from your systems. This 100% visibility allows key decision-makers to eliminate inefficiencies and streamline processes. It also means teams can compare as-is processes with expected or optimal process models.
While process mining dates back to the 2000s, modern technology and algorithms now allow companies to use high-grade tools that eliminate the need for manual data mining.
Research from Fortune Business Insights estimates the market for process mining software will grow from $2.46 billion today to an incredible $46.39 billion in 2032.
How does process mining work?
All businesses operate by following a set of processes. From acquiring new customers to fulfilling orders and managing finances, processes are defined by a series of steps that lead to a completion point.
Our reliance on technology means every process results in a digital footprint—also known as event log data. Process mining uses this data to create an accurate representation of your processes, highlight inefficiencies, and allow decision-makers to find proactive solutions for improvement.
Automated v manual process mining
Business process management used to be an arduous task involving a whole team of people who had to manually review all areas of a business’s operations.
Any intel gathered from process mining was stored in people’s heads and the systems that housed the processes, resulting in a lack of transparency.
Today, process mining software means companies of all sizes can assess their efficiency and compete in competitive markets.
Let’s explore why automated processing is more effective than manual process discovery.
| Automated Process Mining | Manual Process Data Discovery |
| The software works in just minutes, enabling it to discover and map data quickly. | Understanding and mapping processes takes hours, days or even longer. |
| Process mining software uses AI and other advanced technology, ensuring there’s no room for error. | Manual process documentation means there’s always room for error. Humans can miss vital information. |
| Offers an accurate picture of your processes. | There’s no way of saying whether manual collection can offer a true picture of all processes. |
| Software can allow you to automate various processes and maintain accuracy. | Automation is more challenging with manual process discovery, and can miss important steps. |
| Using automated process mining tools means you can automatically create Process Definition Documents (PDD). | Manually creating PDDs can take time and money. |
Why does process mining matter?
Technology has changed the way businesses operate, allowing them to streamline processes and achieve more productivity. However, many aspects of everyday operations aren’t always visible to key stakeholders.
Whether from a lack of communication and siloed departments, failure to understand how each employee is doing their job, or inadequate data collection and analysis,, companies often have insufficient transparency. Process mining solutions, on the other hand, take a deep dive into your operations and gather vital insights.
According to CIO Dive, businesses lose around $1.3 million a year due to inefficient processes. You might think your existing process model is linear, but implementing the right software can highlight inconsistencies.
The benefits of process mining:
- Absolute Clarity: Process mining accurately represents how each process within your business works, from start to finish. Instead of relying on team feedback and assessing the situation manually, you’ll have concrete facts.
- Data-Driven Decisions: When key stakeholders can access concrete information, they can focus on process improvement and enhance productivity. The result? Happier customers and increased ROI.
- Risk Management: Breaching compliance laws can result in reputation damage and legal issues. Process mining tools can assess how your processes align with compliance guidelines and help you make changes.
- Lower Costs: When you consider how much time your team spends on operations, it quickly becomes clear that those hours could be utilized elsewhere. Process automation means departments can focus on other tasks, improving productivity.
- Remain Competitive: Process mining helps your business maintain a competitive edge, whether through proactive customer relationship management, system transformation, or practical resource allocation.
- Ongoing Improvements: Implementing the right software solution lets you constantly monitor and improve processes in individual departments or across the entire organizational infrastructure.
Process mining with automation
Automation comes with the promise to make work faster, more efficient, and free up employees to do more meaningful work. However, automation can also make existing problems worse by expediting the rate at which they occur.
Process mining highlights where processes are broken and helps measure the ROI of automation, ensuring that automation is deployed in the right places at the right time for maximum benefit.
According to Strategic Market Research, 85% of large enterprises used the RPA in 2022, and its market size continues to grow yearly.
Process mining with BPM
Process mining and Business Process Management are your dream team. While mining techniques perform investigative work, BPM tools let you identify key performance indicators and define ideal processes for your business.
Think of them as blueprints for achieving better business outcomes. Combining both solutions means you know which direction to take, allowing mining tools to deliver seamless business process intelligence.
Process mining steps
So, now you know how process mining works, it’s time to reveal what it’s like in action. If you’re new to mining, getting used to the software can take time. Following these process mining steps, you’ll be able to get the most out of your investment.
1: Data Ingestion
Process mining tools rely on the data in your source systems like ERPs, CRMs, HRMs, and others in order to create visual process maps. To start quickly, event log data can be extracted from systems in a csv or excel format. The only data necessary to get started is a case ID (e.g. sales order ID), activity (e.g. order received), and timestamp for the activity.
As you become more advanced, you can leverage APIs to create live connections to these systems for ongoing process monitoring and continued assessments. You can also start to add new attributes (e.g. sales order value or sales team involved).
2: Discovery & Analysis
Once you have the data for your processes, you are presented with a visual process map showing the entire process and all of the different ways that it is executed. This can be used to validate hypotheses about areas of strength or weakness, as well as allow for more open discovery of process bottlenecks. You then can drill in deeper to understand the root causes of these bottlenecks.
For example, when examining your customer onboarding processes, the process map may reveal that a particular step such as a background check is taking too long and slowing down the entire process.
At this stage, you can also compare actual process execution against defined best practices to ensure that policies are being followed for productivity and risk mitigation.
3: Optimization
Process optimization is the most challenging step, as you’ll need to use the data-driven analysis to make changes to your processes, such as rebalancing teams or implementing automation.. Concentrating on critical processes first is best, as these often provide the largest business impact.
4: Monitoring
Investing in advanced process mining solutions means you can take advantage of constant monitoring without human intervention. The tool will issue alerts when issues are predicted to occur by analyzing an ongoing stream of data from your systems in real time as your processes are being executed. This ensures that problems are addressed in a timely fashion, or ideally before they even occur.
Examples of process mining in action
While process mining solutions are applicable to most processes across all business types and industries, here are how some industries are leveraging it to optimize processes, make quick decisions, and improve their bottom lines.
The healthcare industry
Healthcare providers know that patient experience is key to their success, but departmental silos, stringent data protection regulations, and a constantly improving technology landscape can slow down operations. Process Mining can help foster communication and streamlined processes, improving efficiency and mitigating risk.
Process Mining can:
- Improve patient care
- Support clinical workflow management
- Preserve resources
- Ensure compliance
- Reduce the risks of fraud
The finance industry
Businesses in the finance sector know that accuracy and efficiency are integral to their survival. As one of the most regulated industries, small process gaps can result in severe financial and reputational repercussions.
Process mining can help to:
- Ensure compliance
- Optimize financial product application processes
- Speed up customer onboarding
- Enhance security
- Facilitate decision-making
Consumer goods
Organizations specializing in manufacturing and providing consumer goods rely on efficiency across their operations. A minor disruption can impact the entire supply chain, resulting in poor customer satisfaction and retention rates.
Implementing process mining techniques will:
- Highlight bottlenecks in the supply chain
- Ensure customer satisfaction
- Improve quality control
- Increase customer loyalty rates
- Eliminate inefficiencies
Process Mining versus Process Intelligence
Process mining is a vital technology for businesses to understand what’s happening with their systems and operational processes, but it’s a subset of process intelligence. Process intelligence leverages these process insights to define and implement optimized future state processes
Imagine you’re testing a car. Process mining would assess the vehicle’s performance and highlight inefficiencies, such as how long it takes to go from 0 to 60mph. It would also point out the root cause for slowness such as the engine or transmission.
Process intelligence would help to design a better engine and test its hypothetical performance, and then actually build the engine.
Process mining versus task mining
Process mining and task mining operate similarly, but there are some key differences. However, both are central to understanding your company’s strengths and weaknesses to ensure more efficiency. Here are the main differences between process and task mining:
- Focus: Process mining identifies and analyzes entire business processes, while task mining monitors individual processes. Its primary purpose is to evaluate how employees handle tasks and identify room for improvement.
- Data Collection: Process mining gathers data from event logs, but task mining leverages desktop interaction data, including collaboration tools, emails, screenshots and keystrokes.
- Purpose: While process mining evaluates all workflows and systems, task mining identifies weaknesses for individual tasks. For example, if typing emails is consuming a lot of time, this may be a candidate to implement GenAI.
When’s the right time to implement process mining?
The great thing about process mining is that it can fit seamlessly into your existing systems, no matter what stage of process maturity you’re at. However, if any of the following initiatives apply to you, it’s an excellent time to explore process mining solutions:
✔ Streamlining operations across departments
✔ Identifying where your organization is losing money
✔ Embarking on a merger or expanding your business
✔ Boosting employee productivity
✔ Migrating systems
✔ Risk Management and conformance checking
Are you ready to simplify process mining?
Process mining is vital for companies that want to grow, scale, and save money. With competition levels in all industries continuing to rise, investing in advanced process mining solutions can secure your company’s place in the future.
If you’d like to explore how our process mining helps small, medium, and large-scale enterprises, please book a free demo with iGrafx today. Our experts would love to help you explore your existing processes and find proactive solutions.
FAQs
What are the three main process mining techniques?
The three main techniques are:
- Discovery: Discovers and analyzes processes, understanding how they work.
- Conformance Checking: Performance analysis of an existing process model with the actual process to maintain compliance and eliminate deviations.
- Enhancement: Combines and leverages insights from discovery and conformance checking to optimize processes.
Is process mining expensive?
Process mining is an investment, but the right process mining software will analyze complex processes and provide valuable insights.
The initial expense of software can save a lot of money and resources compared to manually and subjectively documenting processes, making it a wise decision if your goal is to streamline and automate processes.
If you’d like to experience our software, you can take advantage of a free trial, which lets you test it before making a decision.
Is process mining the future?
It’s changing how businesses approach operational efficiency and productivity today. Our data-driven society compels companies of all sizes to leverage real-time information in order to make intelligent decisions.
Identifying bottlenecks and inefficiencies can potentially level the playing field and allow smaller companies to compete. Most importantly, process mining tools can integrate with other technologies that are moving the needle, including BPM, simulation, automation, and AI.