How to Use Process Mining to Uncover Automation Opportunities

Process Mining, also known as process intelligence or process discovery, will find its place in the sun over the next year. Check out my 2022 Intelligent Automation Prediction TikTok.

• Companies like SAP and UiPath are acquiring and developing functionality to match industry leaders like ABBYY Software.
• Process Mining unlocks powerful insights into improving your processes. And it’s a great tool to help you make the right improvements to the correct part of your process.
• Process Mining captures information from log files within your existing solutions. Then, it provides detailed, data-driven insights into how processes perform which allows you to better understand what is truly happening in each process, including who did it, how long it takes, and how it departs from the average.

Intelligent Automation - Eliminate Bias in Your Processes

Wayne Butterfield, Global Head of Intelligent Automation Solutions at ISG Automation, joined us to share how process intelligence can illuminate bias in the discovery process. He also reveals how he has seen it substantially impact his customers.

Eliminate Bias in Your Processes & Findings

How we think we complete our work is often different from the reality. Moving beyond the how a process is done, often the when and how frequently can also be skewed by our perception.

Earlier today, someone asked me how much time I allocate to a specific task each week, and I struggled to answer the question. Imagine how many variations in estimation you would receive from a team of 20 guessing how long a task takes or how often they complete a function.

Using data, we can uncover the undeniable truth regarding the who, what, where, when, and how often of process-driven questions.

A quick disclaimer, data cannot do it all.

Process Mining cannot answer questions like:

• Why does a process happen?
• What happens outside of a system?
• Why has the team developed a workaround?
• What is the desired outcomes?

In these cases, we can combine process mining with traditional consulting. This combination will help you see all facets of your process and design a winning future state process!

Examples of Process Intelligence Customer Success

1. 🛄Process Mining in Claims Processing 

Using only a traditional discovery process, a customer of Wayne’s thought they had automated every step they could in their complex claims process. After a closer review of their results, they found they recognized only 20% automation, despite anticipating a value closer to 70%.

The customer then used process mining to analyze the data related to their claims process. In doing so, they realized that there were 2,000 different variations of a claim running through their system and process. Before using process mining, their team had identified only ten variations.

Not every one of those variations had high enough volume to be managed with automation. However, the link between what they had identified and what the data brought forward as automation candidates were substantial.

2. 💵 Task Mining in Financial Services 

One Financial Services client used Task Mining to uncover process bias impacting their automation efforts. Employees indicated that a given task was completed within two days of month-end, and that it only took them two days to complete it.

What the data showed was different. The reality was they started the process within two days of month’s end, but the process took five times as long as the employees indicated. Were the employees lying? Not intentionally, but technology tells us the reality when our human recognition is inaccurate.

3. 📧 Conversation Mining for Enhanced Efficiency in Email Communications 

Another client used conversation mining to analyze 150,000 emails. This technology was able to identify insights like:

• Approximately 60 percent of people who were CCed on emails never took any action.
• Only 25 percent of all emails received were forwarded to the appropriate endpoint.

When we can recognize these types of redundancies and change our behavior, we can remove manual work like email deletion and forwarding while simplifying processes.

Learn More About Process Intelligence

Want to learn more about how you can use Process Intelligence to change how you work? The Naviant team is always here to help. We would welcome the opportunity to talk with you about your needs and how we can help you solve your specific problems. If you’re ready to learn what process intelligence can do for your organization, contact us to start the conversation.

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