Why You Need Process Mining for Digital Transformation

C-Suite executives are under increasing pressure to deliver improved results in an ever-evolving business landscape. Uncertainty in global markets is forcing businesses to turn inward to find new revenue, strip out costs, and compete on efficiency rather than throw money at new expansive projects. Fortunately, the proliferation of new digital tools and applications has opened up a world of possibilities for leaders to find buried revenue, trim the fat, and create much leaner, more efficient businesses.

The challenge though, as always, is knowing where to deploy these new digital technologies. Which processes are ready for transformation? Which could be automated? And which projects are going to return the most value to the business?

The business need for digital transformation

We have never lived in a more competitive business world and it has never been easier for your customers to find a competitor. It means that across every transaction and interaction with your customers, the quality of that engagement is being assessed. It is no longer good enough to have the best product on the market. If others can do things faster and are easier to do business with, you have a problem.

It also means your processes are rapidly becoming a key differentiator. Whether it’s your customer order processing, invoicing, quality assurance or risk management, your workflows have never been more important. The speed and efficiency of these workflows will determine whether you secure new business and maintain it once you win it.

In order to remove unnecessary steps and automate for optimum efficiency, you must embrace digital transformation. You need to find ways to break down information silos and allow the free flow of information. Digital tools offer a solution to this problem. They also help you engage your workforce, empowering them to do their best work while freeing them from the monotonous and repetitive tasks that plague their overall productivity.

Using process mining as the keystone of your digital transformation

Process mining technology is the perfect platform to help you discover, monitor, and improve your processes. Analyzing event logs and other available data to build up a graphic representation of your workflows, it helps you immediately find problems, locate process bottlenecks, highlight areas where work is duplicated, and subsequently where improvements need to be made to your models.

The application of process mining offers you deep insight into the workings of your business, giving you visibility into what is really happening, not what you think is happening.

Here are just some of the many capabilities of process mining technology:

• Monitoring of key performance indicators in real time

• Predictive analysis and scenario testing

• Visualization of how processes contribute to business outcomes

• Standardization of processes

Now, when approaching your digital transformation initiatives, you have a powerful ally giving you the vital information you need to make informed decisions. You can run through scenarios of how changing the process will impact your business. You can see exactly what returns to expect from your investments. You can be advised of how and where to make improvements to your existing processes automatically.

Process mining should be your foundation technology upon which to base all future investment and transformation projects.

Building the business case for transformation with process mining

In volatile times, securing budget for investment and demonstrating value in disruption is no small feat. You need total transparency and a business case built on truth, not just projections and estimates. Mapping out clear-cut scenarios that factually depict the returns to be delivered to the business is hard, but process mining technology makes it easier.

Building your technology roadmap and taking the business from visibility to transformation is simplified by process mining. End-to-end visibility of how information and work flows through your business makes it easy to pinpoint where and how to make necessary improvements to uncover new margin and revenue potential. Building a business case based on this level of detail is far easier, and therefore leading digital transformation projects is much simpler.

For more information on process mining technology, download our new ebook.

Southard Jones

VP, Product Marketing (former)

Southard Jones is the former VP, Product Marketing for Celonis. Prior to Celonis, Southard held various executive product and marketing roles at enterprise software companies in the Business Intelligence, Analytics, and Data Science market, including Domino Data Lab, Birst, Right 90, and Siebel Analytics.