What is task mining?

Task mining software

Used alongside process mining, task mining gives you a complete view of how your business processes actually run — including all the steps that happen outside of major systems, like checking emails or consulting spreadsheets.

Process mining vs task mining

When it comes to understanding the inherent workings of an enterprise, there are two major sources of data to look at: 

• Business data

• User interaction data

Process mining extracts business data. This is the data that lies in your transactional systems as time-stamped event logs. These reveal every step — and every deviation — that makes up a business process, based on what happened and when. Process Mining captures this data in real time, such as when a Purchase Order was created, approved, fulfilled, dispatched, and so on. It also uncovers opportunities to get more value out of your processes, based on these event logs. It’s like a moving, breathing X-ray of your business.

Task mining extracts user interaction data. This is everything your people do in between those steps on their desktops. Things like filling in the PO, checking the amounts are correct in tools such as Excel, matching receipts to invoices in Adobe, or spending ten minutes on LinkedIn to research a prospect. Task mining collects and analyzes this data, such as clicks taken, copy/paste, time spent per application and other details, to reveal how teams execute work and find ways to improve employee experience and productivity.

Identify business opportunities with Celonis Task Mining

This is how Celonis Task Mining works:

Celonis Task Mining software captures user interaction data such as clicks, copy/pastes, time spent per application using the Celonis Task Mining Client. It then integrates this click and scroll-level data into a Celonis Process Data Model. This data is then processed by the Celonis Process Data Engine which enables teams to understand their application usage and user behaviour.

1. Capture user interaction data

Collect clicks, copy/pastes, time spent per application, and more — complete with time-stamps and screenshots.

2. Integrate the data

Celonis Task Mining then integrates this data into a Celonis Process Data Model, whilst continually capturing new insights with automatic data loads.

3. Analyze the data

Finally, processed by the Celonis Process Data Engine, Task Mining enables you to understand application usage and user behavior across applications and where improvement opportunities exist across your workforce.

How task mining boosts business performance

Business data is messy. All those different ERP systems, weird data formats and informational black holes can make getting an accurate, moving picture of what your business processes look like difficult.

But when it comes to sheer complexity, business data has absolutely nothing on user interaction data — and the many ways that people, in their infinite variety, choose to interact with software.

The beauty of task mining is finding the signal through the noise — the actions that really make a difference to your business performance.

And by case-matching the actions to the business process, you can ultimately track effectiveness against the outcomes that really matter.

That’s what Celonis Task Mining does — and we’re the only ones who do it.

There are several benefits to task mining. It can be hugely beneficial to any enterprise, as it lets you:

• Identify opportunities in how users execute work outside of your transactional systems

• Measure and optimize your workforce experience and productivity

• Decrease amount of time spent on non-value adding activities

• Discover team training needs and application adoption

• Improve employee experience

The question therefore isn’t whether to choose between process mining or task mining — it’s about the two working together, side by side, for transformation. The task mining use cases, much like the process mining use cases, are infinite. Both technologies can be applied to any process — from Procurement to Accounts Payable, Order Management to Accounts Receivable, and more.

Moreover, task mining is safe, secure, and can be configured according to individual privacy obligations. Advanced privacy features ensure that only relevant user interaction data is captured, sensitive data is hidden, and only approved individuals can view this information. Please check out the Task Mining Data Protection by Design whitepaper for more information.