How Has Process Mining Developed In 2023?

On October 17-18, 2023, SSON hosted the Process Mining & BPM Digital Summit. The summit aimed to demonstrate to attendees how to “do more with less” through process optimization.

The online event began with a panel discussion: “How Has Process Mining Evolved? New AI And ML Capabilities in Contemporary Process Mining.”  The session was well-received by attendees, with 251 live participants, resulting in a collaborative and insightful dialogue. Engaging with online audiences can be difficult, but the level of attendance and number of questions were incredible. This engagement shows that process mining is certainly a key target and core challenge for shared service leaders.

For this first session, SSON was joined by Ricardo Henriques and Timo Peters. Ricardo is the Transformation Leader at EDP. Timo is the Head of Process Insight and Value at Bayer AG.

Recent Evolution of Process Mining

Ricardo and Timo began the session discussing the recent evolution of process mining. Timo argued that in the last 5 years, the tool was receiving more visibility as people continue to understand its capabilities. He accredited this development to the significance of not only remedying a symptom of process inefficiency but identifying the root cause to reach true process maturity. Process mining can also be a crucial tool in identifying automation opportunities. As more and more shared service leaders become the drivers of digital transformation in their organisation, they are similarly seeking out process mining tools to assist in this task.

Process maturity appears as a priority within the industry as, according to the SSON R&A “Research Insight Report, End-to-End Process Integration and Optimization: the [Critical] Role of the Global Process Owner,” “only 29% of companies believe they are advanced or close to expert in terms of maturity…”

Continuing, Ricardo defined process mining as the simple ability to measure and observe. For Ricardo, the key value drivers of process mining can be difficult to understand when starting to work with the tool, but its time-efficiency is hugely beneficial.

The Future of Process Mining: Generative AI

Both Timo and Ricardo agreed that generative AI will likely play a role in the future of process mining, however noted that patience is a virtue. Although generative AI has the potential to be 'a gamechanger' in both speed and depth of insight, Timo emphasized not to “expect everything in the beginning."

Ricardo discussed similar potential, as the industry has reached “peak enthusiasm around generative AI.” However, like Timo, Ricardo asserted that we need more development. He continued by touching upon the issue of continued automation, as some steps within many processes need to be analysed by humans.

But Ricardo and Timo are hopeful that in the future, generative AI will be able to recommend the next best thing.

Later in the session, Ricardo discussed the future of process intelligence. EDP are currently working with digital accelerators such as, Chat Bots. He argues that process intelligence needs to be configured like a Digital Intelligence eco-system. Process mining analyses the structured data, whereas generative AI analyses the unstructured data, so the two combined could have powerful results for end-to-end digital transformation. Similarly, process intelligence (a solution which analyses multiple processes within your business and provides a digital process model of your operations), can also assist in accelerating your digital efforts. By creating a “digital twin” of your processes, process intelligence can provide insight into problem areas. Navigating the many tools now available and using them in the right way, will be the key to unlocking the value behind the process.

Process Mining and Change Management

A poll during the summit noted which processes attendees have already onboarded with process mining. The results were as follows: 37% procure-to-pay, 12% order-to-cash, 10% Supply Chain, 7% record-to-report, 2% HR and 31% other.

However, Timo offered a new potential application for process mining within management processes. In Bayer AG, Timo is using process mining to optimize change management, which he contests is already yielding results. Using process mining to facilitate change management is a new application of the tool. This could prove incredibly useful for the industry as, according to Gartner, "half of change initiatives fail, and only 34% are a clear success."

If you would like to learn more on process improvement and technology adoption, SSON are hosting an Intelligent Document Processing Digital Summit in early December, which can be found here. Alternatively, you can watch the entire session, “How Has Process Mining Evolved? New AI And ML Capabilities in Contemporary Process Mining”, on demand.