The day-to-day tasks we perform as part of our work may seem small or trivial, but they in fact work to form part of the larger business process which are the foundation of any successful business.
These processes range across all areas of a business but examples could include HR processes like onboarding a new employee, or a member of the finance team paying an invoice. These business processes however define what should be done within a business and how it should be done.
The business leadership team will have a picture of the perfect flow of these processes, with an idea of the personnel and actions that should occur at each step. Over time however people can become complacent, inefficacies can creep in and these processes have suddenly deviated from the perfect flow. The more the process deviates, the larger impact it can have on a business, with delays, employee inefficient and a loss of revenue often some of the side effects a business will experience.
Process Mining allows businesses to take a microscope to these processes and see in detail what is happening at each stage. By analysing the event logs or digital footprints left through a process, we can build a visualisation of how that process works. Using this visualisation businesses can then clearly see where delays or diversions could be occurring and rebuild their ideal process flow.
How to extract value from process mining
The true value of Process Mining is the ability to see through the noise of a business process and completely dissect it, seeing in detail what parts are working, what doesn’t and what needs to be trimmed. By truly finding the weaknesses in their business processes, they can discover low-risk, high rewards enhancements to make them more adaptable and competitive within the market.
Those looking to extract the true value of process mining should consider these areas.
Business Intelligence
By diving into the data generated through process mining, organisations can suggest enhancements to help all business stakeholders and employees drive towards a common goal. Organisations can also make decisions faster, confident in the path presented to them by analysing the data.
Many organisations are failing to scale correctly and successfully due to not having a complete picture of who the processes within their organisation are truly running. Without this clear picture many are investing in the incorrect areas or processes, leading to a waste of investment and long-term damage to the organisation and its development plans. Organisations that have invested in Process Mining are able to scale correctly as they have a clear overview of the processes that need to expand in order to allow the organisation as a whole to grow. They are also able to gain a competitive edge in the market buy speeding up the process of expanding by knowing exactly where to invest.
Identifying Bottlenecks
Bottlenecks within a business process can prove disastrous. Having too many actions leading to a singular point can lead to delays, overreliance or employee overload. With process mining businesses can detect bottlenecks quickly but they can also backtrack to look at the root cause of the bottleneck and work quickly to improve efficiency before more delays or overloads occur.
Surfacing Process Deviations
While a business might know how it expects a process to play out, often workers will deviate from the ideal workflow, causing it to come off track. These deviations can often cause delays and lead to tasks taking longer than needed. Process Mining is invaluable for not showing an ideal process but to show the actual process, including these deviations, allowing businesses to see how a process actually plays out.
Prep for Automation
Finally one of the key values of process mining is that by having a detailed idea of how a process is working or how we would ideally like it to work, means that we can start to think about how automation can be applied within these processes. By deploying automation businesses can save employees time by removing manual, repetitive tasks and allow them to focus on more cost-effective, complex tasks. Automation can also save the organisation money by removing the potential for human error and the associated costs.
By successfully deploying Process Mining businesses can be confident of gaining valuable insights into the processes that make up their organisation and start to formulate and action a plan to achieve key optimisation.
ABP Consultancy are specialised in developing tailored and “fit for purpose” automation solutions. With our combined years of experience in Process Mining we are providing value to clients with processes that hit tangible performance metrics, continuously improve and offer well rounded customer or employee experiences.
If you want to now more about this topic or if you are are ready to start optimising your business processes, get in touch with ABP Consultancy.
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