When reality is not what you planned for: how Process Mining works
Have you ever ignored the recommended routes on Waze or Google Maps because you know a shortcut that will get you home faster?
Suppose Waze gives you the most optimal route to reach your destination. However, you think you have enough information to know that you can save time by taking the route you already know, so you choose a different route than the one you planned and … end up being late for your appointment.
Well, the same is true for workflow design in companies. People believe they have sufficient information to identify the best route to achieve their objectives.
Process Mining is a methodology that uses technology to track the entire history of your process flows and provides a team of specialists with the necessary information to identify the best alternative and the necessary controls to execute a business process in the most efficient way.
For example, the Company has planned the simplest purchasing process for a customer, the shipping mechanism for a product that could reduce labor time or the production line that guarantees more profit. But are they really running the most efficient solutions? How do you know? What controls do they require? can you automate part of the process?
What you think you know versus the facts
These people have designed, step by step, the path that they believe will make a given process more efficient. But, just as you decided to ignore Waze’s recommendations because you knew a road that worked better for you, the reality may be different than planned.
How to correctly analyze the information that reality is giving you? This is where Process Mining becomes relevant, because it is not enough to have the data if you cannot analyze them in depth and put them at the strategic service of the organization.
This technology gives you the ability to analyze, in real time, executable business processes or workflows. In this way, you will have information associated with data usage, resource utilization and performance-related statistics, in order to generate alerts on bottlenecks or hot spots that you would not otherwise be able to identify.
Recalculating route
You may find that the next time you use Waze, the app will recommend taking the shortcut you chose on your previous trip, based on how you’ve done on your recent rides.
In the same way, process mining will help you to build a map in which you can identify inefficiencies in operations, which will allow you to optimize processes. Then, as if you were guiding someone back home, you will have to recalculate the route to make it what the user expects.
This path begins with the discovery of the actual process and its variations, continues with the identification of rework or inefficient resources, and progresses to the construction of an analysis that will provide you with the necessary tools to generate an improvement action plan and even identify activities with potential for automation.
With the information available, it is time to take into account new perspectives, evaluate, adjust and rethink solutions to increase productivity, optimize the business, accelerate performance and, ultimately, stay one step ahead of your competition.
