If you’re like other BizOps pros we’ve talked with, your day is filled with constant demands for information, questions that lead to an endless loop of more questions and a disturbing whiff of a hamster wheel.
Lots of different technologies (not to mention vendors) promise real-world insight from your data to improve your business processes. But they use a bewildering array of terms more-or-less interchangeably. Is business intelligence the same as business process optimisation? Is data mining the same as predictive analytics? Which one is best for BizOps?
Let’s take a look at an overview of business process mining and under which circumstances you need process mining for your business operations.
Process mining is related to data mining — but it goes a step beyond. Process mining doesn’t just comb through large, static datasets looking for patterns. Process mining techniques are used to analyse dynamic business event data and operational business processes.
In short, process mining provides a real-world view of what is actually happening in your business.
Process mining can be used to examine three major types of key performance indicators (KPIs):
• Time KPIs: How long does it take to complete a particular process?
• Cost KPIs: How much does it cost to complete a particular process?
• Quality KPIs: Does the outcome of this process meet established criteria?
You Have Too Many Systems in Place
Process mining systems are designed with exactly this challenge in mind. It is now possible to dismantle the silos that separate different types of data and correlate it all into one dataset. With tools that can automatically aggregate different types of data, decision-makers can see that. For instance, a big sales order got stuck in finance approval, which would be much harder to detect by looking at sales and finance data alone.
Your Systems Too Big to Scale
A good process mining solution can handle huge amounts of data without a hiccup, and is built to scale as needs grow. First, as mentioned above, they automate the data cleansing and preparation, which speeds things up and makes it easier for the user. And as the field continues to evolve, process mining solutions are increasingly able to analyse ever-larger datasets.
You Don’t Have Enough Help To Process Your Data
There’s a good chance your job has changed a lot since you started (even if you’ve been at your job for a year). You may find yourself spending long hours manipulating data instead of using it.
Process mining solutions are designed for you to use on your own, without specialised data skills or help. In short, process mining is your best hope to free yourself from manually trudging through the data so that you can actually make an impact on your business.
You Don’t Have The Right Tools
We’re guessing you’ve probably spent a lot of time trying to fit data into a spreadsheet and build formulas to make sense of it. You may have even (reluctantly) become the office Excel expert. The point is not just to surface the data, but to use it to drive decisions. Process mining solutions are designed with that goal in mind.
You Need Flexible Reporting
You need a reporting approach that lets you ask and answer multiple questions without having to pull a pivot table out of your hat. Process mining gives you flexible reporting, lets you create easily shared (and understood) visualisations and dashboards and customise them no matter how many questions your boss asks.
In this FREE ebook you can learn in detail