Process Mining for Business Users
Elevating Process to the Business vs. IT Conversation
While there are plenty of challenges to collecting and curating data, ultimately process mining is a known commodity from a technical perspective. Each system is unique and requires some amount of massaging of data, but it’s a straightforward process that has been done a thousand times at this point. Many vendors have already created base-level analysis/data models which can quickly turn new data sources into areas of insight.
What is challenging and somewhat new; is how we prepare our business end-users to consume this data. We’re asking people, who have previously been very siloed to look at their processes but also, the process which comes before and after. We’ve seen numerous instances where business SMEs are very knowledgeable of “their piece” of the process with a limited understanding of how it “fits” within the full end-to-end flow. This is challenging if we want to completely reimage our processes and ensure our operations are both effective and efficient in how work is being completed
Bringing people into process mining is a change management activity and if done properly can have immense organizational benefits. However to bring people on board, you need to educate them on the current process, what different KPIs and metrics mean, and ultimately what broader business goals are being impacted by their individual performance. This problem is not unique to process mining, but something being seen with any new major technology (AI, RPA, ML, NLP). I would recommend reading HBR’s work on analytics translators where a dedicated group is focused on added context and explaining metrics to those less technically inclined.
For process mining specifically, I do believe there is a need for analytics translators - but it goes beyond that. Most organizations are geared around separate businesses and IT teams focused on their piece of the process. This inevitably leads to somewhat adversarial relationships with each party focused on their organizational goals at the expense of process excellence as a holistic company. IT hitting targets to hit their metrics instead of adapting to help sales meet/achieve/surpass theirs. Most of our customers don’t care how the work is done, only that it is and meets expectations.
Instead of treating this problem as a single choice where one side takes action, instead, I propose we elevate the process back into the overall equation. Focusing on the process creates options and allows for increased flexibility in meeting organizational objectives.
Oftentimes, new regulations and requirements are identified which will turn into a system request to build this new capability. Instead of moving directly to a system change request, we should let process and organizational goals be our guide.
Process mine the existing process to understand how business and IT systems are currently working.
Compare existing processes and future state processes to understand where those updates need to occur.
Evaluate those required updates and identify the best solution forward.
Changing a business process with no system change
Implement RPA or other advanced capabilities to enhance the process
Put in a change request to update the system
There is no right answer, each request will be slightly different however, if we follow our process and key objectives we, will be making decisions on what’s best for a holistic enterprise. With every system change, there is a much larger cost to build, maintain and support this change request. Likewise, there is an equally impactful opportunity to reduce non-value activities in most business processes. We cannot improve both of these constraints without a dedicated focus on process excellence.