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Process Mining helping to resolve the generational challenge of process inefficiencies
Process Mining helping to resolve the generational challenge of process inefficiencies

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Hidden process inefficiencies are the silent killer of operational performance. Companies around the globe have placed their trust in Global Capability Centers (GCCs) to optimize processes such as procurement, payment, shipment and collection. However, complex technical legacies, pressure to drive process transformation and automation pose continuous challenges.

Hannes Apitzsch, CEO Global Business Services Siemens AG, noted in the book “Process Mining in Action”: “... in organizations with a huge variety of processes, there is a great deal of complexity which forces them to find new and innovative ways to handle these complications and gain more transparency. This is the reason why Siemens started to exploit and thus become an early adopter of a technology that takes an innovative path in simplifying complexity: Process Mining. It essentially creates transparency on business processes and improvement measures can be derived from it.”

Process Mining - how it works

Process Mining allows the visualization of actual process flows based on event logs. It provides insights into unique process flows as well as millions of different processes, allowing a holistic understanding of even the most complex business processes. As an example, Siemens was able to achieve full transparency for the Order-to-Cash process —  from incoming orders to payment receipt —  for more than 30 millions items orders per year, with more than 900,000 different process variants. For Purchase-to-Pay — from sending purchase orders to goods receipt and paying invoices — Siemens was able to achieve insights on millions of transactions with several hundred thousand suppliers.

These insights into actual process flows facilitate a giant leap forward. However, without action, insight is useless. Business value for GCCs is not so much achieved with insights, but with targeted actions to improve process efficiency. 

From Process Mining to intelligent process execution management

Intelligent execution management systems (EMS) leverage these insights, identify process inefficiencies and provide the right information to operational users to execute smart actions. For example, understanding the actual process status allows users to identify deviations from the standard process as well as process inefficiencies such as late payments, late shipments or payment blocks.

Cardinal Health — a leading healthcare company in North America — was able to achieve transparency on more than 1.5 million customer orders per day, allowing them to save millions of dollars by identifying and optimizing delinquent invoice recovery. Nokia — a European technology leader — has taken action on duplicate payments and payment term mismatches, leading to millions of euros in savings.

What makes an Execution Management System unique

The execution management system with the underlying Process Mining engine differs significantly from traditional data analytics techniques or Robotic Process Automation (RPA). While the latter rely on human intelligence to identify process inefficiencies or single automation opportunities, Process Mining provides a holistic view of the actual processes and enables the user to take targeted actions in the execution layer. An intelligent process execution platform senses process inefficiencies and supports users in their daily work. Proactive action flows can even alert users about next-best actions, thus saving valuable time for operational GCC users.

While Process Mining was invented at the end of last millennium and has been used for more than a decade in large multinational companies, the intelligent execution management layer has only become possible in recent years with smart technologies such as artificial intelligence and machine learning. These technologies allow sensing process inefficiencies in the underlying transactional systems, even across different systems and most complex processes. Identifying process anomalies, deviations from process standards and root causes for inefficiencies are achieved in one single platform and with intuitive user interfaces, thus taking GCCs to another level of process efficiency.

Author: Dr. Lars Reinkemeyer (Celonis Customer Transformation Advisor; Editor of the Book “Process Mining in Action”)


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Celonis is the global leader in execution management. The Celonis Execution Management System provides companies a modern way to run their business processes entirely on data and intelligence. We pioneered the process mining category 10 years ago when we first developed the ability to automatically X-ray processes and find inefficiencies.

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