Why Process Mining Is Important

A vivid explanation using the development of the city of Chicago

You might have heard about various tools under the term Process Mining which is apparently a key component for digital transformation. Whereas the term delights itself of huge interest in Europe, it seems that especially in the US it remains to date relatively unknown. I always tend to underscore the motivation of Process Mining using the example of the development of a city, like Chicago.

The city of Chicago was founded in the 1830s and consisted only of a few houses. Within a short period of a few years, the population inclined to 30,000 people. Due to its important location at the shore of Lake Michigan and the Chicago River in the center of the Midwest, the city became quickly one of the most important trade hubs in North America along historically important routes. Such an economic boom lead obviously to an increasing population at a fast pace and maxed in the 1950s when the city hit 3.6 million people. Such a quickly rising city faces issues. How do you manage traffic? How do you meet the demand for space? How do you maintain or improve people’s satisfaction? How do you build an education and healthcare infrastructure? Point solutions were made: building high-rises, an elevated train which runs above street level, a subway train, an underground expressway, underground pedestrian systems, schools, and hospitals. Even the direction of the river flow was inverted. Seeing how many changes, modifications, and adaptions the city underwent, would anyone consider Chicago perfectly effective and claim that all the major KPIs are met? Probably not. There are still a lot of problems that create friction. Did some of the decisions improve situations for the worse? Absolutely. Whereas some problems might have been solved, new ones appeared somewhere else as a direct consequence. Tearing everything down and starting all over from scratch with an ingenious concept to optimize the KPIs in the long-term seems sometimes as the easiest — unfortunately unrealistic — solution. A city that develops over time, which faces so many different problems of all kind, and which undergoes so many changes, is inherently very likely to end up somehow messy.

We can transfer this concept seamlessly to your organization. Did your business or product rise and underwent changes, adaptations, expansions, and modifications to meet deadlines, KPIs, and customer expectations? Naturally, internal and external structures, products, and processes are changing over time. Important is, however, how you make such decisions. Do you aim at long-term improvements or are you aiming for short-term point solutions risking that you end up in processes that are messy and full of friction? Process Mining starts right here with a toolset that assists in providing a holistic view of your assets from different angles and perspectives using data that you have collected over the past. It helps to figure out which screws of your processes need to be adjusted to meet your long-term targets without negatively impacting processes somewhere else. Process Mining even integrates with state-of-the-art Artificial Intelligence methodologies to go even further, as recent academic research studies demonstrate. Ultimately, you want to avoid that your organization ends up as a patchwork rug like a major city that naturally developed over time; and Process Mining is one straightforward way to go about it.

With this article, I am starting a content series focusing on Process Mining and how to apply Machine Learning to continuously unveil and realize value to support digital transformation journeys. Follow to stay informed.

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