This year’s Process Mining Camp on 13 & 14 June is made for experts. But that does not mean that those of you who are new to process mining should not attend.

In fact, as beginners we learn best when we see, first-hand, more advanced practitioners at work. We all learn the fastest by observing experts at the top of their game. Nevertheless, it can be useful for you to have a solid grip on the basics, so that you are better able to follow the discussions.

This is why, this year, we offer an optional boot camp training just before camp for those of you who are new to process mining. When you sign up for camp, choose the Process Mining Camp + Boot Camp ticket (the second ticket on the list) to reserve your seat for this pre-training.

The boot camp is going to cover a big part of the lessons from our regular trainings. In this crash course, we will teach you the most important process mining concepts. By immediately immersing yourself in the real-life use cases at camp, you will solidify your understanding and bring it to life. The boot camp also gets you ready to start practicing, and to participate in the workshops on the second day of camp.

Boot Camp program

The boot camp consists of two sessions. The first session takes place online one week before camp, on 6 June. The precise time will be determined based on the availability and the time zones of the participants. Afterward, you will get a homework exercise to work on between the first and the second session. Then, on Thursday morning, 13 June, just before camp starts, the second session takes place in person at the campsite.

You will learn:

• Introduction and positioning: We will keep the introduction short and focus on how process mining fits into existing process improvement methodologies. We will also look at how process mining differs from other methods and what it is not, so you can clearly place it in your head.

• Guided hands-on session: Then, we will dive into the first hands-on session. Together, we will go through a typical process mining scenario, step by step. You will learn how to import data and perform your first process mining analysis.

• Simplification strategies for complex processes: One of the first challenges you will encounter in your process mining projects is that the discovered process maps can become very complicated. Based on concrete examples, you will learn ten strategies for dealing with this complexity.

• Hands-on exercises: You will start practicing with two exercises, where you will work on real data sets by yourself. We will discuss your solutions in the group and talk about the different use cases for process mining.

During the boot camp, you will learn everything to become prepared for camp, even if you are still a greenhorn. With this foundation, you will be able to step over some of the more obvious challenges, so that you can have a deeper discussion and challenge others.

We recommend the boot camp to newcomers as it allows you to focus more on what is relevant for you instead of just listening in. You will have a broader perspective and more effectively place what you hear at camp in the right context.

You will also receive a Disco training license for 60 days, so that you can hit the ground running at the boot camp and continue to learn at your own pace.

Furthermore, you will join a follow-up meeting online with the same training group after 1-2 months to discuss the first results. Afterwards, we stay in contact and keep supporting you on your process mining journey.

The only catch is that we have a very limited number of seats available for the boot camp. → Sign up now, and make sure you don’t miss this opportunity!

Certificate of attendance

Both boot campers and regular campers will receive a certificate of attendance to document their education activities.

We have also created an overview of the educational and training components at this year’s camp, to help you better plan and justify attending camp. Do you still need to request permission to come to camp this year? Send us an email at camp@fluxicon.com, and we will send you some information on how you can fit process mining camp into your own training program and budget.

Sign up for a process mining practice that you can get nowhere else. If you buy your ticket before midnight this Friday, 19 April, you help us plan, and you can still benefit from the morning person rate before prices go up.

We can’t wait to see you all at camp!

In the next Process Mining Café this Wednesday, we have invited Miguel Gómez from PROA in Mexico. PROA is a healthcare services provider that collects samples and takes images to produce medical interpretations that help people make decisions related to their medical treatments.

Miguel has done several process mining projects that have had a big impact at the company. In the café, we will talk about these projects in more detail. One of his challenges was that after the improvement he was asked to quantify the benefits. Together, we will discuss how to make a business case for process mining.

What has been your experience with business cases for process mining? Join us this Wednesday, 17 April, at 15:00 CEST, and let us know! (Check your timezone here). As always, no registration is required. Simply point your browser to fluxicon.com/cafe when it is time. You can watch the café and join the discussion while we are on the air, right there on the café website.

Sign up for the café mailing list here to receive a reminder one hour before the session starts.

Tune in live for Process Mining Café by visiting fluxicon.com/cafe on Wednesday, 17 April 2024, at 15:00 CEST! Add the time to your calendar if you don’t want to miss it.

Most organizations have complex processes that are hard to manage and control. Moving out of a fire-fighting mode and stepping back to understand the existing business processes is the necessary starting point for process improvement.

A lot of data is available in IT systems (e.g., CRM, ERP, Workflow, PDM, ITSM, homemade or legacy systems, data warehouses, or even Excel) that contain detailed information about which activities are performed, when, and by whom. What is needed are quick methods to gain insight in this data to understand the underlying processes and take actions.

Process mining can be used to quickly and objectively get a complete picture of a process by automatically analyzing the IT data and visualizing the real process flows that took place.

Many of you already know this and are convinced about the benefits of process mining. But you may still be asked to make a business case before you can start. So, how exactly can you quantify the added value of process mining?

You will need to look at the precise use case and business context in which you want to apply process mining. This article provides several example scenarios in which process mining helps internal process improvement departments. Many of these advantages also apply to other process mining use cases, such as auditing. At the end of the article, we provide you with an ROI template that you can use as a starting point for your own process mining business case.

1. Challenges for Process Improvement departments

A Lean Six Sigma or Process Improvement department, a Change Management team, a Process Excellence function, or a Process Performance or BPM group employs process experts and internal consultants who help different departments in the organization to re-structure and optimize their business processes. In cooperation with the process owners, these teams deliver process improvements that aim to provide long-lasting cost savings and increased revenue for the company.

The starting point for any process improvement project is the so-called ‘As-is’ process analysis, in which the current state and all the deficiencies of the process are mapped out, and improvement opportunities are identified. The traditional way of process discovery is carried out manually through workshops and interviews.

The advantages of process mining are the objective and quick diagnosis of process issues. If you use a traditional method of manual process discovery, you typically have the following problems:

1. It takes lots of time for the people who do the interviews and process mapping. This is about the time that is spent by the internal consultants. If they could do their work faster, they could do more projects and therefore deliver more value for their organization.

2. It binds people (interviewees) from productive work into discussions about how things are currently done just to understand the ‘as-is’ process. This is about the time other people (outside the process improvement department) must spend on ‘As-is’ process discovery. For example, suppose there is a one-week workshop with one consultant and ten employees from the operations department. In that case, this costs the company the consultant’s time plus 50 FTE days for the participating operations manager and other stakeholders.

3. The results are subjective, based on what people think about the processes, not necessarily on how the processes really are. If these subjective insights are used as the basis for the improvement project, there is the risk that the applied improvement measures will not be effective (because they do not address the real problems).

4. Different opinions may not be resolved (political deadlock). In situations where the participating people cannot agree on a unified view of the ‘As-is’ process and its problems, the risk is high that the project will fail, and no process improvement will be carried out at all.

5. You get only a sample view, not the complete picture. The manual picture will never be complete if you ask people to spell out the process. Like with the risk of a subjective bias, an incomplete picture carries the risk of missing important parts in the process analysis and therefore the risk of implementing the wrong (ineffective or even counterproductive) improvement measures.

6. Manual tracking and measurement is costly and biased and provides only sample data. This is about the practice of measuring process steps with a stopwatch to collect objective evidence: (1) Doing this manual work is very time-consuming, (2) People who are observed behave differently than normally, and (3) Only a limited sample can be obtained (e.g., tracing 30 cases over a few weeks).

7. Because the cost of process diagnosis and information collection is so high, it cannot be easily repeated. Therefore, the impact of process improvements is often hard to estimate (“Did we really achieve what we wanted to achieve?”). Without a way to measure the effect of the improvement initiative, the actual value that the project delivered to the organization cannot be measured. There is also the risk that people fall back into old behavioral patterns after some time.

In the next section, we review how process mining can help to address these seven challenges.

2. Benefits of using process mining in process improvement projects

Process mining significantly lowers the cost of understanding the current process by bypassing interviews and extracting the necessary information out of the existing data from the IT systems. This way, you can focus your discussions on ‘why’ the processes are performed the way they are. Furthermore, iterative improvements with continuous assessment of the impact of changes become possible because you can repeat the analysis at any point in time at little cost.

The benefits of process mining with respect to the challenges discussed in the previous section are described in the following table:

3. Ingredients of your business case

While the benefits of process mining are often obvious and it is clear that using process mining will “pay for itself,” you will most likely find yourself in the position of having to justify the investment. How do you do that? You create a business case for your management to approve the purchase.

Ultimately, each business case is unique, but you can follow a number of guidelines to put it together. In this section, we give you a starting point for how you can create a business case for your own process mining projects (see also the ROI template in the next section).

First, you can assemble the investments that you need to make. Think of the following components for a process mining project:

• Software license cost - The use of the process mining software

• Training cost - Educating the people who will use process mining about the approach and the software

• Employee cost - Time investment of the people involved in the project (analysts but also additional stakeholders)

• Data extraction cost - You may need to pay the IT department (or your external IT provider) to extract or transfer the data

• Professional services - If you are getting help from an external consultancy to help you with the project, their services need to be incorporated as well

To quantify the return, you can think in two dimensions:

1. Saving costs: Where will you reduce your current expenses?

   There are two categories of cost savings that you can consider for process mining projects:

   1.1. Cost savings through more efficient As-Is Process Analysis

   Revisit the section ‘Benefits of using process mining in process improvement projects’ above to think through this category of cost savings. Doing at least one small pilot project in your organization (that you can compare with past projects that you had done in “the old way”) will help you get some hard numbers you can use for your business case.

   For example:

   • Time reduction for process analyst: How much faster was the process discovery for the analyst? How much effort did it take before to understand the current processes and collect and analyze data manually?

   • Less time for subject matter experts in the As-Is workshops: How much time have you saved for these stakeholders in the workshops by focusing on the ‘Why’ rather than the ‘What’?

   • Avoided risk of focusing improvement activities in the wrong area: It is easy to waste process improvement resources by focusing on the wrong places or processes. If you have seen project failures in the past, can you quantify their loss in proportion to the risk and include this component in your business case?

   1.2. Expected cost savings through the process improvements themselves

   If you make your business case for the overall process improvement project (not just the use of process mining in your current process improvement activities), include the potential cost savings from the improved processes. This is usually difficult to quantify beforehand because you do not yet know how much improvement potential you will find.

   Also, here, it can help to first do a quick scan of your process to get some hard numbers, if possible. Alternatively, you may be able to draw upon your experience from past process improvement projects or your domain expertise about the process and the potential value of improving it just a little bit (especially for high-volume or high-value processes, small improvements can have a big impact).

   The expected savings will then be quantified in a unit that makes sense for your particular process.

   For example:

   • Fewer steps: How many steps are needed to complete one case in your process? Your process mining analysis can often determine an ideal range of steps. Cases that take more steps indicate rework. Your improvement project will focus on finding the root causes and avoiding this rework in the future.

     You can then determine the improvement potential based on the process’s volume. For example, for the incident management process at a bank, the cost of one step was estimated to be around 20 Euros. If you can save 200,000 steps within one year, this cost reduction is 4 million Euros.

   • Reducing total activity time: In processes where the time of activities incurs significant costs, reducing their duration can amount to cost savings. For example, in call centers, one minute of an agent being on the phone with a customer is often quantified with 1 Euro in costs.

   • Avoided penalties: In some processes, missing specified Service Level Agreements (SLAs), for example for how fast the service is delivered, leads to penalties that need to be paid. If improving the process leads to a speed-up that helps to meet the contract SLA for more cases, then these penalty payments can be reduced.

   • Improved quality: If poor quality of the delivered product or service leads to the rejection by the customer, then all the steps that were taken to deliver this service or product were essentially wasted. Clear processes with quality assurance measures on the way, and the adherence to these process guidelines (i.e., compliant processes), can ensure that services are delivered more consistently. If your process mining analysis helps to reduce the variation in the process and improves compliance, then the reduced rejection rates can be quantified in terms of less waste (i.e., cost savings).

   • Fewer people: If, by improving the process’s efficiency, fewer people can handle the same amount of work, then their salaries can be used to quantify the cost savings.

2. Increasing revenue: What will you gain that you did not have before?

   If you can tie your process improvements to additional revenue, your business case should state these expected gains and put them in perspective with the investment.

   For example:

   • More orders processed: In a telecom process, almost half of the customer orders were lost because the ordering process did not work well. Solving these process problems increases the revenue in the value of these otherwise lost orders.

   • Happier customers leading to more business: In customer service processes, often the focus is not so much on saving costs but on making the customers happy and, therefore, keeping them as a customer and having them recommend the company to their friends and colleagues. Their process improvement initiatives target the increase of customer satisfaction measures, such as the Net Promotor Score (NPS), which are then used as a proxy to estimate the resulting increase in revenue.

   • More payments: In processes that deliver services to their customers based on contract SLAs, it can be the case that the customer only pays for the service if it was delivered on time. If the process efficiency can be improved in such a way that more cases meet the SLA, then this leads to an increase in revenue.

   • Sustaining improvements: One of the challenges discussed above was that traditional process improvement projects have trouble maintaining the effects of their process improvements over time. If people slide back into old patterns, then the gains from these process improvement initiatives are lost. Process mining can help to verify and monitor the effectiveness of past process improvements to sustain the improvements.

Finally, even if they are harder to quantify, make sure to mention “softer” benefits such as being in control, being proactive, etc., and also think about whether you can tie your proposal to your company’s strategic goals. For example, many organizations place importance on digital transformation in their strategic agendas for the next five years.

4. ROI template

You can create an excel sheet, where you list the investment on the one side, and the expected cost savings and revenue increase on the other side, to show how long it would take to recoup the investment over time.

For example, if a total investment of 100,000 Euros will lead to an expected revenue increase of 20,000 Euros per month, your business case shows that the investment has paid for itself within five months. After that, every month will continue to deliver an additional 20,000 Euros for the business.

To make this calculation easier, we have created an ROI template that you can use as a starting point:

→ Directly download ROI Business Case Template in PDF format (contact us for the Excel and Numbers versions)

When you look at the template, you will see that it follows the same structure as this article. However, it is more detailed and provides examples for process improvement roles, auditors and controllers, IT departments, and process owners. Furthermore, it includes examples of soft benefits and further references.

We are curious if you get to use the ROI template and if you have any additions or feedback about it. Let us know, and if you find it useful, share it with your colleagues!

5. Process Mining Café

Business cases can be tricky. What do you include in your calculation, and what do you leave out? What is a realistic assessment, and what is just wishful thinking?

In this month’s Process Mining Café next week on 17 April, we will look at a concrete process mining project and discuss its business case in more detail. We would love for you to join us and share your own process mining business cases.

Keep an eye on this blog or sign up at our café mailing list to be notified about this Process Mining Café and all future café editions.

In last week’s Process Mining Café, Andrea Delgado and Daniel Calegari from the Universidad de la República, Uruguay, showed us how they used process mining on open data for an urban mobility project.

Before the session, they had already shared a detailed description along with all the scripts to reproduce their approach. We had a lively discussion in the café and you are invited to continue the conversation, whether per email, on LinkedIn, or with Andrea and Daniel directly.

You can now watch the recording here if you missed the live broadcast or want to re-watch the café. Thanks to Puttwaldo, Scott, and Miguel for the discussion, and a big thanks to Andrea, Daniel, and all of you for joining us!

Links

Here are the links that we mentioned during the session:

• Case study about the process mining analysis of bus lines in Montevideo in Montevideo by Andrea Delgado, Daniel Calegari, and Nicolás Carignani

• Open data definition on Wikipedia

• Exporting the Disco process maps as XML files

• Another creative use of open data to analyze football matches by Hadi Sotudeh

Contact us anytime at cafe@fluxicon.com if you have questions or suggestions for the café.

Have you seen that the Process Mining Café is also available as a podcast? So, if you prefer to listen to our episodes in your favorite podcast player, you can get them all here.

Sign up for our café mailing list and the YouTube playlist, follow Fluxicon on LinkedIn, or add the café calendar to never miss a Process Mining Café in the future.

Hands-on practice is at the very heart of this year’s Process Mining Camp on 13 and 14 June. Above, you can watch a short video we recorded to tell you more about the workshops on the second day of camp.

To help you advance your process mining skills, you will get to work on real-life data sets. You will be exposed to the same challenges that you typically also encounter in your own process mining projects, supported by our expert guidance. You will participate in three workshops that fit together perfectly, with each of them focusing on different skills that you need to be successful.

→ Sign up for a process mining practice that you can get nowhere else. If you buy your ticket before the end of Friday, you can still benefit from the early bird rate!

Here are some further details about the three workshops on the second day of camp:

Workshop 1 · Discovery and Analysis

There is a certain magic in watching an experienced process miner approach a new data set. While they apply standard practices like identifying incomplete cases, they also follow their intuition and explore layers of the process in an iteration of discovery, questions, and analysis cycles.

Sure, it takes domain knowledge to identify the standard process and its deviations. But it is also a question of experience to know what to look out for, which questions to ask, and how to break up the “spaghetti processes” — even if you are not familiar with the process at all.

In this workshop, you are going to practice on a real-life data set. Together, we will discover and analyze this data set in multiple phases. We show you standard practices and discuss the results in each phase before going further. There will be time to apply the same approach to multiple data sets, and you can even bring your own data, if you like!

Workshop 2 · Data Skills

It is important to accept that your process mining data will not be perfect when you start analyzing it. After all, the vast majority of IT systems were not created with process mining in mind. Recognizing these limitations should not discourage you. Instead, embrace it as an opportunity for getting creative! Learn to navigate the available data and its possibilities.

In this workshop, you are going beyond the fundamentals of process mining, typically centered around case IDs, timestamps, and activity logs. More than just talking about these concepts, you are going to experience them together to gain a better understanding of the associated challenges and explore potential remedies.

To achieve this, you will immerse yourself in a practical case. In multiple steps, you will identify and address issues like faulty and missing data. You will explore techniques for combining event logs from different systems. And you will be stretching the boundaries of the data beyond their original design. We’ll also be discussing what the logs of the future might look like, and what steps you can take today to achieve that vision.

Workshop 3 · Organizational Best Practices

How do you translate process mining insights into changes in your organization? How do you make sure that the improvements stick? And how do you develop your process mining projects into a routine and general practice? The challenges for process mining are not only about technical skills. You also need to take strategic and cultural factors into account.

There is no simple recipe for what makes process mining successful. But there are a lot of different lessons that can be derived from both successes and from setbacks. By now, we have all been talking about these challenges and our experiences for two days — in the discussion groups, over dinner and drinks, in the breaks, during the workshops. In this last workshop, we take a step back and collect what we have learned.

Together, we are going to make this really practical. We will list what works, what doesn’t work and in which situation — and we put it into perspective. You will leave camp with new approaches and patterns that you can apply right away in your future process mining projects.

— We can’t wait to see you all in Eindhoven!