ORLANDO, FLA., May 12, 2021 – Prolifics, a global digital transformation leader and a longtime IBM business partner, is thrilled to announce that IBM named Prolifics as a finalist in its 2021 Beacon Awards. Our “Outcome-based Process Automation” solution is recognized in IBM’s “Outstanding Business Automation Solution” award category.
Now in their 22nd year, the IBM Beacon Awards celebrate the next generation of innovators, creators and thinkers that use IBM technology, like hybrid cloud and AI, to power innovative solutions for partners and their clients.
Prolifics has been successfully delivering business results from Process Automation projects for years. But these types of projects are often lengthy and expensive, which makes them difficult for an organization to cost justify. The Outcome-based Process Automation approach provides rapid visibility into specifically projected business results before an investment is made, reducing the risk typically associated with large scale automation projects and enabling a more agile, phased approach to implementation.
Our solution works through the combination of IBM Cloud Pak for Automation, myInvenio process mining, and Prolifics accelerators and repeatable outcome-based frameworks. Prolifics leverages process mining to accelerate the initiation and success of larger automation projects.
The Prolifics Outcome-based Process Automation solution uses the following steps:
Automate Process Discovery: Often problems have non-obvious causes. We are able to pinpoint those hidden root causes through process mining and our framework.
Quantify the Benefits: We conduct process-mapping and add measurable cost and time measurements to the complete process – not just the problem areas.
Quantify the Cost: Prolifics architects the proposed automation solution and phases to generate cost options.
Guarantee the Outcomes: Using the quantifiable information from the above two steps, Prolifics creates a documented proposal with financial accountability and projected measurable outcomes.
Automate the Process: Once approved, Prolifics initiates the project using our time-tested process automation methodology.
Demonstrate the Results: Once the new process is live, Prolifics monitors its performance over a period of time and documents the results for the client, demonstrating the projected benefits.
Provide Automation as a Service: An optional step, Prolifics may provide managed services to the client to monitor and adjust the process over time.
Gartner’s Business Automation practice described our approach as compelling and unique in the market – and we agree. Prolifics Outcome-based Process Automation finds the real, hard-data reasons for process inefficiencies, and projects specific, measurable outcomes based on how the client wants to automate the process.
Prolifics CEO Satya Bolli stated, “Companies can now take a fresh look at automation and the projects they may have been reluctant to start. We can show them exactly what is happening through process mining and quantify the benefits from the proposed automation. The guesswork is gone.”
About Prolifics
Prolifics is a global digital transformation leader with expertise in Data & AI, Integration & Applications, Business Automation, DevXOps, Test Automation, and Cybersecurity across multiple industries. We provide consulting, engineering and managed services for all our practice areas at any point our clients need them. Vision to Value. Faster. It’s not just the Prolifics’ tagline, it’s what drives us.
You’ve heard the term process mining. But what is it really? And why should your business invest in more technology? This presentation answers those questions. It explores what makes process mining so valuable, and shows how it can help you save costs, improve efficiencies and increase revenue. Let’s start with this definition: Process Mining is an evidence-based solution designed to let DATA tell its TRUE story. What story does your data have to tell?
The AI Journal recently published “What is Robotic Process Automation and Hyperautomation?” by Prolifics UK Marketing Coordinator Vikesh Kaushal. As the title indicates, he covers RPA, intelligent automation – and more. Read the full article here.
Process Mining doesn’t have to be a huge archeological excavation. You can get surprisingly good results with just a shovel.
Process Mining – what we know
We’ve published several blogs recently on Process Mining, and we’ll take the opportunity to link some of them in this article. But for now, let’s quickly summarize what we know and have shared:
Process Mining is a technique designed to discover, monitor and improve your business processes – fast
Process Mining identifies process inefficiencies by following a digital trail of data
Your workforce, customers, vendors, and others generate this digital trail when using your internal systems like ERPs, CRMs, databases, log files, audit tables, Excel documents and others
Process Mining is based on real data – not opinions and assumptions from time-consuming process mapping exercises
Process Mining applies equally well to any business in any industry
Process Mining applies equally well at any point and level: a process, an operation, or end-to-end through an organization
How deep does this mining have to go?
Many clients have asked us about Process Mining – with some angst – in terms of it being a major undertaking. We think a lot of this worry is a hangover from their experiences with process mapping – the endless meetings, the sticky note flowcharting, defensive co-workers, assumptions not backed by data, and lengthy action plans that were never implemented.
However, we admit that we may have caused some of this concern ourselves. In our enthusiasm over the many (many) benefits of Process Mining, we’ve written, “… Process Mining can support your entire digital transformation strategy – it allows you to track and measure whether your digital transformation initiatives are working as planned…” While true, it’s also just as important to realize that a Process Mining project doesn’t have to be about your entire digital overhaul.
We like the analogy of the “busted pipe” versus the “leaky faucet.” A busted pipe is a big project that definitely gets your attention, you realize it needs to be fixed immediately to stop the loss. The leaky faucet is small. You may not know it’s happening or don’t really pay much attention to it. However, your water bill is higher than it should be, month after month after month. Leaky faucets need to be fixed too.
So, it’s that last bullet point from above that we’d like to address now: “Process Mining applies equally well at any point and level.” You’ll get surprisingly good results from smaller scope projects. This will get you comfortable with how Process Mining works, and you’ll be able to see how the benefits are directly identified, measured and supported. Here are just a few examples:
A business was incurring contractual penalties and extra fees because they were missing deadlines on vendor payments. They used Process Mining to find bottlenecks and breakdowns in accounts payable procedures. With some refresher training, fees and penalties became rare.
A financial institution used Process Mining to analyze its HELOC document production process. It identified time wasted on transferring data fields between applications and documents – a potential savings of up to 33 percent.
A healthcare company applied Process Mining to identify how and why supplies were being transferred between its branches. This led to optimizing purchasing and reducing costs.
So, think about that one workflow that doesn’t seem to go quite right or that department that’s always a little over budget each month. Find the leaky faucets – big benefits can come from small Process Mining projects.
Talk with us
You have a vision for your organization – don’t let your technology slow you down. Our Process Mining solutions and experience will get you there. Sit down with us – let’s talk about your challenges, review and reevaluate your plans and get you started where it makes the most sense. Vision to Value. Faster. It’s not just our tagline, it’s what drives us. It’s how we deliver solutions and services. It’s our commitment to you – and it’s needed today more than ever. Visit www.prolifics.com or email solutions@prolifics.com.
Dive into the world of Process Mining. Learn what it really does and watch it in action – Learn how Process Mining accurately identifies areas for continuation and improvement across a full spectrum of lines of business. And find how how quickly you can really get started. For all of us, Process Mining can be a game changer – let’s not get left behind!
Fedway Associates Inc., New Jersey’s largest liquor and wine distributor, uses its omni-channel portal app to easily locate products, automate manual processes to improve workflow efficiency, and enhance the customer experience. Kirk Wolthouse, Vice President of Marketing Services, talks about how Prolifics helped Fedway Associates prepare its app for market in under 6 months, while making the process quick, efficient, and cost-effective.
Process Mining is a term circulating across industries and with good reason. It has the power to impact all areas of your business and getting started is a lot easier than you probably think. Don’t miss this overview with our digital technology experts as they reveal what process mining really is and how it can define your business objectives and tactics for success.
Featured presenters: Kelli Chastonay, Sr. Account Executive and Solution Director and Anant Gupta, Global Head of Digital Automation and Cloud Solutions.
As Gartner defines it: Process Mining is a technique designed to discover, monitor and improve real processes (i.e., not assumed processes) by extracting readily available knowledge from the event logs of information systems.
More simply, Process Mining identifies process inefficiencies by following the digital trail of data through a targeted system.
The concept of Process Mining has been around for several years and has been very popular in Europe. It’s only recently become more popular in the U.S. as sophisticated digital technology solutions make it a better alternative.
How does Process Mining Work?
Process Mining uses your company’s own data to quickly identify inefficiencies, where to improve operations and how to get your desired business outcomes. Your workforce, customers, vendors, and others generate data in the form of digital footprints any time they use your internal systems to perform work. These digital footprints are recorded in ERPs, CRMs, databases, log files, audit tables, Excel documents and other systems and applications. Process Mining follows this digital trail through a system to discover what’s happening and automatically creates a visualization of the process from the data.
As Gartner states: “Process Mining helps you look at your business processes in an unbiased and transparent manner.”
Traditional process mapping is a time-consuming exercise involving many subjective interviews and manual or boxed-software flowcharting, often ending in assumptions on what the problems are and how to fix them. It has no “staying power” once completed.
Process Mining is based on real data – not assumptions or opinions – and is significantly quicker and more accurate than mapping interviews and flowcharting. Because it’s based on data, clearly measurable impacts from changes can be documented. Going forward, Process Mining can become process monitoring – analyzing the targeted process for current performance.
Think of it this way: Process mapping is like asking a lot of people for directions. Process Mining is like using your GPS.
What are the benefits of Process Mining?
As stated above, Process Mining uses your own data to quickly identify inefficiencies, where to improve and how to get to your desired business outcomes. You’ll gain greater insights into how your company runs. Because it’s based on real data, a Process Mining project can guarantee the improvement to the targeted process, and monitor the process going forward. In fact, Process Mining can support your entire digital transformation strategy – it allows you to track and measure whether your digital transformation initiatives are working as planned in day-to-day operations, or if they need to be adjusted.
Where do I use Process Mining?
Process Mining can be applied at any point and level: a process, an operation, or end-to-end through an organization, and applies equally well to any business in any industry. Currently, clients have found Process Mining extremely useful in the following scenarios:
Robotic Process Automation (RPA) – As noted earlier, Process Mining quickly identifies inefficiencies in your processes that cost you time and money – especially those that waste your employees’ talent on tedious, mundane and/or manual tasks (like data entry). RPA can run repetitive, mundane tasks, or bridge previously manual data entry, 24 hours a day quickly with extremely low error rates. It can be scaled as needed to help with seasonal or event-driven changes in volume. You can even add elements of intelligent automation and artificial intelligence to help with decision making. RPA frees your employees up to do more important, value-added work.
The customer journey – Understanding your customer journey will get your entire organization pointed in the same direction, improve your customer experience and give you the insight to outperform your competition. Every day your customers are generating those digital footprints, and Process Mining will show you how those footprints move through your company – visualizing and diagraming the actual digital journey with hard data. This is insight generated by the customers themselves, not your company assumptions. Also, Process Mining continues on as process monitoring – analyzing the customer journey against the procedures or practices you put in place.
Today’s work-from-home – Covid-19 has created a whole new scenario: work from home (WFH) as part of the new normal for the foreseeable future. How have your processes and procedures changed – intentionally or unintentionally – to accommodate all the people now working away from the office? How do you control – or even recognize – these changes? Process Mining shows you what is actually happening based on the employee event data captured in your enterprise systems. Process Mining will diagram the actual (including variations, exceptions, gaps and siloes) against the policies and procedures you want.
Data governance and data privacy – Process Mining shows you how data moves through your organization. This helps you complete privacy and risk assessments, find information siloes and gaps, and assist with your enterprise data strategy. Process Mining can help validate a process audit or compliance procedures by diagraming the actual against a defined standard, best practice or instituted policy. This is extremely useful for data privacy regulation compliance like CCPA and GDPR.
How do I prepare for Process Mining?
Know what you want: Define clear business outcomes and key performance indicators (KPIs) targeting a specific situation, like customer experience, inefficiencies, or data governance. You’ll achieve a better return on investment. As Gartner states: “It is important to link your optimization efforts with the business outcomes you wish to achieve. Include the business outcomes that are relevant to your organization. This can help you to achieve buy-in from the leadership team at every stage. Some major key performance indicators and business outcomes to track include revenue, customers, products and employees.”
Ensure that your target data is clean and in good order, so its use is optimized. Your data may be stored in many different systems or data bases, and maybe it’s incomplete. You need to make sure your data can be extracted and collected. The benefits of Process Mining are directly related to the quality of the information that goes into it. At the most basic level, your Process Mining project data needs three attributes: time stamp, unique case ID, and an activity ID.
Have the right mindset. This may be a new way of doing things for you and your company, and you may have had poor experiences with traditional process mapping. Put that all aside and implement and leverage Process Mining without any human biases or assumptions – let the actual data tell the story.
Examples of Process Mining in action
Here are summaries of some case studies compiled through Gartner:
Consumer Goods – process inefficiencies
Process Mining project included:
Analyze and visualize carton movements throughout five production plants and a central cold store
Analyze the carton movements from in-feeding plants to central cold storage
Identify primary and preferred process flows
Identify and compare variants and associated flows
Identify re-loops and bottlenecks and quantify the effect on target efficiencies
Identify process inefficiencies and opportunities for change
Financial – Insurance Claims
The scope of the project was to analyze the claims submitted in case of water leakage in private or business buildings. The objective was to find measurable areas of improvement and anomalies inside the process. Different behaviors inside the process were isolated and different process dimensions were analyzed. A comparison between different regions was also performed. As a result, the company was able to find emerging best practices both process-wise and organization-wise. The company was able to define key performance indicators (KPIs) for measuring the process health and to set up improvement initiatives.
Financial – repetitive tasks and RPA
The company conducted a data-derived performance analysis through Process Mining to identify the costly and repetitive tasks that would be ideal for ideal for robotic process automation (RPA). Thereafter, Process Mining was used to monitor whether the optimal outcome was reached.
Financial – car accident claims
The project analyzed submitted car accident claims. The objective was to find measurable areas of improvement and anomalies inside the process. Process Mining isolated different behaviors inside the process and analyzed different process dimensions (e.g. different kinds of settlement, geographic partitioning of claims, compliance with regulatory deadlines, etc.). A comparison between different regions was also performed. As a result, the company found emerging best practices for both the process and the organization. Hot spots inside of the process were identified and addressed with specific initiatives and change requests.
Financial – customer onboarding
The scope of the project was to analyze the customer onboarding process across four countries. Strong differences in performance across these countries had been previously observed. The main goal of this project was to determine which steps or pathways of the process were determining these differences in performance. Process Mining of the entire process and variant analysis with filtering, side-by-side comparison, and multi-log animations allowed the company to find specific pathways that explained lower performance in some countries.
Financial – customer journey
The project looked at the car policy renewal customer journey. It analyzed the full process after a car insurance policy has run out and what actions lead to highest probability rates for renewal from customers, identifying factors such as individual customer groups characteristics on probability and increase in scope or size of the policy.
Financial – forex process
The scope of the project was to discover and analyze the paths of different forex exchange deals at the client. Data was extracted from different systems and aggregated into a single event log (each deal can embrace several systems). Next, different variants of a deal where segregated based on logical drivers (e.g. type of deal, broker/no broker) and performance driver (e.g. average number of activities, or average cycle time). The variants were then used as input for variant analysis in order to identify root causes for deviations.
Financial – loan approval
The project measured processing time for loan applications, resulting in the creation of a dashboard for monitoring process performance.
Financial – loan documents
Non-post and branch validation processes detected inefficiencies and potential savings – up to 60%. Funding and onboarding processes: detected inefficiencies and potential savings – up to 40%. Documents production process (HELOC processes) – list of data fields transferred between applications – time wasted on transferring data fields between applications – detected inefficiencies and potential savings – up to 33%.
Financial – process improvement
Process Mining replaced staff interviews with automated capture of the employee activities in real-time, producing the end-to-end process visualizations and measurements. Results: 88% time savings for process analysis improvement work.
Healthcare – medication and supplies tracking
There were several different departments (specialties) and each department had a dedicated pharmacy at the hospital building. Process Mining was applied to identify how medications and supplies were transferred between pharmacies, how restricted medication were handled, and what were the purchasing optimization opportunities that could drive cost reduction and patient care improvement.
Healthcare – invoice verification
Process Mining helped gain a deeper understanding of process challenges and deviations and identify opportunities for process automation. Results: Saved 900 man-hours per year through process automation; identified the cause for 97% of process deviations; revealed over 1,000 internal violations of the service level agreement; achieved higher degree of standardization
Industrial – supplier payments
The company’s main objective is to ensure that suppliers are paid within a reasonable period based on regulations, otherwise high penalties are due. The company looked to identify where payment time is lost and processes with low automation. They used Process Mining to discover process violations in accounts payables, discover non-compliant process behaviors using a conformance check, and monitor payment related issues with a defined set of key performance indicators (KPIs).
Industrial – customer journey
Process Mining obtained a clear visualization of the journey of the customer. Looking into the visualization, a new product development process was discovered. Instead of only producing a sample, in the new product development process pieces needed to be designed, produced and delivered quickly. By shifting priorities, the company was able to produce customer samples quicker without impacting the regular production lead times. This allows the company to grow their business, while keeping up the delivery performance for their existing customers.
Industrial – credit and collections
Gained a competitive advantage by automating and optimizing the process beyond the capabilities of the established process management systems. Result: saved more than 100,000 Euros and 1,600 man-hours per year on extra manual work; reduced execution times and idle periods in the process by up to 80%; identified compliance risks in over 70% of all cases
Manufacturing – maintenance and repairs
A machine recovery is a procedure of tests and calibrations to get a machine back up and running after repairs or maintenance. The ideal recovery was described by a procedure containing a sequence of 140 steps. The company used Process Mining to compare the recoveries with the procedure to identify the key deviations. In this way they were able to find steps that are not part of the expected recovery procedure and improve the process.
Manufacturing – equipment usage
The case study shows how Process Mining can be used to analyze the system usage of an MRI machine. It helps to understand how the customer (the physician) uses the MRI system, and how its behavior deviates from the expected (and designed) behavior.
Telecommunications – RPA initiatives
The company began an RPA initiative to improve service quality and customer journey and added Process Mining to their automation strategy to verify operational tasks that could be automated and rank them by ROI. Use cases include service desk, customer interactions (tickets from different sources), remote troubleshooting, field services and operators/workforce advisors.
Telecommunications – customer journey/automation
The company’s the main customer service portal – an interactive voice response (IVR) system – had more than 500,000 daily calls, with most of them being forwarded from the automated system to the employee-manned call center. Process Mining visualized the customer journey and the improvement opportunities to increase customer satisfaction with the IVR and reduce human interaction to the more complex exceptions.
Telecommunications – potential fraud
The company used Process Mining to understand the SIM card activation process and investigate internal stores and partner vendors for patterns that could indicate fraudulent behavior.
Telecommunications – debt collection
The company conducted a general investigation of the debt collection process, identifying customer payment habits and factors driving successful debt collection.
Our extensive experience in banking and finance, healthcare, insurance, mortgage, public sector, retail and distribution allows us to bring our industry know-how to your specific process analysis.
You’ll see a quicker outcome – on average about three weeks – while keeping costs in check.
Our expertise in hyperautomation and artificial intelligence can help you solve issues that processing Mining finds.
You’ll have a “one-stop-shop” with our integrated offering of infrastructure, security and testing, along with our automation.
Because it’s based on real data, a Prolifics’ Process Mining project can guarantee the improvement to the targeted process.
Talk with us
The “New Normal” is here. You have a vision – don’t let your technology slow you down. Our Process Mining solutions and experience will get you there. Sit down with us – let’s talk about your challenges, review and reevaluate your plans and get you started where it makes the most sense. Vision to Value. Faster. It’s not just our tagline, it’s what drives us. It’s how we deliver solutions and services. It’s our commitment to you – and it’s needed today more than ever. Visit www.prolifics.com or email solutions@prolifics.com.
For a larger conversation about Process Mining, watchInnovation Sandbox Episode # – Process Mining with Anant Gupta, Global Head of Digital Automation and Cloud Solutions with Prolifics.
Process Mining and the New Working-From-Home Normal
The pandemic has made a lot of things the New Normal. One of them is having a remote workforce, also known as working from home (WFH). How are processes and procedures changing to accommodate people working remotely? How do you control – or even know about – the changes that may be happening ad hoc or even unintentionally throughout your organization? Process Mining may be the key.
Working from home (WFH) is part of the New Normal
Salesforce Research offers a “Snapshot Research Series – Insights on How Consumers and the Workforce are Navigating Change.” In its “Future of Work” section (filtered for US responses only), we find these interesting responses from worker surveys in early May and mid-June:
67% agree with the statement “The pandemic will permanently change the nature of work.”
42% agree, with only 8% disagreeing, with the statement “Expect employer to reassess long-term remote work policy.”
For “most appealing work scenario,” 73% would want a home or split home/office scenario.
43% – Work from home full-time
30% – Split between home and workplace
27% – Work from workplace full-time
In its May survey titled “Navigating Covid-19, Returning to the Workplace,” the Society for Human Resource Management (SHRM) found that 68% of organizations report that they “probably or definitely” will adopt broader or more flexible work from home policies for all workers.
How will WFH affect processes and procedures?
It may be too early to tell – there are a lot of ad hoc situations going on for processes and procedures to accommodate people working remotely. But there are those giving thought to it.
“Some processes will be easier to move to remote working than others, so it’s important to firstly identify and thoroughly understand how all of your processes operate. You should establish:
Which processes are critical and/or high-risk?
Are there any processes that require someone’s physical presence to complete? This includes any processes to maintain your IT infrastructure.
Have you locked any systems down so they can only be accessed from the office, or only from specific named IP addresses?
Do you have any paper-based processes or processes that cannot be easily moved online?
It is much easier to get a handle on this if you have comprehensive, up-to-date process and data flow maps. If you don’t, I would suggest you begin by identifying and mapping your critical and high-risk processes – these are the ones where any problems will cause the biggest impact.”
Unfortunately, most companies did not have the luxury to do this as lockdowns and quarantines came down pretty quickly and organizations had to scramble with a sudden WFH staff. So, as the New Normal progresses, what’s the best way to get “comprehensive, up-to-date process and data flow maps?” In our view it’s through Process Mining.
What is process mining and how does it work?
Process mining identifies how a process works by following the digital trail of data through the targeted system. Every day you have employees, customers, vendors and others generate a digital footprint when they utilize your company systems. These digital footprints get captured in these systems, such as ERPs, CRMs, application databases, log files, audit tables, Excel documents and many others. Process mining uses these digital footprints to create visualizations and analysis charts for the process.
Many of you may be familiar – unfortunately too familiar – with process mapping and its interviews and flowcharting. Process mining is significantly quicker and more accurate than traditional process mapping. Think of it this way: Process mapping is like asking a lot of people for directions. Process mining is like using your GPS.
Process mining discovers what is actually happening based on the event data captured in enterprise systems. – which is probably now different from what was happening pre-pandemic. Process Mining shows you how data moves through your organization – diagraming the actual (including variations, exceptions, gaps and siloes) against what you want: an instituted policy or procedure; defined standard; or best practice. Don’t take the chance of thinking you know what’s happening in the New Normal – Process Mining will let you know exactly what’s happening.
Prolifics can help.
The “New Normal” is here. You have a vision – don’t let your technology slow you down. Our Process Mining solutions and experience will get you there. Sit down with us – let’s talk about your challenges, review and reevaluate your plans and get you started where it makes the most sense. Vision to Value. Faster. It’s not just our tagline, it’s what drives us. It’s how we deliver solutions and services. It’s our commitment to you – and it’s needed today more than ever. Visit www.prolifics.com or email solutions@prolifics.com.
