Looking to make waves in your business? Add Process Intelligence in Action to your reading list

But you’d be missing a trick. At least that’s what Lars Reinkemeyer, editor of Process Intelligence in Action thinks. And Lars certainly knows what he’s talking about. He’s got over 25 years working with data in big businesses, and 10 years experience with process mining, having been the person driving Celonis adoption at Siemens, before joining Celonis as Chief Evangelist.

His latest book, a follow-up to Process Mining in Action (2020, Springer) lays out not only a blueprint for how to practically implement Process intelligence, but also a new potential avenue for those with a change maker mentality to make real impact.

We sat down with Lars to talk about the new book, who it’s for, why someone should read it, and what they’ll get out of it.

Q: Lars, thanks for taking the time to talk to me today. Let’s start with who this book is for.

A: It's a very practical book written by practitioners for practitioners. So they might be executives, transformation leaders, process managers, experts. It’s full of hands-on tips which they can use straight away. Best practices that they can apply in their own organization. Stories of success, but also pitfalls and failures. The whole book is basically saying: ‘Okay, what are key learnings?’ You know, what is the most valuable advice from practitioners like myself and the 12 other people on how to drive value using Process Intelligence.

Q: I’m glad you bring up the 12 other people because the book has a really interesting structure. Can you talk a bit about that?

A: Yeah, the book is in three parts.

The first part, written by me, is basically setting the foundations. I go back to the history of Process Intelligence, comparing its evolution to the evolution of the X-ray. We chart its progress through academia and into business. And then I lay out some of the fundamentals like how to drive adoption, how to scale, how to build an operating model, the importance of a value focus, governance models, and some common pitfalls.

The second part is building on that, showing examples of all of those things in real companies. So part 2 is those 12 amazing use cases written by leading change makers from companies like ABB, Siemens, Kimberly Clark, Pepsico, Merck, and more.

Each of them come with their own experiences, and shine a light on a different dimension of Process Intelligence. So that could be sustainability, supply chain, driving value, whatever. So there's a range of different topics which hopefully will be blueprints for many others to say: ‘Okay, hey, this is interesting. I can learn from those people and their challenges, which are similar to mine, and how they approached it.’

Then finally part three looks to the future. It starts with a chapter by Wil van der Aalst, looking at OCPM and how that will be fueled by GenAI. So is looking at the academic perspective on the future of Process Intelligence.

Then finally a chapter from me on what a highly performant business will look like in the next 2, 3, 4 years.

Q: It’s really interesting that you talk a lot about change makers, about the type of person that will be successful with Process intelligence, rather than just about the technology and how to use it. Why is that?

A: One of the pitfalls that it’s very easy to fall into with Process Intelligence is thinking that you can show people the data and magic will happen, the company will start rocking and rolling. Which is simply not the case. It’s about finding the people who are change makers, who want to make an impact across the organization, who have the personality for change.

Q: It seems like a role that requires a lot of empathy.

A: Empathy, yes, and also communication. Someone that can see what’s driving other people, what’s causing them to resist change, and get them excited about it. Transparency can be scary because if we say: ‘We can see where you’re paying invoices twice, or shipping goods without billing’ that can feel like a foolish mistake.

The person in charge of that department will of course say: ‘That doesn’t happen here. Look somewhere else.’ So getting them onside is about putting them in the driving seat — so they can provide the solution rather than look like they caused the problem.

Q: That reminds me, one of the things that really stood out to me about the book is the inclusion of very relatable examples. The case studies are incredibly in-depth, and the pitfalls like ‘catastrophe spotting’ are surprising and very tangible.

A: That’s a very common one. You get into the weeds of finding all the catastrophes, but don’t actually fix any of them. It’s like: ‘Look, we have an approval process with 12 steps for a mouse that costs $5.’ But then you have to ask: ‘So what?’ What can we do about it? How do we fix it?

It’s back to the point about change management. If you spend all your time and energy collecting the data and analyzing the data, but don’t do anything about it, then it’s not valuable.

You need someone entrepreneurial who is looking for a way to drive value, and is able to get people excited about change.

Q: Finally, you keep coming back to value. In the book you talk about value methodologies, building business cases, quantifying the different kinds of value. It all comes back to value, doesn’t it?

A: Of course. Value comes in many different shades of gray. It can be something like reducing working capital, or carbon emissions. It can be customer experience, the speed of a transformation. Supply chain transparency. Greater audit capabilities. It goes on and on.

In the book I try to give many examples so the reader can see which resonates, and then try to apply it in their own environment.