Business process management is full of three-letter acronyms. From business process management (BPM) itself, to business process optimization (BPO), business process reengineering (BPR), robotic process automation (RPA) and automated process discovery (APD). Now there’s another term to add to the list: rapid process discovery (RPD). So what is it and how does it work?
Rapid process discovery: What is it and how does it work?
What is rapid process discovery?
Rapid process discovery is a type of functionality that can be found within some business process discovery tools. Like other methods of business process discovery, it is designed to model processes so they can be better understood and ultimately improved.
It could be seen as a step up from traditional, manual process mapping techniques, because it allows process analysts to document an existing process without having to schedule time-consuming workshops and focus groups, or individual interviews. Instead, they can ask specialists or stakeholders within an organization to complete digital surveys independently, to document their perception of how individual activities within a process occur.
Because there’s no need to schedule interviews or workshops, and stakeholders can complete digital forms at a time that suits them, this approach delivers results more quickly than traditional process mapping – at least in theory. That’s why the technique is called rapid process discovery. However, it’s generally slower and less accurate than various types of automated process discovery, including process mining.
Let’s take a look at the various stages of rapid process discovery, as well as its pros and cons, to find out why.
The stages of rapid process discovery
Stage one: Survey design
The first step is for the process analyst to identify and define the business process they wish to survey. Then they need to design a simple, digital form to be sent to relevant people within the business, usually via email. These forms are most effective when they are kept as concise as possible and give respondents specific answers to choose from, or structured response formats.
Stage two: Form completion
Stakeholders should complete a separate form for each individual activity or step of the process they are involved in, or have specialized knowledge of. The type of information they might complete on each form includes the systems involved in that step of the process and the time it typically takes.
Stage three: Submission review
As the digital forms are completed, the process analyst can collate this information to gain an aggregate view of responses. Forms can be submitted by many different stakeholders and specialists concurrently, and the process analyst can be working on mapping a number of processes at the same time.
Stage four: Process map creation
Once they have received enough responses, the process analyst can draft a process model based on the reported tasks and activities. This can take a number of forms, such as a workflow diagram or a swimlane diagram, and can be used as a basis for process analysis. It can be used as an interactive tool, where analysts can drill down into the survey responses for each process step and identify potential areas for improvement.
The benefits of rapid process discovery
Any type of process discovery is better than doing nothing at all to gain visibility over business processes. Rapid process discovery has some potential advantages over more traditional form of business process discovery like process mapping:
Speed
As the name would suggest, rapid process discovery is less time-consuming than traditional process mapping techniques, which involve in-person workshops and interviews. Analysts can avoid scheduling issues as stakeholders are able to complete their responses individually, when they have availability, which should mean the time taken to create a process map or model is significantly shorter. In addition, rapid process discovery allows multiple processes to be mapped concurrently.
Uniformity
Analysts can design the digital form in such a way that compels stakeholders to give structured, uniform process insights and answer specific questions, which doesn’t always happen in an interview or workshop. By using drop-down lists and set response formats for specific questions, analysts can get more precise data about how stakeholders view process steps.
Candor
It’s possible that stakeholders will give more honest responses in digital forms than they might in group workshops. Individuals may want to avoid the appearance of apportioning blame in a group discussion, or equally may not want to admit the time it actually takes to complete a particular activity when they’re in a group setting. Rapid process discovery could be set up with restricted access to survey responses to afford a degree of confidentiality and anonymity.
The limitations of rapid process discovery
Rapid process discovery shares many of the limitations of traditional process mapping. The most obvious of these is that it relies on people’s perceptions of how processes run, rather than on actual data. And people’s perceptions of how a process works are inevitably wildly different from how the actual process runs in reality.
In addition, the insights derived from rapid process discovery only capture process activities at a particular point in time. The technique doesn’t allow them to be visualized in real time. By the time the results are analyzed and the process model is built, it is not only inaccurate, it is already out of date.
Some other limitations of rapid process mapping compared with other process discovery methods (like automated process discovery used in process mining) are:
- The usefulness of the end result depends on who is asked to take part in the survey.
- The method lacks the collaboration and deeper clarification possibilities of workshops and interviews.
- The technique won’t reveal all deviations from the planned process, making it difficult to find improvement opportunities.
- Rapid process discovery on its own won’t recommend or drive action to improve processes.
- Despite the name, rapid process discovery isn’t as fast (or effective) as techniques like process mining.
All of these limitations mean rapid process discovery isn’t the most effective process discovery tool for truly understanding the complex processes most businesses run on today, and for driving process improvement.
Process mining vs rapid process discovery
If businesses want to achieve faster (and far better) results from process discovery, automated process discovery is a more effective approach than rapid process discovery.
Process mining uses automated process discovery to extract event log data from transactional systems and create a digital twin of business processes. It identifies the most common path these processes take, but also reveals every single deviation – usually far more than the business expects. More advanced techniques, like Object-Centric Process Mining (OCPM), mean businesses can see not just how individual processes run end-to-end, but how those processes interconnect and impact one another across different functions and departments.
At Celonis, we take process mining data (as well as other data from activities like task mining), and layer in standardized process knowledge and artificial intelligence to create a bespoke Process Intelligence Graph that businesses can use to drive process improvement. As well as showing processes as they really run – in real time – businesses can identify where value is hiding and take action to capture that value, driving continuous improvement. That might include taking advantage of automation opportunities through robotic process automation (RPA) and more advanced intelligent automation.
Take a look at our process mining guide, as well as the other resources below to get familiar with process mining and explore why it’s a more effective approach to quickly improving processes than rapid process discovery.