What is Process discovery and how does it work with Process Intelligence to create real business value?

What is process discovery?

At its most basic level, process discovery is the act of creating a model that can be used to analyze and optimize a business process. It’s sometimes referred to as business process discovery (BPD) and emerged from the concept of business process management (BPM), which aims to discover, model, analyze, and optimize business processes.

Early, in-person process discovery techniques – like process mapping – were manual, time-consuming, and lacking in accuracy. They relied on people’s perception of how processes ran and resulted in overly simplistic, flowchart-style process representations.

But the advent of process mining technology transformed process discovery. Instead of relying solely on an inaccurate, subjective process map, it enabled the creation of an objective process model using event data extracted from business systems. The type of process discovery used in process mining is often known as automated process discovery. More recent developments like object-centric process mining (OCPM) allow businesses to use automated process discovery to create a full digital twin of their processes.

Process discovery is just the first stage of process mining. It shows businesses how their processes run, as well as where value opportunities might be found. For process mining technology to deliver real business value, the process discovery phase needs to be followed up with additional stages such as modeling and conformance checking. Businesses need to be able to compare a model of their ideal process flow with what’s actually happening in their operations if they want to optimize their processes and unlock the value within.

Three examples of process discovery

Process discovery is a vital first step for any business looking to realize value from its processes, no matter the size of the organization or the industry in which it operates. Here are three very different examples of how process discovery can be used to identify value hiding in business processes.

Case study 1: Accelerating Florida Crystal’s S/4HANA transformation

Sugar producer Florida Crystals needed to understand how its processes were configured ahead of its S/4HANA transformation. Using process mining, it took just three weeks to create a digital twin of the Source-to-Pay and Order-to-Cash processes. This enabled a fast and detailed understanding of process adherence, as well as process issues, saving IT and the process owners a lot of time and effort in the documentation and design phase. As a result, Florida Crystals pulled off its S/4HANA transformation in just twelve months.

Following this successful transformation, Florida Crystals used the digital twin of the Source-to-Pay process to improve processes in Accounts Payable. The company saved millions by capturing cash discounts and preventing duplicate payments.

• Find out more about Florida Crystal’s process discovery journey

Case study 2: Increasing visibility into Accenture’s procurement processes

Globally renowned professional services company Accenture has an internal procurement function, known as Procurement Plus, that includes the whole purchase-to-pay value chain, from Procurement to Accounts Payable. This function wanted to increase visibility into the Purchase-to-Pay process, which was becoming more complex over time due to constantly changing regulations, guidelines, and legal and governmental requirements.

Process discovery revealed there were a staggering 14,000 different ways to get a requisition through the system, and the turnaround time was anything up to 60 hours. This visibility enabled Accenture to have fact-based conversations with stakeholders about potential areas for improvement, and cut down request-to-order cycle times by 50%. With shorter cycle times, Procurement Plus can more effectively enable the business, delivering a faster and more efficient experience for both consultants and customers.

• Learn more about Accenture’s process mining success

Case study 3: Standardizing fraud investigations for Doculab’s customers

Management consulting firm Doculabs is working with banks and other organizations to deal with a surge in fraud and financial crime. While the financial services industry has invested heavily in fraud detection and prevention technologies, the same cannot be said for case management systems and processes. Investigators research each case differently, making individual decisions about what process to follow, and there is a real lack of standardization.

Doculabs is using Celonis for both process discovery and task mining. This allows information about tasks that are conducted on investigator desktops, and aren’t visible to case management systems, to be merged with the relevant process data. By revealing how investigators currently complete cases, banks can identify and adopt more standardized processes. This frees up capacity for existing staff and reduces costs, which allows banks to scale their investigations. It also improves customer service and helps to avoid reputational risks.

• Read more about Doculabs’ process analysis endeavors

How to select a process discovery tool

To avoid the common pain points outlined above, your business needs to select the right solution for process discovery. Here are six questions you should ask when you’re looking for an automated process discovery tool:

1. Does the tool have process set-up and data preparation capabilities?
2. Can the tool be easily integrated with my existing systems?
3. Can the process discovery tool be used with complementary capabilities (like task mining, business intelligence, and robotic process automation)?
4. Does the tool analyze discrete or interconnected processes?
5. How easy is the process discovery tool to use without technical expertise?
6. Will the solution tell me how to fix my processes?

Read our article on choosing process discovery tools to find out why these questions are important, and the type of answers you should be looking for.

Process discovery with Celonis

Process discovery is a core capability of the Celonis Process Intelligence Platform. Using OCPM, Celonis extracts and standardizes process data from any data source and layers it with standardized process knowledge and AI to create a digital twin, or Process Intelligence Graph.

Then the platform brings together process analysis solutions to discover and visualize as-is processes, and analyse process-specific KPIs – such as throughput and on-time delivery rate.

These tools include:

• Celonis Studio: a unified building environment for analysts that allows you to leverage assets like purpose-built dashboarding tools incorporating a wide variety of analysis components to support process discovery.
• Views: a Celonis Studio asset that empowers you to effortlessly build flexible dashboards for process analysis and improvement, and share them across your organization.
• Process Explorer: a process analysis tool within Views that helps you find value opportunities by illuminating the complex ways in which multiple objects and events in your system interact, with built-in KPIs to measure performance.

Ready to find out more about process discovery and process analysis with the Celonis Process Intelligence Platform?

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