What is process discovery?
Process discovery is the analysis of operational activities to uncover how processes work across people, systems, and data to identify where to optimize and automate.
Process discovery delivers visibility on how organizations operate, showing everything that happens between applications, information, and people to accomplish workflows and processes. It fills in the unknowns of process execution to identify bottlenecks and risks, fueling business process improvement.
The benefits of process discovery.
Gain a deeper understanding of current processes, uncovering opportunities to improve, optimize, and automate.
Accelerate automation
efforts to expand digital transformation to more enterprise functions and teams by uncovering top automation opportunities.
Overcome bottlenecks
that consistently delay and reduce the number of processes completed by identifying everything that can be automated.
Achieve transparency
for the most complicated, drawn-out processes with unparalleled visibility into how business processes really work.
Improve compliance
and reduce risk by documenting exactly which actions are performed in a process to assess whether compliance standards are being met.
Assess scalability
of processes to meet growing business needs with insight into process components and dependencies.
How does process discovery work?
Process discovery works by leveraging state-of-the-art technologies such as computer vision, artificial intelligence (AI), machine learning (ML), and natural language processing (NLP) to continuously monitor and analyze digital interactions across all applications and departments within an organization. Without disrupting workflows, it generates a real-time, comprehensive map of every digital process throughout the enterprise.
Process discovery is nonintrusive and captures data quietly in the background. It requires zero integration, enabling barrier-free collection of valuable process data from every system in use, including modern and legacy applications such as ERP, CRM, HCM systems, and databases.
Collect process data
Capture process information across all systems and applications.
Clean and aggregate
Compile and transform process observations into structured information.
Discover and analyze
Interpret and contextualize granular process data into workflows.
Action with automation
Utilize insights to inform decisions and optimize automations.
What to look for in a process discovery solution.
When evaluating process discovery solutions, consider the importance of advanced AI capabilities in providing a granular view of every process detail as well as insights for prioritizing automation efforts.
Speed and accuracy
The ideal process discovery solution allows you to swiftly comprehend your business’s functions and operations. It provides 100% transparency, allowing you to uncover every minute detail about your business processes efficiently and securely.
AI-powered automation
Search for a solution that employs AI for discovering, prioritizing, and automating processes at an accelerated pace. The AI-powered tool can help significantly in generating swift automation development and fine-tuning, hence enabling ready-to-launch automations in less time.
Process transparency
Your chosen solution should provide a transparent, secure, and exhaustive view of where you need to focus your automation efforts. With data-driven insights, it should help pinpoint inefficiencies, unveil the optimal path for processes, and cut down the time to automation.
Advanced computer vision
Process discovery solutions should be equipped with state-of-the-art computer vision and AI capabilities to accurately capture intricate user details across diverse applications. This allows organizations to visualize their processes at a micro level for a better understanding.
Intuitive process visualizations
Your solution should articulate complex workflows through clear and dynamic process maps and flow graphs. This feature presents a broad, easy-to-understand visualization of end-to-end operations, aiding in effective process analysis.
Comprehensive process intelligence
Your chosen solution should offer advanced AI analysis of user actions to unearth hidden patterns, trends, and deviations in work processes. These actionable insights can assist in spotting high-impact opportunities for automation and improvement.
Data privacy controls
Your process discovery solution should give you power over the applications and domains included in data capture or filtration. It should have an automatic redaction feature for sensitive information to maintain data privacy. An effective process discovery solution should be able to comply with industry-specific regulations, adhere to GDPR and data privacy principles, including the encryption of sensitive information, and provide essentials-only cloud storage. Certifications to trust: SOC 1 Type 2, SOC 2 Type 2, ISO 27001, HITRUST, and ISO 22301.
Multi-pronged security
The process discovery solution you choose should provide robust, multi-tenant, cloud-native environments with data encryption and adherence to privacy compliance. Compliance with major industry data standards and security certifications is essential to ensure data protection. Look for security certifications such as ISO27001 and SOC 1 & 2 Type 2.
Process data analysis
Your process discovery solution should be capable of capturing, visualizing, and interpreting digital processes to assess, prioritize, and quicken automations. This feature is key in decoding and analyzing process data to guide decision-making and optimization.
Process discovery use cases by industry.
Discover where to optimize customer interactions, including onboarding customers, notifying them of new service options and features, and navigating through the process of changing or upgrading services.
Identify customer processes to automate, such as issuing payment reminders or requesting documentation for claims or policies. Find backend processes to automate, like resolving claims, formulating quotes, and determining discounts for premiums.
Speed up accounting workflows by identifying what to automate in managing payroll, completing tax forms, reconciling balance sheets, handling expenses, and ensuring orders are filled and invoices are paid.
Analyze talent acquisition tasks such as sending interview invitations and job offers, screening resumes, and performing background checks. Understand benefits workflows, including processing vacation requests and health insurance needs.
In contact centers, evaluate process efficiencies in onboarding and training, customer service workflows, and fetching and updating customer information across systems of record.
Increase efficiency and compliance with visibility into invoice processing, accounts payable/receivable, and expense management.
The evolution of process discovery.
The advance of process discovery technology has empowered businesses seeking to harness the power of Intelligent Automation.
Manual effort
Initially, process discovery was manual, relying on stakeholder input, workshops, and observation to map out processes. While slow and often limited to uncovering incomplete or inaccurate process models, these early efforts laid the groundwork for understanding the critical importance of accurate process mapping in automation.
Digital logs
Soon, tools began to leverage data logs from enterprise systems (like ERP and CRM) to reconstruct processes. Although more accurate, this approach still lacked process nuances and variations that were not reflected in digital logs. However, it marked a significant step forward by using technology to identify inefficiencies and automation opportunities more systematically.
Process performance
Process mining, by exploiting event logs, enabled visualizing and analyzing the performance of business processes. This offered a more detailed, accurate picture of business operations with insights into bottlenecks, deviations, and compliance issues, enriching both the scope and success of automation initiatives.
Intelligent process discovery
Harnessing AI enabled a quantum leap in process discovery. With AI-powered discovery and generative AI, organizations get a clear, secure, and complete view of processes, controlling for data privacy and pinpointing where to prioritize automation efforts to drive growth, efficiency, and innovation.
Understanding the stakeholders in process discovery.
A diverse range of stakeholders form the backbone of process discovery, helping businesses unlock its full potential by ensuring every step, from identifying to optimizing to automating, is aligned with business goals.
Process Engineers
The architects of business processes, these professionals are responsible for understanding and optimizing process efficiency and quality. Their core duties include enhancing workflows and designing processes that boost productivity.
Subject Matter Experts (SMEs)
These individuals possess specialized knowledge in a specific field or process. SMEs offer valuable insights into particular processes, significantly contributing to the accuracy of process mapping.
Data Analysts
As the name suggests, these practitioners analyze data, transforming it into meaningful business intelligence solutions and reports. Their analytical prowess is critical for spotting trends, identifying bottlenecks, and suggesting improvements.
Business Analysts
These experts adeptly harness data and analytics to align with business goals and objectives. They are instrumental in bridging the gap between IT and business needs, enabling smarter decision-making and strategic planning.
What are the outcomes of process discovery?
Process discovery reveals a lot about how an organization works. It uncovers bottlenecks, deviations, and compliance issues, providing data for companies to base their automation strategies on. With the integration of AI and machine learning technologies, process discovery has evolved to offer predictive and prescriptive analytics, empowering businesses with deeper operational insights and automation direction.
What to automate
Reduce time-to-value on your automation investment by uncovering automation-ready tasks and processes.
Where to refine deployments
Leverage your existing technology investments more efficiently by identifying where to finetune deployments.
Productivity hurdles
Maximize workforce productivity by revealing and resolving the workarounds and bottlenecks holding employees back.
Performance enhancements
Reduce operating expenses by acting on revealed opportunities to increase process performance and level of automation.
Transformation path
Optimize your business outcomes by leveraging process insights to transform for operational excellence at scale.
How process discovery fits within a complete Intelligent Automation platform.
Process discovery works best within an Intelligent Automation solution that supports the end-to-end automation journey, encompassing workforce management, systems integration, security, and scalability.
