End-to-end process transparency enables companies to boost impact in all efforts
Topic: Operational Excellence
When we recently spoke to 100 executives about end-to-end process optimisation, 86% said that their process mining delivers unmistaken business value, and 52% said that process optimisation is actively supported by the C-suite. Increasingly, COOs and other operations executives are taking advantage of new technology to x ray the organisation – and using the insights to refocus the entire business towards value creation.
From identifying operational improvements and detecting root causes to battling complexity and boosting impact. In 2023, data-driven, end-to-end process transparency continues to be a large untapped opportunity for companies who are committed to maintaining their competitive advantage and market leadership.
Recently, we spoke to 100 COOs and other executives from leading organisations across EMEA, North America, South America and APAC to understand more about how leading companies are currently orchestrating their continuous process improvement – and how they view this important discipline in light of increasing complexity, market uncertainty and the constant battle to take advantage of new technology to keep up with competition.
Here are some of the key insights from the survey:
- Business value creation: First, process transparency remains the number one value driver among the respondents, and process mining can deliver important opportunity identification and tangible savings potential. For example, 86% of the executives said in the survey that process mining adds significant value to their company.
- C-level agenda: 52% of the leaders surveyed agreed that their process mining projects have active support from the C-suite, leading to faster turnaround, increased impact and greater buy-in from all stakeholders.
- Synergies with large transformation projects: Process mining initiatives tied to large transformation projects are likely to be more successful and can help drive even more value. For example, 70% of executives in the survey agreed that they are using process mining in conjunction with automation and wider digitalisation efforts.
- Companies invest in human capital: End-to-end process transparency demands new roles and dedicated resources, sometimes centres of excellence. 58% of the companies in the survey now have fully dedicated process mining resources with an average team size of 15 FTEs.
- Process mining goes AI: Prediction models and AI are at the top of the list of technologies that are being used in combination with process mining. From simple process automation to drastic changes in business or operating models, AI is already becoming a key enabler for operational excellence and future growth.
- The future of process mining: With new technology, process mining as a discipline continues to evolve drastically. For example, 96% of the organisations surveyed plan to extend process mining initiatives in the future including enterprise-wide rollout of pilot projects or proofs of concepts, many within AI.
A new way of striving for impact in all efforts
Historically, companies and external advisors have been working for a long time to improve structures and processes through various approaches. However, it is largely thanks to rapidly advancing technology that we now have completely new analytical possibilities, paving the way for comprehensive transparency, real-time control, data-driven root cause analysis and adherence checks against defined target processes.
Examples of what technology can do include end-to-end actual process visualisation, process status on transactional level, process conformity check with plan vs. actual deviation report, insights of systematic and individual process bottlenecks, interactive drill-down function for root cause analyses, multi-dimensional and dynamic KPI analyses and benchmarking of business processes again competition.
However, process optimisation is much more than just getting the right insights. Today’s COOs are increasingly charged with the difficult task of realigning the whole business towards high impact collaboration and value-creation through customer-centric processes and solutions.
In fact, I would argue that in these times of massive disruptive forces in operating models and technologies, there has never been a more important time to achieve visibility into the end-to-end processes and thus get this kind of “x-ray” of the business, which is absolutely vital to accelerate operational benefits and re-think the business to thrive in the digital economy.
I think we can all agree that today’s businesses face a rapidly evolving landscape, including a variety of new operating models, changing organisational priorities, volatile supply chains, customer pressures, evolving corporate cultures and disruptive technologies. More and more often, our clients need to navigate through undiscovered regions of the process landscape: atypical extreme cases, outliers, inefficiencies and other patterns. In process optimisation, the middle way does not always lead to the final objective. Instead of statistically overlooking special cases, it is precisely these that have to be searched for and scrutinised. Process mining in 2023 is a true end-to-end, insight-driven approach. If done well, it can result in a huge increase in efficiency and impact across all areas of a company’s operations.
You can read the full survey here.
