Posted: 26 May 2022 5 min. read

Operationalising Process Mining to accelerate business transformation

Inefficient processes cost businesses time, money and energy. Process mining offers business leaders the opportunity to uncover and fix hidden inefficiencies across their operations, improving business performance and reducing waste.

In this special collaborative blog with our partner Celonis, we’ll get Celonis’ view on the latest frontier in process improvement technologies and look at how organisations can successfully operationalise them to drive sustainable decision-making. To bring this to life, we’ll also explore how a large German airline uses process analytics and execution management to accelerate its sustainability goals.

Making sense of it all: what value is process mining delivering for businesses right now?

The process mining market is experiencing rapid growth. Overloaded with data in disparate systems, companies are turning to process mining to cope with the complexities of interconnectivity and higher than ever process volumes. Research by Forrester and execution management experts Celonis found that 71% of employees use 10 or more business applications to carry out their primary business function. Meanwhile, fewer than half of decision makers have high or complete visibility into their business processes.

Process and task mining technologies offer decision makers an integrated real-time view of their operations. This enables them to pinpoint inefficiencies, reduce waste and turn insights into actionable improvements.

Deloitte’s 2021 Global Process Mining Survey found 84% of organisations are seeing value from their investment, particularly in terms of increased process transparency and operational insights. Yet when it comes to acting on that visibility and driving continuous improvement, less than half of process mining adopters are targeting process redesign or identifying automation opportunities as one of their top expected outcomes. 

It is becoming increasingly important that businesses move away from tweaking isolated processes and instead focus on process improvement to support true digital transformation. To tap into the full potential the technology, Deloitte and Celonis have teamed up their technical capabilities and deep industry expertise to help clients reimagine their business from top to bottom. 

Celonis: Operationalising process mining and analytics into ‘Always On’ 

Process mining is key to obtaining an objective view of your business processes. Information is power, but only when it’s up-to-date, accurate and combined with the tools to drive change. As the founders of commercial process mining, Celonis is now pioneering the new evolution of ‘Always On’ business intelligence software with its market-leading Execution Management System (EMS).

The Celonis EMS offers decision makers a continuously updating X-ray, in real time, of their enterprise’s processes. It reveals inefficiencies, and then provides advanced analytics, AI and Machine Learning tools to drive improvements, redesign processes and deploy automation. For example, the EMS can quantify how much inefficiencies are impacting the organisation, as well as suggest process improvements and use simulation to test their effectiveness. The Action Engine capability can then execute on these insights automatically, as well as continuously monitor and optimise processes. 

Deploying this impressive ‘always on’ technology requires investment to integrate and scale, as well a fundamental change in mindset to place data and insights at the heart of decision making and to subsequently transform and embed continuous improvement and agility.  

Operationalising KPIs on climate performance & sustainability: How a German Airline uses process analytics to optimise fuel usage

We’re in a decisive decade to act against climate change; the 2022 Deloitte CxO Sustainability Report calls upon business leaders to approach climate metrics with the same rigour as other key operating metrics. Process analytics offers a unique opportunity for management to audit their organisation’s climate performance, as well as identify risks and opportunities. 

Data accessibility is crucial to ensuring the right changes can be made. For many organisations, embedding climate considerations into every part of their operations will require a fundamental business transformation, as well as a mindset shift throughout the organisation. 

Sustainability is an integral part of the digital transformation strategy for a German Airline. The airline has built a dedicated Centre of Excellence (COE) for process digitisation to monitor and continuously improve efficiency across their operations, unlocking simultaneous financial and environmental benefits.

Together with Deloitte, the airline COE has successfully scaled process analytics to optimise their complex ground service operations. One part of this is the fuel-to-order process. Before take-off, the pilot receives a fuel usage recommendation based on historical data and changing variables, such as weather conditions and the estimated flight time. Using Celonis, this German Airline gained full visibility into this process and discovered that pilots were ordering three times as much fuel as previous estimates suggested. This over-ordering was resulting in over-consumption and excessive CO2 emissions. Using a digital process twin, the airline is working to get estimated and actual fuel amounts as close as possible – empowering their pilots to make more sustainable fuel decisions through more accurate and up-to-date information as close to departure as possible. Transforming the German airline into an insight-driven organisation as they move from a reactive to proactive position.

Aim high: the future of digital transformation

Process mining is the ideal platform to monitor business performance for operating and sustainability metrics. The keystone for digital transformation is when organisations can successfully convert these insights into actions to drive business and social value.

The new evolution of process improvement technologies are equipped with the intelligent tools and ‘Always On’ capabilities to support organisations towards continuous optimisation. By supporting strategic decision-making in real-time and providing next-generation automation, execution management solutions help create a truly hybrid workforce enhanced by the ‘Age of With’.

As a Celonis Platinum Partner, Deloitte brings world-class capabilities and technical experts in Intelligent Automation to help you implement and scale the very best in process improvement technology across your enterprise.

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