What do executives really think on process technologies and how the best organisations are transforming

Becoming an insight-driven organisation is essential for organisational transformation from reactive to proactive. This can be achieved with Process Bionics which focuses on the ability to re-engineer, re-imagine and re-invent processes to realise rapid process optimisation and deliver end-to-end cost reduction, revenue, and risk efficiencies.

As part of our Latest global Intelligent Automation report (2022), we worked with 479 executives to understand their experience with process mining, task mining, and simulation and execution management tools. We asked executives to visualise where they want their business to be in the next 3 years and what they would need to achieve this, with the following findings

1. Process Bionics and AI technologies are being involved in enabling strategic growth

The results of the Intelligent Automation 2022 report were intriguing with a high proportion of respondents stating they are planning to invest in artificial intelligence, process monitoring and  process mining (Figure 1). This highlights how critically important processes are,. Process Bionics enables organisations to intelligently investigate processes for optimisation, simplification and suggest solutions for implementation beyond automation.

We also saw that 82 per cent of all respondents agreed that using process mining improves outcomes compared to not using it. However, only one in five organisations surveyed are currently using it. 

Figure 1. Emerging intelligent automation technologies

2. Challenges to overcome

However, while there are vast benefits to be gained from using process intelligence there are still  significant challenges. These challenges include a lack of a clear vision, IT readiness, skills and understanding of the monitoring capabilities and are key barriers to implementing process intelligence. To overcome these issues and achieve the full business potential, we suggest establishing Process Bionics initiatives as part of wider improvement and transformational programs. Setting specific and strong initiatives or clearly defining a company’s strategic objective and key performance indicators (KPIs), it enables digital transformations to identify where it is best to start.

3. Where executives are finding value and ROI

Key benefit leavers are realised when using Process Bionics as shown by executive responses in figure 2 below. Including increased productivity, process transparency and improved decision making.

Figure 2. Benefits of using Process Bionics

To maximise the return on investment of Process Bionics initiatives as part of the digital transformation, consider the following:

• What target operating model is required for your organisation
• How fragmented and disjointed your processes are even with a quick manual review
• The quality of your data and if you have a golden data source within your organisation
• Your data architecture and if having an onsite, cloud or a hybrid approach is best for you
• The impact of ‘Age of With’, humans and intelligent solutions cohesively working together, to truly reimagine your business or customer journey.

Considering these points helps focus the shift to become outcome driven and know what you want to achieve as part of the initiative.

Evolving towards insight driven organisation: Know Your Organisation (KYO)

Based on industry analysis, Deloitte have created a Process Bionics maturity curve characterised by four main phases of maturity (figure 3), with each phase delivering increasing rates of return from investment. Organisations are at the data-led discovery stage with some having moved to ‘Always On’, Continuous Monitoring. However, there are still organisations the first stage , manual discovery and only a few who have achieved the enterprise monitoring stage.

Figure 3. Deloitte Process Bionics maturity curve

Stage 1: Manual discovery

This is the most established method for many companies and is the method by which processes are assessed through time consuming and subjective workshops with and process improvement insights.

Stage 2: Data-led discovery

We see many organisations are currently at this stage but are also becoming stuck as they try to scale to the real time insights stage. This is because when attempting to operationalise there are many hurdles to overcome.

Data-led discovery leverages digitalised process diagnostic and execution management tools to assess large volumes of data and enable insightful process improvement discussions with Subject Matter Experts (SME’s). Many organisational processes are disjointed and difficult to assess end-to-end. However, leveraging task and process mining, even in an ‘offline’ capacity, can support your business in overcoming the current fragmentations and realise your process potential.

This approach supports executives as it turns insight into action quickly. Due to the empirical data method, it also enables process owners to identify other solutions beyond automation.

In our experience, the average value of opportunities identified increased 3 to 5 times due to the empirical approach for effective processes.

Stage 3: End-to-end monitoring (always on)

The ‘Always On’, Continuous Discovery capability is a key step for companies to realise enterprise-wide monitoring and enablement. As the space of process mining matures we are beginning to see more and more clients obtain this capability.

End-to-End monitoring is also known as ‘Always On’, turns the mass of insights produced from mining into digital assets that can support real time strategic decision making. By continually assessing process metrics, Key Performance Indicators (KPIs), and resources, End-to-End monitoring provides business with an empirical view on the entire operation at both a macro and micro level.

A benefit of process mining is opportunities can be identified future deployment and placed in a backlog.

An additional key benefit of ‘Always On’ is that of digital twins and true transparency for processes. Combined with the ability to forecast operations, End-to-end monitoring enables rapidly adaptive process responses to quickly become the norm.

Stage 4: Enterprise Monitoring

This capability is integrated and essential to business functions as it enables organisations to fully ‘Know your Organisation’ across multiple functions with supporting operating model to maximise potential. In real time and the future.

While few companies are at this stage yet, we see huge growth potential of the value it can realise for organisations.

Numerous organisations are still at the early stages of the Process Bionics maturity curve however many are making investments to move to enterprise monitoring and enable business to transform.