Every event that occurs inside IT environment should be recorded in a log -a digital “footprint” of the actions that take place while business operations are carried out. However, gathering this data is useless if you don’t review the event logs to figure out what’s really going on in the system.
The utilization of event log data in order to monitor, analyze, and optimize your business processes is known as process mining. Business process management (BPM) has traditionally been a time-consuming and difficult discipline that necessitates a considerable deal of human input and research. Process mining, on the other hand, skips the whiteboards and spreadsheets and goes straight to the source: the location of your event.
Process mining can swiftly grasp the general picture of your business processes while also diving down into bottlenecks and inefficiencies that need to be addressed through automated surveying and analysis. Process mining can be beneficial to businesses of many sizes and industries, including banking, retail, healthcare, and telecommunications.
Process mining is a solution to this problem. You receive insight into how your IT systems genuinely perform thanks to process mining’s real-time data processing capability. From roadmaps and strategic planning to installation, maintenance, and monitoring, you can use your newfound knowledge throughout the SAP life cycle. The following are some of the advantages of process mining for SAP:
- Process mining provides a quicker return on investment for corporations. Process mining insights can help companies shorten their planning and implementation timelines while also allowing for smarter, faster decision-making
- Greater objectivity: Traditional business process management exposes your firm to the risk of human bias and assumptions that don’t fully reflect reality. Process mining is a data-driven, unbiased approach to BPM that aids firms in moving forward
- Reduced business risk: Far too many companies suffer from IT performance issues and crashes that could have been averted if they had paid attention to the warning indicators. Process mining assists companies in anticipating problems and taking steps to reduce the chance of a critical failure
SAP’s Process Insights seeks to assist clients in streamlining their operations by reporting on the speed and efficiency of existing business processes before comparing them to 300 key performance indicators (KPIs) derived from aggregated SAP customer data.
Process mining software examines enterprise data sources to provide customers with a more complete picture of how their processes are running, where bottlenecks exist, and where efficiencies can be found. Customers can uncover inefficient business processes and chances to automate them when using robotic process automation (RPA) software, according to vendors.
With the acquisitions of business process management software supplier Signavio in January and RPA vendor Contextor in 2018, SAP now has all the pieces in place to model, mine, and ultimately streamline those processes for customers.
The agreement was revealed during a virtual event for the introduction of Rise with SAP, a new set of subscription services designed to help SAP’s customers evolve into intelligent enterprises by replacing legacy technology and processes with cloud-based systems and cutting-edge tools. Companies must become more adaptable, data-driven, and robust to respond swiftly to market changes. The deal’s terms were not disclosed.
Rise with SAP services will include Signavio’s process mining software. Thousands of procedures exist in most big SAP ERP systems, many of which have grown obsolete as business requirements have evolved over time. The Signavio process mining program crawls through an organization’s business systems, identifying inefficient, broken, or unnecessary processes.
According to SAP CEO Christian Klein during the virtual event’s keynote, the addition of Signavio’s software allows SAP clients to inject intelligence into their business processes on every level, from design and analysis to automation using workflow AI or RPA.
Signavio isn’t the only company selling process mining software. Celonis, situated in Munich and with a long history of working with SAP, has also aided in the growth of the process mining and intelligence software sector.
According to Reetika Fleming, vice president of research at HFS Research, a global consultancy based in Cambridge, England that focuses on emerging technologies, both companies have done well in creating process mining and intelligence tools that drill down to the root of processes and determine what to do with them.
This made Signavio and Celonis potential SAP acquisition candidates, but it appears that Signavio was the better choice. Signavio was a lot less expensive. Celonis has a significant market capitalization, therefore is not expected to be bought out very soon. It was probably way too much money for SAP to invest in Celonis..
Aside from the cost, SAP’s acquisition of Signavio was a “no-brainer” because of follow two use cases:
The first is to search for process inefficiencies in ERP system, identify bottlenecks, and restructure processes like order-to-cash and procurement. The second is assisting IT teams with system migrations, such as S/4HANA migrations. Signavio assists IT in determining what the landscape looks like now with the processes in place, as well as how they should look in the new systems. Rise with SAP is all about assisting clients in understanding why they need to become intelligent enterprises, but in order to do so, they must first assess their current business process landscape.
It’s not only about comprehending the process; it’s also about enhancing it and then automating it. In a digital transition, you want to achieve just that. You don’t want to just speed up every single procedure by automating it. It must be better, otherwise you’ll just be speeding up the terrible processes — and who wants that?
