Process Intelligence vs Process Mining: What’s the difference?

Process mining and process intelligence could, at first glance, be mistaken as interchangeable. Understandable, since both give you visibility over how your organization’s processes run. Process Intelligence is probably just a fancier name for process mining, you might think. But let us stop you there.

Process mining walked so Process Intelligence could run. All the work process mining tools do to create business-wide visibility has been something of a pathbreaker for Process Intelligence. So there are some simple but important differences to clear up, giving you a full understanding of the sophistication of Process Intelligence and the value it can offer your business.

Let’s start with the concept you’re probably more familiar with.

What is process mining?

Your familiarity with process mining is a safe bet – you’re on the Celonis website, after all. Perhaps you’ve bumped into our ‘For Dummies’ guide. And we also know that 70% of businesses are either already using process mining or exploring using it.

Here’s a quick summary for anyone brand new. Process mining is a widely-used technology to model, analyze, and optimize business processes. It provides an objective view of how processes run across systems, desktops, and departments. In doing so it helps teams improve processes that were originally designed to be linear but soon ended up like a bowl of spaghetti. Improvement does not only mean visibility, it includes enabling people to find and capture value in processes.

What does process mining do?

Now for the nitty gritty. Process mining uses data from your systems of record in the same way task mining collects desktop data from activities such as sending emails and opening spreadsheets. Think ERPs, CRMs, SCMs – basically anywhere you have data related to the running of your business.

Process mining therefore accounts for all the variants in your processes – from procurement to fulfillment. But the important thing to say here is that it’s real-time data. This means the process modeling isn’t just highly detailed, but lives and moves with your business.

Process mining is great for getting complete visibility over your processes, so you can begin to prioritize where to take action and how. It’s also one of the core technologies that makes up Process Intelligence, which enables you to improve processes and boost company performance. Let’s explore that in more detail.

What is Process Intelligence?

Process Intelligence is the tissue that connects the different parts of the business – the departments, the systems, the people. In doing so, it gives you a common language for how the business really runs, across every system and each and every department. Because it’s system agnostic and unbiased you get an objective view – the data doesn’t lie.

Teams use Process Intelligence to build on the visibility that process mining provides by enabling you to take easy, effective action. It’s here where the exciting stuff happens for process optimization and value realization. With informed decisions, you can effectively target and capture the value hiding in processes.

What does Process Intelligence do?

Process Intelligence gives you the power to see your processes and improve them. It goes beyond process mining to connect you to your processes, your teams to each other, and emerging technologies to your business fast. That’s why we call it the connective tissue of the enterprise.

1. It takes data from systems like your ERPs, CRMs, and Excel, and then uses process mining technology to turn that data into a living, system-agnostic digital twin of your end-to-end processes.

2. This is where it one-ups process mining. After the data is in, Process Intelligence uses specialized process improvement knowledge built up from thousands of implementations over the last decade, plus AI algorithms to show where value is hiding in your processes.

3. Finally, Process Intelligence gives you the tools to capture that value. For instance by empowering your people with easy-to-action insights, and by helping you effectively deploy technologies like AI and automation to improve your processes.

Being system-agnostic, it all works with what you currently use, without the worry of incompatibility or replacement. So the short answer is: it can do an awful lot.

At Celonis, we’ve seen Process Intelligence create billion-dollar free cash flow improvements by optimizing cash collection effectiveness; massive bottom-line and green-line savings thanks to reducing the distance traveled by delivery trucks; and double-digit reductions in cancelations by optimizing order fulfillment cycle times.

Why is Process Intelligence important?

Process Intelligence is a new class of intelligence that helps you get more ROI from your existing technologies and deploy new ones more effectively. You can feed Process Intelligence into technologies like automation and AI, giving them the context they need to be successfully deployed in the right places, in the right process.

By introducing a shared language for your departments, systems, and processes, Process Intelligence  creates a shared understanding for achieving organizational alignment and identifying value opportunities.

Read how PepsiCo used Process Intelligence to unlock millions and saved 1000s of hours.

• Read: What are Process Intelligence tools and how do they work? 

• Read: Process mapping vs process mining – what’s the difference? 

• Read: Process Intelligence vs. Business Intelligence: What's the difference?

• Watch: 'In the Process' videos on the world of process mining

• Demo: Intro to Celonis in just 20 minutes

Edward Baggaley

Content Marketing Lead

Edward writes about Celonis, its customers, partners, and product. He creates blogs - perhaps the one you’re reading - as well as ads, ebooks, keynotes, and advertorials. Newsweek, The Times, Time, and many B2B magazines have published his work.