Five process innovations that have revolutionized process mining

The success of every enterprise depends on the many thousands of business processes it has in place. The importance of these processes is only rivaled by their complexity. Even seemingly simple everyday tasks — like paying an invoice or shipping a product — can involve dozens of steps and be fiendishly complex to analyze.

But pioneering enterprises have begun to take control of their processes and, as a result, capture all sorts of value across their business operations. They’re ensuring processes run smoothly no matter how many departments and applications they weave through, or how many variations of process paths there might be.

These enterprises are working smarter than ever before. Their teams are collaborating and communicating more effectively. Sales are increasing while costs are being cut. Sustainability targets that seemed impossibly optimistic are suddenly within reach.

One secret to this success? Process mining — a technology that models, analyzes, and optimizes processes end-to-end. Process mining gives enterprises a comprehensive, objective, and data-driven view of their business processes. With this view they understand how processes actually run, and, correspondingly, how to use them to drive greater value.

Five new process mining innovations are pushing the capabilities of process mining further than ever before. These innovations enable enterprises to optimize their processes, resulting in significant improvements to their top, bottom, and green lines. The five innovations we’ll focus on here are:

1. Artificial intelligence

2. Object-centric process mining

3. Process mining apps

4. The Process Intelligence Graph

5. Sustainability reporting

Let’s explore each one.

1. Artificial intelligence meets process mining 

Generative artificial intelligence (GenAI) and large language models (LLMs) may offer new problem-solving potential for businesses. But to fulfill this potential, these models need to know how the enterprise runs. AI applications in the consumer world pull from an array of raw data sources (books, articles, posts) and contextual information. Wikipedia or news sites take these data sources, aggregate them and add any missing context. Job done.

In the enterprise world, there are plenty of raw data sources about how organizations operate (SAP, Oracle, Salesforce, ServiceNow etc.) But ways to contextualize this information are far more scarce. Without this business context, you can’t ask AI to flex its generative muscles and recommend operational improvements.

Process Intelligence fills this gap by providing AI the contextual data it needs to understand how processes interact and actually run​​. Without it, artificial intelligence lacks that crucial situational information around why processes run the way they do and, therefore, how they can be improved.

Simply put, it means you can ask an AI tool ‘how can I reduce customer invoice disputes in North America?’ and get an answer.

For years, Celonis has been using AI and machine learning to help customers improve processes. For example, the Duplicate Checking app uses ML algorithms to detect duplicate invoices even when the data they contain doesn’t match exactly. This has led to millions of dollars saved annually for hundreds of customers.

The Celonis Process Copilot, meanwhile, is a GenAI companion that simplifies and accelerates the process of identifying value opportunities across the business. The Copilot uses Natural Language Processing (NLP) so non-technical users can interact with the Celonis platform easily, investigate processes, and receive suggestions on how to improve performance.

2. Object-centric process mining: the next frontier

Object-centric process mining (OCPM) represents a step-change in process understanding. It can help enterprises unearth deeper and more contextual insights about processes. Before OCPM, process mining worked by extracting event data(for example, order creations and invoice payments) from the information systems that run business operations. Interactions between objects (for example, a sales order or an invoice) were not captured. In other words, traditional process mining only allows you to look at individual processes in isolation, usually within a single department, and tracks the progress of a single object through that process. 

In reality, business processes are interconnected, with a variety of interdependencies, and usually span multiple departments. They often involve a number of different objects that are related to one another.  

OCPM is a giant step forward because it visualizes these interconnections, revealing the one-to-many and many-to-many relationships between multiple objects. So, rather than individual processes, insights for end-to-end workflows can be generated. This allows you to answer questions like: “How can we better align sales and production to reduce the number of shipments?” And “how can we reduce delayed shipments by avoiding peak loads in production?”

OCPM helps you understand the impact that any change within one process or department will have across the rest of the business. It helps you find value not just within individual processes, but at the intersection points of those processes. OCPM offers many advantages over traditional process mining, including:

• Data extraction only needs to be done once, which allows you to choose the view, the objects, and the activities you want to analyze.

• Interactions between objects are captured in object-centric event logs.

• With cross-functional, end-to-end workflow event logs and process models, process insights have greater depth and more accurate context.

Professor Wil van der Aalst – widely known as the Godfather of Process Mining — explains: “Simply put, we are moving from a two dimensional, static view of our processes and organizations to a three dimensional dynamic view. This added perspective allows us to look at processes from any angle, and there is no need to create new event logs for different questions. 

Prof van de Aalst predicts OCPM will be one of the most important drivers of business performance and competitive edge in the 2020s.

• Watch: Object-centric process mining explained in this on-demand webinar

• Read more about object-centric process mining here

3. Augmenting process mining with apps

Process mining technology can now be augmented by out-of-the-box applications designed to uncover value in various business areas. Apps can turbocharge value-extraction efforts — creating rapid cash impact, and helping to drive transformation. 

Many of the apps in the Celonis Marketplace have been developed alongside industry leaders such as SAP, IBM, and Accenture. Apps include: 

• The Material Allocation app is an Inventory Management app that helps businesses improve material availability, reduce operating costs, and free up working capital. It’s a powerful way to prevent stockouts and reduce excess stock.

• The Sailfin Accounts Receivable (AR) app suite empowers AR teams to operate more efficiently. It optimizes AR management to improve productivity and can help enterprises realize millions of dollars in savings.

• The Shipping Emissions Reduction App allows businesses to embed sustainability in their daily logistics operations. It pinpoints the source of emissions and sets out practical steps to reduce carbon footprints. The app, developed with Climatiq, measures shipping emissions, simulates the most sustainable modes of transport, and tackles emissions hotspots and inefficiencies.

• The Sustainable Spend Management App helps procurement teams to evaluate each supplier’s sustainability metrics and meet regulatory and customer requirements.

4. Process Intelligence Graph

With so many processes involving multiple applications operating across multiple departments, disconnects have opened up at the heart of many enterprises. When you factor in those oh-so-common inter-departmental issues, and the fact that so many systems don’t play well together, it’s not surprising that so much potential value is left hidden in complex processes.

Enterprises have been crying out for a connective tissue that helps them understand how objects and events interact, how processes are interconnected, how their business actually runs, and how it can run even better. The Celonis Process Intelligence Graph is the answer. It’s an innovation at the heart of the Celonis platform that delivers real-time process observability – capturing the movements of every in-flight process across the enterprise.

This intelligence lets you orchestrate your processes; helping your teams make the right decisions and take the right actions, triggering workflows or process steps based on intelligent process insights.

The Celonis platform delivers a unique Process Intelligence Graph for every customer. The graph is built by extracting and standardizing process data from a variety of data sources. Crucially, it neither replaces nor disrupts existing applications and systems. 

5. Sustainability reporting

Organizations across the world are under unprecedented social and commercial pressure to meet ever-stricter sustainability and carbon-reduction targets. For example, the Corporate Sustainability Reporting Directive (CSRD) now compels large businesses that operate in the EU to report on their sustainability. Meanwhile, the new Climate Corporate Data Accountability Act, requires businesses in California that exceed $1 billion in annual revenue to disclose their emissions from 2026 onwards.

Meeting and exceeding sustainability metrics takes collaboration across multiple teams. Thanks to Process Intelligence, businesses can automatically access and enrich data to reveal actual business emissions, excesses, and violations. It’s easier than ever to measure emissions continuously and granularly, identify opportunities to reduce them, and track progress against targets.

Supply chain teams, for example, can intelligently allocate orders to the most sustainable suppliers, and often find they can reduce emissions order by order. Meanwhile, they tend to get buy-in more easily for sustainability initiatives by showing how they contribute to the achievement of business goals. In this way, sustainability practices can be embedded into everyday business processes.

Celonis’ Material Emissions App is a great example of the progress being made in this area. It bridges the gap between sustainability and procurement teams, empowering them to manage complexity, work better together and ultimately reduce Scope 3 emissions. 

• Get the free Realist’s Guide to Sustainable Order Management

Process mining innovation – there’s so much more to come

Process mining is a transformational technology in and of itself. But process innovations are multiplying its power, helping businesses capture endless value in the processes that drive everything they do every day.

Get to know Process Intelligence by taking a scroll here.

Or start with Process Mining for Dummies, written in that classic easy to understand, hard to forget style.

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.