As more and more organisations seek to roll out Intelligent Automation at an enterprise scale, many are coming to the realisation that they also need to standardise and optimise their processes to fully unlock all the available benefits. This realisation is in turn driving a requirement for technologies such as Process Mining and Task Mining; but what are these two technologies and how do they differ?

Process Mining

A major blocker for many organisations attempting to deploy Intelligent Automation at scale is the identification of suitable candidate processes and the subsequent creation of an implementation roadmap. This is where Process Mining can add immense value.

Process mining tools interrogate the event logs of key enterprise systems to highlight the steps undertaken in order to complete a specific process. The best tools combine these digital footprints with powerful analysis techniques to clearly present the as-is process along with its variants, even suggesting opportunities to optimise and automate.

The benefits of Process Mining are not limited to highlighting automation opportunities but can also directly increase employee experience and customer satisfaction via improved resource allocation.

Task Mining

While Process Mining is a powerful tool for gaining insight into enterprise level processes, Task Mining operates at a desktop level to discover and analyse the tasks that users perform in between taking part in enterprise level processes. This is achieved via the installation of a local agent on each desktop which records user interactions (keystrokes, mouse clicks, etc) and combines this with context recognition to understand how tasks are executed and the variations that exist across teams. (Data privacy and related issues always are taken into account before doing this.)

This brings into focus opportunities for automation that would be missed if using Process Mining alone. Many of the automation opportunities highlighted by Task Mining are good candidates for citizen developers, being by their nature shorter and less complex than those captured through process mining software.

Unlocking Value

As previously mentioned, both Process Mining and Task Mining can independently provide immediate benefits by informing improved resource allocation, however, to maximise the potential value these tools can provide, they should be viewed as individual elements within a larger operational excellence strategy.

Combining Process Mining and Task Mining tools such as Celonis, Minit or UiPath Process Gold with intelligent automation tools like RPA, Chatbots and digital intelligence provides a potent mix of discovery, analysis and execution capabilities. This is increasingly allowing organisations to move seamlessly from identification of improvement opportunities to delivering real time enhancements and efficiencies.

To learn more about how process mining and task mining can help unlock greater value within your organisation ask our team.