Study shows that process intelligence is crucial to maximise efficiency and productivity, both critical to weather volatile markets and disrupted supply chains.
HFS Research has published a study commissioned by Celonis and IBM Consulting that shows approximately 90% of surveyed enterprise leaders are suffering from supply chain disruption and more than 75% cited the volatile market conditions marked by inflation and recession as having a major impact on their businesses.
The study also highlights process intelligence as the most effective way to weather these macroeconomic challenges.
The findings show that process intelligence, specifically process mining adoption, is driven by customer service (56% in production or scaled up), IT (53% in production or scaled up) and supply chain (55% in production or scaled up).
Further data from the research demonstrates that businesses believe in the power of process intelligence:
- Process intelligence is the number one emerging tech investment expected to impact process transformation today.
- 88% of enterprise leaders expect increases in process intelligence investments despite the harsh economic climate.
- More than 95% of organisation leaders see combining visibility into cross-functional operational performance and monitoring as a game-changer.
- About half of enterprise leaders are still exploring ways to become more predictive with their data.
Process transformation for efficiency, productivity and lowered costs
Process transformation efforts have come to the forefront for many organisations, who are focusing on bottom-line metrics – specifically efficiency and productivity gains, as well as cost reductions.
The study findings highlight that process intelligence has become the number one way to address process debt and that ERP alone cannot do it.
ERP modernisation has often been hyped as the prescription for every ailment related to business processes, but roughly only a third of organisations (36%) believe it is essential today.
Designing and running business processes that can thrive despite uncertain macroeconomic conditions will require enterprises to address their process debt, which HFS Research sees as a corollary to technical debt.
Process debt is the creation of awkward (and often manual) processes that are designed to buttress aging technologies and that must be redesigned and modernised to improve business operations.
Infusing intelligence and predictability with digital process twins
Process intelligence has been a good starting point for diagnostics and addressing process problems or process debt.
The study shows that process intelligence, implemented atop digital process twins, can deliver multi-functional data and insights.
This will help business leaders predictively manage business uncertainties through digital command centres.
Digital process twins (also known simply as ‘digital twins’) enable multi-process and multi-function visibility, as well as blend multiple datasets, augmenting process intelligence which was traditionally more focused on impact on individual business functions.
Digital twins enable scenario modelling and planning, as well as stress-testing and simulations – allowing for better future-planning and addressing uncertainties.
“Process mining provides unparalleled visibility into how a business runs, uncovering value opportunities hidden by complexity within and across processes,” said Prof. Dr Wil van der Aalst, Chief Scientist at Celonis.
“Process mining, particularly object-centric process mining, is foundational for analysing a digital twin. With digital twins building on OCPM, teams can analyse multiple processes simultaneously.
“Digital twins can effectively be used to enable quick wins, advanced simulation and expert decision-making, and – in an uncertain macroeconomic climate – help organisations to look forward and prepare for any kinds of uncertainties through a digital command centre.”
New horizons: External exchanges According to the study, the potential for external collaboration with shared process data exchanges is on the horizon for ambitious businesses that want to seek entirely new sources of value.
An example of this might be a CPG company or a retailer exchanging inventory and payment data for mutual decision-making and action-taking benefits – in other words, looking for new sources of value through data exchanges.
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