5 Things Business Processes May Reveal at Year End Closing

End of year acrobatics — it’s the juggling act many of us do in the final weeks of the year to close off loose ends in both our personal and professional lives.

For retailers, December is huge. Telcos may experience increased usage during certain periods. Banks may have a slowdown on mortgage applications, and global logistics may suffer from extended employee vacation in certain regions.

These lulls and spikes in activity put your business process buoyancy to the test, while also revealing interesting insights which you can later apply to improve the processes in the new year.

Here’s what to look for in end of year business process performance, and how Process Mining helps reveal these findings.

(Want to find out the real numbers behind the application of Process Mining? Read our collection of ROI success stories from our clients.)

1. Process Shortcomings (and Strengths)

Amid the end of year rush, processes may break.

An influx of orders, invoices, or purchases will challenge the system and poke holes in its weak spots. Yet, short term pains can lead to long term gains, if process maps are analyzed with an eye for optimization.

Pay special attention to workload distribution and how teams handle a high volume of tasks. Are bottlenecks caused by IT glitches? Is there a high volume of rework delays?

Look at the data and create a plan for improvement.

2. Top Performers and Retraining Opportunities

Is a department or team causing delays? Or perhaps a team stood out for their speed and accuracy. Process Mining connects the dots between process stages and the people behind them.

Data context is essential here.

If one senior employee is supporting a team of under-trained colleagues, it may appear that the senior employee is the bottleneck. Upon closer look at the data, and with the context of their seniority, you may find they were responsible for a disproportionate number of complex tasks.

Process Mining, together with contextual data analysis, will reveal top performers, as well as opportunities to retrain.

Remember: Process Mining revelations should be viewed in a positive light, and not as a tool for finding bad apples. Position Process Mining findings as the path forward, not as a guide for punishing past actions.

3. Deviations from the Happy Path

A step off the happy path isn’t a problem on it’s own, but it’s something to pay closer attention to.

As sales spike or as employees leave their stations for an extended holiday, processes may deviate from expected paths.

Was a temporarily absent employee holding things together with activities outside the documented process path? How do other people manage the same process in different ways?

Deviations from the happy path may also surface due to a load of new customers unfamiliar with your product or service. Learn from out-of-the-ordinary requests, but don’t get caught up on turning things upside down for one anomaly.

Be strategic about a process change.

4. Rework Issues

Rework happens as processes age.

New process steps, IT systems, forms and team members are added with little reflection on the process at large.

Process Mining will show exactly how much wasted effort is being spent on rework and support managers in deciding how to eliminate such waste.

Perhaps the answer is simply better communication. Point C didn’t realize how they impacted point G and sharing these findings with the team will eliminate the rework. Or, perhaps, rework will highlight areas ready for Robotic Process Automation.

5. Automation Opportunities

Even if your automation journey is already underway (as 58% of executives indicate), Process Mining can uncover further candidates for automation and improvement of high-volume, repetitive processes.

By extracting a large volume of data and mapping the as-is process route, areas of repetition better suited for robots are highlighted.

Are Your Processes Prepared for 2020?

Overall, Process Mining on end of year process data can indicate how prepared your team, systems, and processes are for 2020.

Think of end of year Process Mining as a way to clean out your closet and make room for new business in the new year.

Minit is here to help you on your Process Mining journey in 2020. Get in touch with our team today to book a demo or take a product tour.

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The article was originally published on the Minit.io blog.

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