Process Mining

Process mining – Celonis case study

The financial industry is about much more than just processing numbers or anonymous financial transactions. What makes banks successful in the long term today is their interaction with the customer. They expect simple, fast and transparent transactions. However, internal processes need to be perfectly integrated and coordinated to ensure this. PostFinance recognised this challenge and relies on Celonis Process Mining for analysing and optimising its business processes, especially when it comes to account opening, loan processing and purchasing.

(Source: Celonis; Process Mining Story PostFinance: Optimizing the Customer Journey in Banking; YouTube; 2018)

The necessary data is obtained from log files that essentially document the individual processing steps of specific business processes. These days, the corresponding data – digital footprints – are found in every IT system. ERP systems such as SAP and Navision, CRM systems such as Microsoft Dynamics or Salesforce, service management systems such as Atlassian Jira or ServiceNow and collaboration systems such as Microsoft SharePoint or Atlassian Confluence in particular contain large quantities of data that can be utilised.

Where is process mining used?

Process mining is now used in every industry. It can be used to streamline business processes, reduce costs, improve customer satisfaction and gain competitive advantages everywhere from healthcare, banking and insurance, telecommunications and energy, to transportation, logistics, government and administration.

How does process mining contribute to the greatest possible transparency in business processes?

Log files are data that essentially provide information as to when which activity was carried out by whom. This basic information is enough to organise the processes in terms of their chronological and organisational order and to identify long-running ones and/or repetitions. The business processes are made transparent and efficiency can be increased by optimising the relevant areas.

How does the customer benefit?

• Complete transparency by visualising all current processes.
• Using the original/real transaction data means objective decisions can be made based on facts, which means no modelling or simulation is carried out – the processes are automatically reconstructed in the same way as they happened in real terms.
• Previously unknown process weaknesses and compliance risks are identified.
• Processes are continuously measured and monitored, meaning they can be optimised, harmonised and standardised throughout the entire company (end-to-end).
• The number of manual interventions is reduced and automation is increased.
• SAP S/4 HANA migrations are accelerated.
• Process quality and reliability are improved.
• Profitability is increased.