With rising costs, shrinking personnel, and towering inflation, automation is supposed to manifest its worth across different industries. After all, automation helps businesses do more with less – it helps boost productivity, accelerate process execution, and free up resources for other cognitive tasks. But is RPA doing what it is supposed to do?

Not exactly. According to research, anywhere between 30 and 50 percent of RPA projects fall by the wayside. So, does that mean RPA is not the answer anymore? Well, RPA is still the answer. The only thing is that it has to be coupled with process mining to enable organizations to tap into its untapped value.

In this explainer, we will dive deep into how process mining and RPA can help your business uncover massive value. First, let us explain what RPA and process mining are.

RPA And Process Mining Explained

RPA – or robotic process automation – is software technology that enables companies to automate repetitive and mundane tasks. RPA bots can perform different tasks, including data entry, report generation, and record maintenance. By doing these tasks, RPA bots help employees focus on strategic work. RPA mimics human interactions with software apps; this way, it can work with existing business systems without making too many changes to a company’s technology stack. RPA’s popularity has soared because it helps businesses automate routine tasks to streamline operations and minimize costs.

Process mining, on the other hand, helps a business evaluate and optimize business processes. It includes assessing event logs that software applications generate. Assessing these logs helps businesses figure out how processes are executed while identifying inefficiencies, reducing costs, and finding bottlenecks. This data can eventually be used to enhance process efficiency and customer satisfaction. Process mining tools leverage cutting-edge data visualization techniques and advanced algorithms to gain insights into complicated business processes. These insights help businesses identify key businesses areas for improvement. Moreover, process mining has become increasingly important as businesses look to optimize their processes and gain a competitive edge in today’s cutthroat environment.

Now, you are aware of RPA and process mining – so let us understand how the latter compliments automation outcomes.

Process Mining Helps Bring Incredible Scalability And Governance To RPA

Historically, RPA and process mining have not been seen as complementary. It is because they were developed by different vendors to serve different purposes. In general, process mining has been viewed as an org-wide IT investment – whereas RPA is more of an ad-hoc purchase made by specific departments. However, now, business leaders are finding mounting evidence that suggests the two solutions can have a symbiotic relationship. One survey reveals that most CFOs view process mining as a key investment for maximizing RPA returns.

Finding Out Key Processes For Automation

Process mining can help a firm identify its processes that are ready for automation. Analyzing event logs is an integral part of process mining. Assessing logs can help find out key repetitive processes with either high-volume transactions or heavy manual tasks. By having this information, businesses can prioritize which process requires RPA automation. Eventually, by doing this, a business can achieve maximum ROI from RPA investments.

Increasing RPA Efficiency

Businesses that invest in process mining can also increase RPA efficiency. As we mentioned earlier, process mining involves analyzing event logs. Because of that, it will help shine a light on those areas where already-deployed RPA bots are underperforming. For instance, businesses can use process mining to identify the cases where RPA bots have remained idle for a long period. Using this information, a business can optimize RPA bots to cut downtime and raise overall efficiency.

Evaluating RPA Performance

Process mining even helps in evaluating the performance of RPA bots. Analyzing event logs helps a business gain insights into the performance of different RPA bots. This information, in turn, can help pinpoint bottlenecks, monitor performance metrics, and keep track of compliance. That is how process mining helps businesses proactively identify and remediate RPA issues before they have an impact on operations.

How Can We Help?

We help businesses – enterprises and SMBs alike – use RPA to automate workflows. As a robotics process automation services provider, we help businesses assess their automation readiness and define their RPA governance frameworks. We even have an excellent track record in empowering businesses to create game-changing automation road maps and select the right RPA tools for creating maximum impact. Get connected with our RPA experts and discover how they will help your business unlock process mining to augment its automation outcomes.