In earlier days, business process mapping was totally dependent upon expensive manual efforts where decision making would take a long time and involve a number of employees. And, that too with potential human biases and difference of opinions.
Gradually, Process Mining was introduced, which had a wider scope compared to manual methods. It used objective analysis of hard data to shorten the path to process automation and allowed better accuracy for automating decisions.
However, to justify the high investment, organizations also wanted to take actions based on data. And, that’s why Automated Process Discovery entered into business process mapping.
Today, we will discuss about the key differences between Process Mining and Process Discovery and highlight why your company should get started with the latter. But, before we move into the topic of Process Mining vs Process Discovery, let’s check out their definitions for a better understanding.
What is Process Mining?
In simple words, Process Mining is a process analysis method that aims to observe what people in your company do and uses software to describe their performance to you in the form of processes.
Until recently, many decisions in an organization were taken based on instinct. However, Process Mining eliminates all kinds of guesswork and allows you to diagnose the problems based on facts.
Manual methods are often time consuming and have the burden of potential human errors and biases. On the other hand, Process Mining works on regular information collection and provides visibility to actual actions.
Process Mining doesn’t only present the key data of the process, it also recognizes the contextual relationships of the processes and presents them in the form of graphic analysis for diagnosing the problems. Suggesting improvements in the process model’s quality is another key advantage of Process Mining.
What is Process Discovery?
Process Discovery is a collection of machine learning-based tools and techniques that are used to define, map and analyze the existing works and document the current business processes of an organization. It helps organizations to maximize the value of automation by identifying the key problem areas to be addressed based on actual actions.
It is designed to collect real-time data on user actions, analyze work processes through advanced visual recognition technology and identify processes that need to be automated. The main goal is to generate fully functional automation workflows while ensuring optimal savings of time and cost.
Process Discovery uses specific machine learning algorithms to match all the possible variations of existing business processes and provides automation recommendations for improvements.
Unlike Process Mining tools, Process Discovery can restructure and organize the planning process and implement Robotic Process Automation solutions.
It offers a more flexible and comprehensive approach to automatically identify and analyze work processes that need to be automated. At the same time, it saves you a significant amount of time and money.
Process Discovery is a user-friendly solution and anyone without a technical background can easily manage it. The whole process can be done within a few weeks by just a couple of users.
Process Discovery is designed to collect real-time data on user actions, analyze work processes through advanced visual recognition technology and identify processes that need to be automated. The main goal is to generate fully functional automation workflows while ensuring optimal savings of time and cost.
Though for some roles it might be needed to record the activities excessively; in general, Process Discovery is non-disruptive in nature and offers a faster path to optimized business process automation.
Process Mining Vs Process Discovery
Process Mining or Process Discovery – which is the right choice for your organization? Now that we understand what these terms mean, let’s check out the key differences between these two.
| Process Mining | Process Discovery |
| Process Mining aims to bridge the gap between event data and process model,s and seeks a confrontation between observed behavior in the form of events and modeled behavior in the form of process diagrams. | Process Discovery offers automated discovery of business process models and maps all the possible process instances and exceptions along with basic statistics. |
| Process Mining works by extracting knowledge from event logs recorded by the IT systems. | Process Discovery doesn’t rely on system event logs. Instead, it comes with advanced visual recognition technology that gathers real time data on work processes of the employees. |
| Process Mining generally doesn’t provide readily usable information about the completed actions. So, it is often incompatible with Citrix, legacy and certain other software environments. | Process Discovery is compatible with all types of software. |
| Process Mining needs 5-10 employees. | Process Discovery can be managed by a couple of employees. |
| It takes around 1-4 months to complete. | It can be performed within just 2-4 weeks. |
| Depending upon the process mining solution, it provides process maps and other data but no functional automation workflows. | Along with a process map, it provides detailed analytics, automation recommendations, and fully functional automation workflows. |
| Process Mining analyzes work processes based on event logs collected from information systems and maps processes while generating additional information. | Process Discovery identifies a business process that needs to be automated and generates automation workflows for each identified process. |
Future of Process Mapping
The global process analytics market size is expected to grow to USD 1,421.7 million by 2023, at a Compound Annual Growth Rate (CAGR) of 50.3%. – Research and Markets
Process Discovery is making Robotic Process Automation a more promising investment for businesses by identifying the ideal processes for automation. This makes it easier to implement the RPA solutions in a faster and less expensive way.
Expectations and requirements of a business are ever-changing. So, the companies need to go much beyond Process Discovery and offer additional insights for better decision making. Modern process analytics software is being designed to adjust to those requirement changes and offer the needed solutions.
Conclusion
Conventional Process Mining tools were the obvious choice for organizations who were looking to automate business processes. But, with the invention of Process Discovery solutions, companies can now take a faster and more flexible approach to achieve these goals.
While there are many differences between these two technologies, they differ in one key aspect – analysis in Process Mining is based on event logs whereas Process Discovery uses RPA platform for creating automated workflows and saves a significant amount of time.
