As the organizations above have found, IBM Process Mining and IBM RPA are surprisingly quick to get started with and easy to scale within the organization.

Typically, the Process Mining journey starts with a proof of concept covering a single use case. This could be any process within the organization that is currently causing problems, but most organizations start by looking at processes like P2P or O2C – processes that have many stages and touchpoints, and where the inefficiencies are hard to identify manually.

The next step is to identify KPIs against which to measure the proposed process optimization. This might be a reduction in lead time by a certain number of days, a cost saving in the execution of the process, or a combination of indicators.

A tailored proof of concept will then run the IBM Process Mining tool to build the digital twin of the organization, map the activities involved in the process, and identify the bottlenecks. Next, a guided simulation will show which automations will deliver what kind of ROI.

This can be a real lightbulb moment. When the MMC mentioned earlier saw its O2C process mapped for the first time, the VP’s first reaction was: “You drew this. We don’t believe it was created automatically from the data.” Their second was: “It isn’t true — the data is incorrect.”

But then, they said: “As soon as we drilled into the simulation, we saw see how well the model was built, based on the real-world data from our ERP platform. It was a real eye-opener.”

From there on, it can be as easy as clicking a button to generate some of the recommended automations using RPA. And while other process redesigns and automations will necessarily take longer, they’ll be made in full confidence that they will deliver the expected ROI.