Demonstrating the ROI of process mining to executives

‘What has process mining done for me lately?’

Executive sponsors constantly challenge the value of initiatives under their supervision.

And rightly so. Process mining isn’t exempt from such scrutiny.

Fellow process miners, this question is coming your way: So how can you plan your projects so they explode with value, generating insights and outcomes that your sponsors can talk about on webinars and podcasts?!

The key is always to seek value and avoid risk in every project you work on. This is not earthshattering advice but can be forgotten when you’re drowning in SQL joins.

???? Value means quantifiable business outcomes, validated by the relevant business area.

???? Risk is (most often) unplanned, unforeseen data challenges. Your event log is trash, DOA.

What can you do?

On value: Engage with the relevant business area *upfront* to understand the success metrics they are working towards. Your initiative must help them move the needle on these metrics. If it doesn’t, stop what you are doing and regroup.

✨ My trick is to *always* incorporate some costing logic into the event log, however guesstimated at first. This never fails to focus minds, as there’s always some cost-related metric. ✨

On risk: Never scope a project without visibility of the dataset(s) you’re going to work with, even if this is a data schema or sample extract. If you can’t see a path – however murky at first – to how you’ll get your event log, don’t start the journey.

✨ My trick is to *always* try and engage with the DB admin team / system SME early. They do amazing work with little credit, and when you explain what you’re trying to do with ‘their’ data, you often end up with a key contact over the whole project. ✨

When I’m helping clients set up their process mining projects, I try to think about what outcome would be webinar-worthy, and work back from that. (‘Shoot for the moon, and land among stars’ and all that jazz.) Conversely, I also try to think about what would nuke the event log, and mitigate that.

However you approach these ‘value’ and ‘risk’ issues, just remember that as night flows day that question is guaranteed to be asked by your executive sponsor:

‘What has process mining done for me lately?’