Process Discovery Services Overview

Process discovery is a method of identifying, mapping and analysing entire business operation for automation opportunities. The manual method is time-consuming whereas the combination of automation improves the productivity, saving your time and effort for strategic works. This is vital for any business to know their correct processes and look for automation and mitigate the tedious tasks.

What is Process Discovery?

Process discovery is a method of analyzing your existing workflow, including data, people, and processes, to identify opportunities for automation and optimize the current method. Automated Process Discovery (APD) dives deep to learn the existing process and suggests what you can automate to improve your workflow and profit.

In the past, the organization used a manual process, which was effective but took a lot of time. While using the RPA process discovery method, it can save time, money and resources. The discovery tools allow industries to do their detective work with limited human intervention.

Why Process Discovery Is Foundational to Automation Success

The detective work by the automation discovery is the foundation for your workflow. It gives a clear picture of the entire process and helps you make a systematic decision.

• Clarity on the Present Process:

  Knowing the current state of your business is the most vital part to move forward. In that sense, this method lets you get a clear understanding of what is what and offers an opportunity to identify the issues that require attention. Based on the discovery, you can look for opportunities to improve operations.

• Better Decision-making:

  The result you get from this method is not from assumptions, but from data that provides more clarity. The data-driven insights reveal the highly valuable areas for automation opportunities, allowing you to make informed decisions.

• Reveals Problems:

  When you install AI process discovery tools at your organization to find the best opportunities, it reveals some areas that are repeated or complex. Based on the area and high tasks, a firm can allocate its resources, decide whether Robotic Process Automation (RPA) or AI agents fit the context, and implement automation.

• Set Automation Priorities:

  There are priorities for this task: low, medium and high. How can you make these preferences? The manual process assists you, but this is faster with discovery automation tools. Now, with more strength and speed, you can work on automation, set priorities and reach your expectations and customer satisfaction.

• Save Resources and Time:

  Time is a problem in the business because if you fail to know what is missing, it will affect the whole process, especially profit. That's why organizations use automation discovery over traditional methods to keep pace with the market and trends, so the team can spend their time and resources on where human intelligence is essential.

• Get All on the Same Page:

  Bringing every team member on board is one of the significant tasks here. One who goes with the process will know where to use automation. Process discovery RPA helps everyone come to a common understanding, so that every person, from top to bottom, can make a well-informed decision about using AI for repetitive or complex tasks.

• Scalable Options:

  This is what makes this finding one step ahead of all other software. Once finished with the tasks, it does not stop its data analysis. Instead, it continues its job when you grow or add new processes. It is an essential part that assists your business in maintaining maximum productivity.

How does Process Discovery Work?

As you know, the AI process discovery methods examine the existing business processes using data collected from users, event logs, and systems.

This is how it works, from start to finish.

• Collecting Data:

  The software collects fresh or raw data from EPR, event log, system, CRM, employees' inputs, and other software.

• Organizing Data:

  After collecting the above data, it is cleaned and stored to illustrate the steps required for each process or task.

• Creating a Map:

  The next process is to create a visual map to show the workflows. It will include the details of the existing path, changes and shortcuts people take.

• Finding Issues:

  In this step, automated business process discovery uncovers the delays, repeated processes, and other steps that slow down your work.

• Making Improvements:

  The final step for the business is to assess the findings, remove repeated processes and add automation.

Read More: Process Discovery Best Practices

Manual vs. Automated Process Discovery: What’s the Difference?

You probably have an idea about what process discovery is and how it works. This discovery process has two types: manual and automated. Let's discuss the difference between process, what it is and how it differs in several ways.

Manual Process

In the traditional discovery process, an expert goes through the process one step at a time. It is entirely reliant on the experience and expertise of the person who uses this method, but it can be more personal. The main problem with this method is the time that delays the process and the growth.

Automated Process

The modern automated method is an approach that helps companies complete this task with minimal intervention, mitigate errors and may complete this process within weeks, depending on the tools. The present method saves money, resources, and improves the quality of the process.

Key Difference at a Glance

Key Phases of the Process Discovery Lifecycle

The discovery process improves ROI and your business, but this has systematic phases that you need to follow. These structural phases will give a better understanding of how it goes and improves every process.

Preparations

• This is where you need to have objectives, goals and scope. Here, should identify what to automate and why it is essential.
• The preparation is vital for the success of the project, ensuring everyone is included and avoiding waste of time.

Planning Your Needs

• In planning, there are many tasks you do. One of the crucial things is to decide what tool you use, who is involved and more.
• A good plan keeps your business discovery process focused and goal oriented.

Implementation

• It’s time to implement what is planned, finding out the automation workflow and opportunities.
• The implementation must help you move forward with your goals, reduce costs and turn complex tasks into simple ones.

Monitor How it works

• This process ensures the data is accurate based on the goals set in the initial stage.
• It is essential to avoid automating inefficient processes, and that is possible with continuous monitoring.

Finalize your List

• The final process can confirm everything and prioritize which one is fit for automation.
• Confirms whether you need process discovery, RPA, or AI & ML for your automation.

Top-Down vs. Bottom-Up Discovery Approaches

A study by Strategic Market Research concludes that the RPA market, which was $ 2.65 billion in 2021, is going to grow $23.9 billion by 2030. Before deciding on the automation process, the decision makers must understand the types of automation and the difference between Top-Down vs. Bottom-Up approaches to make outcome-based decisions.

What is the Top-Down Discovery Method?

This method of discovery starts from the top management or executives based on the overall business goals. It begins by finding automation opportunities and implementing them. The process is like this.

• The leadership discovers where automation is essential. For example, Customer Experience (CX), because they need to reduce operational costs and increase productivity.
• Based on the goals set, they select the automation process for the next step.
• The next step is to go with the appropriate tools, such as RPA, AI, and other software.
• Now, they go for implementation across different departments in different phases.
• The last one is to track the results against KPIs and look for improvement.

What is the Bottom-Up Discovery Method?

The bottom-up approach focuses on direct opportunities from employees and other teams. It is like the top executive directly goes to the operational team and looks for the daily activities for automation to improve effectiveness. This method reveals the points of your employees and improves work efficiency by targeting their daily repetitive work.

• The workers suggest daily tasks that take time. In this way, they can use their productivity for other vital work.
• After the suggestion, the expert team looks deeply and observes the workflow for automation.
• An agentic process discovery expert team documents tasks to understand the bottlenecks.
• The team assesses whether the suggested tasks are suitable for automation.
• Implement the process on a small scale and expand on the results.

Accelirate’s Humans + Agents Discovery Strategy

Accelirate process discovery method is a combination of two: human and agents, which is highly productive and result oriented. This strategy uses the knowledge of expert employees with AI insights to identify better automation opportunities.

Our method starts with an interview with diverse stakeholders and SMEs to understand the real challenges they face in their daily tasks. At the same time, the digital agents will perform the task of mining to learn user interactions and system data.

The strategy is based on the ROI, feasibility and scalability. The human and AI agent combinations confirm automation readiness and better utilization.

Key Strategy of Human + Agents Discovery

• The Accelirate expert team will understand the workflow and organizational context.
• After observation and engagement, they contribute their idea for automation.
• They also ensure the automation aligns with business goals and stakeholders' priorities.
• AI agents use proprietary tools to gather real-time data for analysis.
• Insights from data identify bottlenecks through detailed reporting.
• Combines human and agent input to prioritize the list with clear ROI projections.

Process Discovery vs. Process Mining: How They Complement Each Other

Process discovery and mining are different, but they complement each other in the work. The discovery process gets insights from systems, employees, data analysts and SMEs to map out the tasks. It is important to understand the pain points and mundane tasks that are part of the early stage of automation planning.

Process mining is different because it uses the data from system logs to reconstruct the actual workflows. Through this, a company understands how the process runs, uncovers inefficiencies, and other problems. It is completely functional on data-driven insights and project performance metrics to support your decisions.

They are an excellent combination for a company, where the discovery brings human and digital experts to find the area, whereas mining validates the accuracy of the data. Both methods are essential for any organization to discover the proper process to automate, track ROI and for long-term success.

How Process Mining Extracts Real-Time Insights from Digital Footprints

By analyzing digital footprints or event logs, mining extracts real-time details that enable the identification of bottlenecks and areas for improvement. This provides information on how the process is running in contrast to your exact planning.

Here is more detail about this process.

• Extracting the Data:

  It happens from various sources, such as CRM, ERP and other related processes.

• Visualizing:

  After data collection, the mining process visualizes how the actual work is currently going.

• Analyzing:

  Analyzing the process will reveal the actual problems, compliance issues and the automation opportunities.

• Improvement:

  The mining does not end here, but provides continuous feedback for improvement. Analyze the data and make better decisions to improve efficiency and scale in the future.

Read: From Idea to Insights- A Process Mining Journey

Using Process Mining to Validate and Enhance Discovery Findings

Process mining discovery is a logical method that can validate and enhance your findings through digital strategies. Mostly, business process discovery comes from humans, including interviews and observation, or a combination of both. The mining process utilizes real-time data that can confirm how tasks are currently working.

By combining the discovery maps along with the mining outputs, you can spot the gaps, issues and inefficiencies that prevent moving forward. Sometimes, what is good in the interviews may reveal a loop in the mining process. It means that the automation decision is not subjective or assumptions but based on the facts that give better ROI.

Read more: Driving Organizational Efficiency and Process Transformation with Process Mining

Tools and Technologies That Power Process Discovery and Mining

Companies worldwide utilize various discovery and mining tools to get their work done. These tools include discovery software, task mining solutions, and other related innovations (AI, ML, and computer vision).

Automated Business Process Discovery Tools

• Accelirate Accelerated Process Discovery

  Uses dashboards, recordings and forms to find the best ideas for automation in less time with SMEs and process engineers.

• UiPath Task Capture

  It can record every user's action and convert them into process maps.

• ABBYY Timeline

  This tool clearly shows how your tasks are taking place.

• SOROCO Scout

  Scout can watch your teams' activities and create a clear view of them.

• Automation Anywhere Discovery Bot

  It records your desktop work and finds out what you can automate.

Process Mining Tools

• Accelirate Process Mining

  It can find process issues and essential automation areas by using UiPath tools.

• Celonis

  A good platform that shows real-time data and performance.

• Apromore

  It is a tool that businesses use for in-depth process analysis.

• SAP Signavio

  The mining process happens inside the SAP system and is used for modelling processes, too.

• MEHRWERK Process Mining (MPM)

  It differs because it combines process intelligence to provide better insights.

Case Study: How Process Mining Solution Identify Financial Leaks and Procurement Challenges

How Process Discovery Identifies Automation and Optimization Opportunities

A company that invests in automated process discovery tools can get insights into optimizations. This identification helps where the automation works the best and saves several resources to help any company showcase excellence in their field.

First, it captures the actual work of the employees, including the screen recorder, interview, and task-capturing software to observe repeated time-consuming work in everyday tasks. Based on the observation, the discovery software identifies the areas for automation. It can be anything like data entry, email, form filling and report writing.

Once it happens, the team can check them for confirmation with expert oversight. It helps you identify the repeated tasks and avoidable steps. When you identify them, optimize such tasks with automation. By using real-time data and behavior, the discovery tools identify only the most critical functions for automation.

Related Read: 5 Strategic Ways to Automate Business Processes: Guide to Business Process Automation

From Discovery to Delivery: Building a Modernization Roadmap

After clear identification, the next step is to turn that data into actionable steps. For this, a firm creates a modernization roadmap, which means a clear path of automation, how to automate, what the prioritization is and how the ROI is calculated. The goal of this map is to support the process with minimal interruption.

Then, the roadmap moves to the delivery process where the expert team identifies high impact cases, assesses them, designs automation, pilots it, and scales to the next sections or areas. With efficient planning and execution, any business can reap the benefits of automation and improve overall processes.

How Process Discovery Supports Gen AI, RPA, and IDP Initiatives

The discovery method that identifies the processes supports the implementation of Gen AI, RPA, and IDP initiatives.

How does it support Gen AI?

Discovery automation identifies where Generative AI (Gen AI) is effective in doing human-like and complex work where creativity is essential. By understanding how humans perform in a situation, this method helps implement the Gen AI in a particular section.

Read more: Why Process Discovery Is the First Step to Gen AI Success

How does it support RPA?

It discovers repetitive, inefficient, and rule-based jobs that are suitable for Robotic Process Automation (RPA). Through the discovery process, RPA gets a clear understanding of the bottlenecks and jobs that can be effectively automated to free up humans for strategic tasks.

How does it support IDP?

A process discovery reveals that the documents are part of an organization and identifies where IDP (Intelligent Document Processing) is effective for data extraction and processing. It includes the type of documents and steps, helping it act effectively during the implementation.

Who Are the Key Stakeholders Involved in Process Discovery?

Stakeholders are numerous, from process owners to company executives. Each has their task in finding the process to implement. Important people are:

4 Key Stakeholders

• Customers:

  The ultimate users of every product and service are the customers of that brand. It is essential to consider them and take their feedback before you implement any process.

• Company Employees:

  Employees are familiar with how things work because they perform these tasks on a regular basis. Gain proper insights from the team to automate tasks, as they can help improve the process with valuable suggestions.

• Investors:

  When you take this into your company, it costs money. Therefore, gain the trust of investors before taking action.

• Top Executives:

  This group, part of any company, supports you with their knowledge and ensures everything fits with organizational goals.

Other Stakeholders

• Approvers:

  They are the people who are responsible for approving and implementing the changes.

• Process Owners:

  They are responsible for executing this task and ensuring its effectiveness.

• Domain Experts:

  They possess knowledge, expertise, and understanding of the purpose and its impact.

• IT leaders:

  They play a good part in discovery, providing security and technical support.

• Process Analysts:

  They analyze the data and suggest improvements.

Benefits of Intelligent Process Discovery for Enterprises

The discovery process tool in your company reveals several automation opportunities that benefit from understanding the process and many others.

Get Clarity on Business Process

Through process discovery, a firm gains a clear understanding of how the process works, beyond its prior understanding or assumptions. It greatly helps as they reveal the open space for automation.

Accelerate Automation Efforts

The effort through the discovery process accelerates your company's pursuit of better automation in areas that are repetitive and complex, revealing bottlenecks.

Mitigate Inefficiencies

It identifies the areas that delay your process and suggests reducing the pinpoints through automation. Identifying them gives an edge in the competitive market, optimizes your workflow and prepares your company to move forward.

Improve Compliances

Compliance is part of every business, and by using intelligent discovery, you can improve your efforts to follow the rules and regulations. It checks the areas where it is missing and suggest action.

Enhance Decision Making

Data-driven decision is part of every success, not a decision that you take on assumptions. The data you receive from process discovery will enable you to allocate the resources and plan and execute your work that aligns with your goals and objectives.

Save Efforts and Time

Employing a smart discovery process will save your time and effort in many ways. One of the essential things is reducing the reliance on manual effort, especially on the daily, tedious tasks. The rapid response and development are other advantages of this process.

Increase Scalability Efforts

The process discovery does not stop once implemented, and it continues to evolve as your organization grows. It analyzes the new process you add and looks at how the automation fits into your work to improve productivity.

Case Study: How the Process Discovery Reveals the Automation Opportunity in a Health Maintenance Organization to Save 59 FTE Per Year.

Key Deliverables from Accelirate’s Process Discovery

Engagements

An organization that collaborates with the Accelirate process discovery gets a crystal-clear understanding of the current workflow and identifies the list of tasks to go for automation. The goal of our discovery is clear: to provide actionable insights and support data-driven decision-making that helps you run in the long term.

Structural Dashboards

Our dashboards give a full detail of how the team, roles and processes work, helping get clear ideas on the bottlenecks, KPIs, and technology status. Accelirate’s unique data model identifies the best place for automation, including the workforce requirement.

Opportunity Dashboards

This is where you get a list of automation, reengineering, and improvement areas. Each of these lists is based on the ROI (Return On Investment), mentioning how easy and hard it is to implement, making prioritization simple.

Modernization Roadmap

The roadmap is the result of your discovery process. It includes insights from the structural and opportunity dashboard, modernization plan, estimated time, and delivery so that senior leadership can make informed decisions.

Real-World Process Discovery Success Stories Across Industries

Organizations worldwide are using an intelligent automation discovery method to improve their performance and outcomes. Let's look at two successful stories of the clients who gained a lot from this process.

A Retail Store Saved Cost and Improved Efficiency

One of the best stories you can learn is that an American Convenience Store and Gas Station chain experienced limited growth. The process discovery of Accelirate helped them succeed in many areas.

Key Successes of the Bank

• It helped the bank save $1 million through an automation effort.
• Improved employee satisfaction by eliminating repetitive work.
• AI-driven invoice and inventory processes improved accuracy.

Read Complete Story Here: How Accelirate’s Automation and Process Discovery Uncover $1M for an American Retail Chain.

A Commercial Bank Boosted Efficiency

A Florida-based Commercial Bank with 50 years of service coordinated with Accelirate to improve operations, compliance and customer service. By using process discovery and automation, the banks could achieve their goals and objectives.

The Result

• Saved 26000 hours annually.
• Improved compliance, reporting and monitoring.
• Helped with scalable solutions to handle workload without hiring new staff.

Read Complete Story Here: How Accelirate’s Discovery and Automation Helped a Florida-based Commercial Bank to Save 26000 Hours Annually.

ROI of Process Discovery: Measurable Savings and Strategic Impact

Once you implement the automation discovery, it identifies the real cost savings, efficiency improvement and strategic advantages.

• It shows you the human resources savings possibilities by using automation.
• Reducing errors is another area in which it excels, so you can increase accuracy and improve quality.
• A firm can increase its productivity capacity by adding a digital workforce to its daily workflow.
• This will enhance your customer satisfaction and brand reputation by providing faster service.
• It can adapt to the change and marketing conditions to put your business at the forefront of the competition.
• Help you follow compliances that improve trust and avoid fines and legal action from authorities.

Why Leading Enterprises Choose Accelirate for Process Discovery

Accelirate is one of the leading automation companies in the world, demonstrating excellence in this area. Instead of spending months on the manual process of discovery, we provide faster and accurate service within weeks.

Speed is what makes us unique, where you get insights within days. Because of this, you don't have any long-term commitment, or you need a larger internal team to do tasks. Our team not only does the documentation but also provides you with a list of areas for automation and modernization.

The method is not the same for every enterprise because the preferences change according to the size and the need for automation. With scalable dashboards, roadmaps and leadership insights, you get all the information in one place.

We create a customized plan that fits your existing tech stacks. The proven track record also makes our service valuable, where we have helped to save millions for our clients and eliminated thousands of hours in manual work. Our success stories listed above are the best examples of our commitment, quality, and assurance.

How to Get Started with Process Discovery Services

Moving with the process discovery service is not a challenging task. Companies offer a systematic, practical and agile way to uncover the hidden automation possibilities at your business. They start by identifying the areas where you need improvement and provide you with clear ideas from start to finish.

A reputable organization will engage with you within weeks to deliver the dashboard, insights, and roadmap that provide a comprehensive view of the areas to automate, along with the associated ROI. If you are looking to improve your effort and productivity through automation, process discovery is the first step you need to take.