Session Information:

Mining, Modeling or Management – Where should You Place Your Bet?

Process Mining has gained a great deal of attention over the past 2 years. Some vendors suggest it will replace modelling, some say it renders BPM unnecessary, others suggest it will be a flash in the pan! Amongst all the marketing hype lies a reality and value that can be hard to uncover, and sometimes hard to implement. In this short session we will explore where Process Mining fits in your Process Management mix, and how you can ensure you avoid the potential landmines ready to catch the unwary. Specifically, the session will help you understand;

• Why Process Mining may not be quite what you think!
• Managing the gaps in mined processes.
• Where Process Mining should sit in your Process Management toolkit.
• Three top tips to ensure Process Mining delivers results you can use.

With Mark’s wealth of experience in all aspects of process, this is sure to be a thought provoking, idea generating session, that may well leave you wondering what just came at you from left field!

Session Transcript:

Yes. And the wrap up of our three day conference is a real treat directly from Birmingham UK. We have Mark McGregor today with us. Mark is an author, consultant and coach. Mark has been active in the BPM and architectural space for almost 30 years. Mark spent several years as an analyst at Gardner and has worked for many of the significant sandler's in the process market.

He has written a number of books on process management, including people centric process management, something, other tools guru. Mark has Watts of his former colleagues at Gardner suggests, is unrivaled insight into the types use and nature of tooling. intraday. He started his attention to process mining and its place in the broader process management landscape. Mark, a real privilege and honor to have you here with us, and sharing your wisdom of our global audience.

Thanks, Jose.

So, just bear with me, and we will get you the presentation.

OK, so, there we go. We're up and running, hopefully you can see. Fantastic, well, listen, everyone, it's great to be here with you.

I know that you've had an amazing three days of listening to people, sharing their experiences, using, promoting, or learning about process mining.

And I feel truly privileged to be joining you here today to provide a little bit of additional color to some of the topics. So, as we see then, the big question that I have today is to look at the mining, modeling or management where you place your bets, because I don't know how you've seen it over the last few days.

There's a kind of a little bit of a shadow war going on. You know, you've got mining vendors saying, Hey, this is fantastic. Use process mining, and you no longer need to do process modeling.

That's so yesterday, we can build all the process models for you, kinda save you a fortune.

And then, on the other hand, you've got the modeling tool. Vendors saying, well, well, what we do is something completely different, and that's not really the same sort of thing. Et cetera, et cetera.

So, here we are caught in the middle, saying, well, what do we believe?

Do we believe these guys saying we no longer need to do it? Too many, these guys saying, what they do is something different.

I suggest that unfortunately, in a simple battle between modeling and mining way, I guess is the potential purchasers are the main casualty.

But certainly in business process sense, management becomes the casualty because actually, we fundamentally are about managing processes. So, if we take just a little look at the landscape. And, you know, this is just a series of representative vendors. I'm not suggesting for one moment, but this is the, these are the only vendors.

So if you are a vendor watching listening or if you're a sponsor and I may have missed you, then I apologize, I just wanted to give a flavor of the landscape.

So, on the right-hand side, we've got a list of many of the known, process mining vendors.

On the left-hand side, we've got those who are based in Modeling vendors, But what's interesting is, that, about 18 months ago, when I started suggesting that actually, it's not a binary choice, one or the other, actually, There are times when we need both, and actually, this example now, because, if we take a look in the middle.

When we look at business objects, GB, Check I graphics Naveen, GPL Scenario of a software AG.

These are examples of modeling vendors, zap now, half process mining, as a capability, within that's all set.

So, suggesting that there absolutely is a space where we can combine mining and modeling.

Now, conversely, there are some people on the right-hand side of the screen here who suggest that you don't need modeling, and some of you may have seen some of the discussions I got involved with. And I'm a real believer in the.

If you're a mining vendor that says you don't need modeling is probably because you don't have a modeling capability and it's more to do with your products on what users want.

Now, what I would say is that yes, this is an oversimplification.

Be aware if you're looking at those vendors in that middle piece of the jigsaw, circles, not all of the offerings are equal. OK, so I'm not going to go through everyone's offering, it's not what we're here for today. But some vendors have their own process mining technology, and actually compete in the process mining segment.

Others have added process mining through partnering with approach money.

So, depending on what's appropriate for your situation, that there is a decent selection out there, but don't assume that any one is a binary choice.

So I wanted to show that this move as combining is important, because aye don't know how you guys have felt from seeing all the other presentations over the last three days, or looking at the various website.

I find it quite challenging, sometimes, when we think, we know what process mining is.

But then we go looking at some people talking about process discovery, some use the process mining, some use APD. So automatic process discovered some joke about process intelligence.

Some now talked about it being that journey mining or task binding.

Because we need to get rid of variance or deal with conformance and get a higher degree of rigor or worse still, for me, is that the process mining vendors refer to many of the models they create as process models. I'm going to challenge that perspective.

Doesn't make me right, just gives me an opinion and I'm going to challenge that perspective.

As we go through, over the next few minutes.

I'll give you a different way of looking at it because I don't mind, whether you want to refer to them or think of them as a process model or not, that's entirely your choice.

I would hate for you to be communicating with others and colleagues in your business, and for them to see what you have is the process model, when it may not actually be quiet, like you say.

So, I think the language of mining vendors can be very confusing.

I wish I'd put an additional link on this slide. one of my former colleagues, a guy called Frank Baum's, who spends a lot of time consulting with vendors. Put out a blog yesterday, which was suggesting that too many vendors are jumping all over the same terms as everybody else, but using them differently, and spending more time confusing the market, then helping to educate the market, would have been a very nice addition. So I'm not the only one that gets a little confused by these things.

So, my argument is that despite what many say, most business processes, nope, they actually can't be mined.

Because many of those business processes span multiple systems, and many of the tools out there still only look a singular system.

There are some now that all, looking at, bringing that data from multiple systems, but, again, even with the addition of toss mining, which is adding a degree of complexity, for us, the user, That says, Well, hang on a minute, we've gotta get data from multiple systems. And, they're saying, we can toss mine.

And, we can kind of fudge all that together and call it a business process. But, why don't we just accept that?

Actually, sometimes we can use it.

Sometimes we call, when it comes to applying process mining to customer journeys, I struggle to understand how you can do that.

Because, if you're correctly and fully using customer journeys and they begin outside of your organization, they begin in the mind of the customer.

Whereas, what you are, mining, through tools are only the digital footprints, or the digital traces to the left behind.

So, let's not confuse capturing the journey through your systems that a customer might take in order to buy or have product delivered, with actually a customer journey.

So, there are different things. I'm not saying that one is right and the others wrong, We just need to think about which one it is and what it is we want to do, not just buy into the, Hey, we can just simply mind and be much better. You can indeed, takes things like HubSpot Salesforce into ...

and track many steps that customers take, but that's not necessarily the customer journey in terms of it.

And indeed, if we take this very topic that we're looking at now, how many of you are looking at various websites, listening to these presentations and doing a whole bunch of things, for which there's no digital footprint for a vendor to capture and therefore mine. So there's a big piece going on.

So just be aware that you might be missing it.

And then, when we talk about the task mining, Yes, it records how users interact with systems, and certainly can add to that richness.

But it doesn't help you, if it's human to human interaction, and I'll give you another situation, which someone shared with me this week, that was a problem for them. And, indeed, would have been a problem for them in my analyst research types.

So in my analyst research days, I might take 8 to 10 inquiry calls interjecting.

Speaking to people like you about tooling and various other things.

Each of those interactions needs to be recorded in the CRM system that we used. The trouble is, some analysts recorded that at the end of each interaction.

Some analysts recorded it twice a day.

Some analysts simply went through it and try a batch at the end of the day.

So, we can't always rely on the time stamping that were going on that. So just be careful, you don't get me wrong here. I'm a real fan of process mining. Doesn't mean readable sales. I just wanted to make sure that we're all in the same place, so make sure that we recognize it's not a silver bullet.

There are limitations in what it can do, and when we apply it correctly, it's going to help us, but if we over a shoe, we can draw ourselves up.

And one other observation, you know, in my mind, a lot of the talk has been around very much about sap systems, like Procure to pay, order the cash Ayesha retire.

Yeah let me ask you.

The question is what you're capturing designed processes that are truly end to end or is what you're mining the transaction chain through the paces? the process that goes through the ASAP system?

I'll let you make your own minds up to say, how narrow or broad your situation?

So as I was doing my research, I came across a paper, and I've given you the You can go onto the website here. They did a paper recently on the state of process, mining and robotic process automation.

And I thought there was some interesting statistics here, is that while 39% of companies statement processes are rigorously adhered to, 51% of people say, actually, excuse me.

we deviate from predefined processes, but to meet customer needs.

And no, I don't want to talk over my latest seismic Taste really was a major aha moment for me.

When one of the use cases this pulled out frequently for process mining is how to get rid of variance, make people couldn't fall, get rid of those outliers.\

And he really made me say, well, actually, it might look neater, might seem better for me as an organization, but maybe I'm not serving my customers the best way.

It's these people are deviating in order to serve customers.

Maybe I need to talk to them more, to understand why they're deviating, and rethink about what the process should be could be that. What I think is my standard processional, my linear transaction chain is actually what's wrong. And what I get people conforming to is to make sure everybody does it wrong in a consistent manner.

So it may not be the smartest thing.

I was really surprised, by this statistic, that 65% of organizations say that they are either using, or in the early stages, of adopting process mining, have to say, from my own experience of surveying, and talking with people, I felt it was much, much lower than that.

What was a little bit of a head scratcher, though, as you can see here is that 34% of those companies sense that they're doing it but without children.

Well certainly without process mining. So I can think of a few ways that some people might be trying to do things.

But it sounds like a worry, long handed, a long winded way of doing it. It may be symptomatic of the fact that many process mining tools are perceived as pretty expensive. So it could be one of those things that we see the same thing. Sometimes in the enterprise architecture space, where half the tooling price is too high, and the incentive for people to try and put together suboptimal home-grown systems is pretty high. So I was surprised that, so many people say that they're in the early stages of adoption.

I would put it much lower. But also curious as to how those are, getting by without tools.

I'm sure some of them are doing some smart things on really figure that. If I'm a bank, I need to focus on banking, you know, building process mining tool, so just be a little careful when you look at those home-grown solutions.

So I'm suggesting that we should use process mining to capture system processes or reverse document system logic.

Because that's what we're actually capturing to understand simple variants compliance or conformance issues, because it's only going to first launch, allow me to do the simple version of that.

It can help me analyze System Pulse and bottlenecks, and that can be useful.

And notice I'm being a little cagey in this, because actually when you're reducing those things like the bottlenecks or system paths, within process mining, you don't tend to have access to the resource.

So if you're in a modeling tool, then resources would be one of the key things you'd be attaching. So you'll be running simulations. You can adjust the resources. I've got 10. No mortgage processes here or I've got five vacations, et cetera.

So without the access to resource, I think it can be a little more challenging.

So I wouldn't rely on process mining to deliver a complete process models.

They are a pace useful pace, but not the whole place.

I would also say not to rely on them to deliver actions on inside.

now, some vendors now talk about having an actual engine, and such like, but the actual engine is useful, and it's providing some insight.

But again, I wouldn't say it to be always the full picture and that's partly linked to my next point, uncovering the root causes of things.

So, for example, if I'm looking at insurance claims, I'm looking at the way they're all going through, and I can see that there's a bunch of claims coming out here and going around this way, and they don't follow my lineage.

So I could run simple analysis. That's wrong.

I've got, this is what I'm going to do, to stop people doing that and make people do this, but it doesn't necessarily jump out, says, Oh, actually, it's because large claims go through this part, small claims goes through a different one.

So, the failure may be that actually there isn't one process, there may actually be 3 purposely 3 variants of the process, which happened to be implemented in the same system, simply recording when the various actions or transactions occur.

But, actually, it's a designed process.

Outside of the system, was designed to go through a different path, depending on the scenario.

So, whilst process mining can help me, I wouldn't rely on it and be certain that what it was giving me were the root causes. All of the actions, when necessarily fully thought out.

Now, what becomes interesting is another play, was, when we stopped talking about process mining, she's a collection of technology and talk about process mining, and some other additional technologies in the context of what sometimes is called process intelligence.

Now we start to get something interesting, because now we're starting to identify that we can get some ongoing monitoring.

We can more easily identify the issue's triggers and actions.

We're focusing more about connecting data, which may not have historically been connected with process.

And actually view those in a contextual way.

I use I showed you the links to the pipes, Abby. I mean, I don't want to pick on them. But now they use the concept of a timeline, where I'm actually looking at, which way more each case goes. I'm not looking at what the process, necessarily, as I can look at it. both ways.

So I want to readily digestible dashboards.

Many process mining pieces don't do that as well as we would do in process intelligence. There is crossover.

I want to supplement and replace some parts of traditional manual research.

I wanted to take it across the cheap.

So don't just think about it as mine, and think about more intelligent ways of covering things.

So I suggest that process mining is more of a technology.

But process intelligence, potentially is a goal seeking, because I really do believe that it's not the mining that makes the difference, is when you're running that constant monitoring, from which you can then build it.

And one of my we've all got our favorite management gurus. Well, here's one of mine, which is Edward de Bono.

Are you proud of the fact that chose to use some of my articles a few years ago in some of these newsletters?

But, you know, hey, we can analyze the past, but we need to design the future, the difference between suffering and enjoying it?

Mining tools or pure mining, and even some of the challenges is still all about analyzing ease of the past or the current.

It's not helping me design the future.

So, I cantons ditch Modeling Code sets for pure mining.

On the other hand, modeling historically doesn't connect sufficiently with the underlying historical data to know whether I'm making good decisions going forward.

So there's a blend of the two, But he has to say where do you want to spend your time designing the future or just analyzing the past.

So.

We're looking about where did we place our, our best scenario. I created this and again, not intended to be complete, but just to give you a flavor of how I see things coming together.

So, on the on the right-hand side, yeah, we've got our systems of record, so transactional systems, databases, CRM, etcetera, and we can mine those transaction shea's from that.

Now, as we've talked about, we can also leverage that, so that we can run monitoring, so that we can both inform management and, when necessary, where we see remedial action maybe require then we can take that monitoring information. I'm pumped back in to a modeling environment. And the same goes in terms of the mining because within the modeling environment, say, we can do resource analysis. We can do multiple scenario planning.

We can run simulations, which is one of the areas of weakness for many mining shops. So there's a whole bunch of things that we can do.

Mazel Future Plan the Future.

Now, you know, we can say that having modeled our future, if we then implement that future implementation is not in here because it wasn't significant.

But if we then implement it, then we should be able to continue to use mining monitoring to make sure that actually what's occurring is what we intended to occur.

Because often we're running through it a mind process, and we're focusing on conformance, variance restriction, what we forget.

It's actually even the simple, happy path, as some people call it.

It's not the pulse of this plant.

So, it may not be appropriate. So there was an area that, I just added the mapping in there, because, you know, there were times when, it's just, quick, simple sketch of a process enough is enough to understand the current State. Because the future State's gonna look so different. So, whether we're mapping, and then adding that into our modeling environment.

But, basically, our success for most businesses, comes from a combination of people, process systems.

So, by focusing everything over on the systems, then process, if I'm being really specific, actually, becomes very procedural, We're implementing in a system. Then, you don't tend to be a process.

It tends to be a procedure at that point, but over on the other side, then we have the people, so, whether we want to discover, analyze, design, validate, or improve processes, we need to combine the various things together. So, how you combine them, which tools you already have, which you don't have, is entirely your choice.

I just want to bring a perspective that suggests that don't go to one or the other. Because, if you're doing one or the other, then you're probably missing something that could be of pretty important, family itchy.

OK, so I believe that success comes with collections rolls, and the replacements.

So it's not about replacing one tool with another, it's about connecting a type of tool with another type tool in the environments that makes sense to you.

So this is a slide for that I purposely didn't play with because sometimes we're forever re-inventing the wheel.

So this is a slide that I used a few weeks ago in the, the Beach House, a live event.

The context there, as this screen shows, was really all about enterprise architecture.

And the same thing goes for process management.

And process mining.

Our success, as individuals, as teams and those organizations, we'll come when we can get everybody involved.

We sometimes get really hung up on while I've been looking at this particular tool in this particular tools, and, of course, shall we say, Hundreds of thousands.

And it's just not worth it, because only me and Josephina, we're actually going to be using the tool, OK.

Well, whether you spend $100 on a tool for you and Josephine or $100,000, I'm going to suggest that. It's all for you and Joseph P is the problem, not the solution.

Because none of these technologies, none of these tools, and not much of the value, is going to be gained by keeping it to a tight group.

More benefits will be gained if those dashboards, for example, in process monitor process intelligence, are being used by hundreds of people in the organization.

Being used on a regular basis As part of the, this is how we check, how we do it, and they're going to want the effort put into mining and to keep that data up to date. So I'm not using it every day, then it's always a cost option.

And then the process mining, or the process intelligence, or data modeling tools that you use.

I'll say, there's nothing more than a diagnostic tool to solve point problems, as opposed to becoming part of the system by which you run the business.

So whether you're looking at enterprise architecture, whether you're looking at process management or whether you're looking at process mining, think about how you can get information from my winded group.

And how you can share that information in such a way, the more people to get involved so that you focus on your conversations on the congregation, not the client.

Related to that previous slide, then, you know, process mining output leads to serve everyone, not just the data science. I've seen a lot of amazing demos of the technology, and they are absolutely incredible.

It all seems to point to providing output for data scientists or analysts. or some other really large brained individual.

As opposed to saying, Actually, what can what can you do for me, as an individual now?

one of the things that I find interesting, and maybe it's the way that we apply the technology.

You know, in Europe, we're very privacy conscious. So you get a lot of talk about caching data to anonymize it.

In the US, doesn't tend to be quite the site.

But the funny thing is, that if you didn't have the anonymized data, then this actually becomes, not just a workforce management tool in terms of some manager managing the workforce, but it could be an individual job.

Yeah, you may allow me see how my performance angling claims compares to people in another country or another office.

So I actually can use it as an individual tool, not a big brother watching me, but to help improve how I work, Maybe, can help me work out, how someone's doing it better than I can actually go and reach to that. So, just the monitoring alone could help me understand and improve the way that I work.

There, a list of various other things that we can do. But. Yeah. Yes, there's small ways of using technology, I'm sure. We've been listening to many other ways in which process mining is becoming almost synonymous with RPA.

I think it's because it's an exciting area that's changing a lot of budget, and therefore is natural for process finding, and just wants to latch onto it. But that's just too easy.

But why should it be focus those improvement efforts? What about the datasets, alter, How often? When we use a modeling tool, people say, well, that's great, but that's all intuition based.

But, you know, it is causation and correlation are two different things. So sometimes we need those. So just some ideas of how we can improve.

Not just buying the tool, but assuming that you buy the technology, How are you going to make it actually deliver long-term value?

As I say here, I think workforce management is an interesting emerging use case to apply the process mining technology.

Yes, there'll be variances from country to country, but it's going to be interesting.

So, as we start to move to the close play.

Tips that I would have for you, Oh, look.

We need to make sure that, if you're using process mining, or process intelligence, work on how you're going to use it constantly, just deliver results that you can use every day.

So think about it as that monitoring tool first, as a diagnostic tool second.

Principally, because I say, hey, I think you'll find it hard to justify the ongoing costs.

If it's just a diagnostic tool, no, you don't want an MRI scan every day.

Sometimes the cost of this technology can be likened to going through an MRI scan.

On the other hand, there are much lower levels of scan that we can do on a more regular basis that can actually be a little more preventative in nature.

The other check that I haven't, maybe you've heard of 1 and 2 others talk about this, is you don't need to rely on perfect or totally clean data.

And I know that that's a little bit of a misnomer because we'd all like great dates.

But if you wait for that, you're going to wait forever.

It's amazing what data science is still the game with incomplete data. And there are tools now that, when they bumped into that incomplete data can actually help you clean as you go along.

My third shape, as you can imagine, going straight from the rest of the things that we've talked about, is that I suggest that you really do need to ensure that any process mining activities all connected to other process initiatives.

And I don't mean that as modeling, but I mean, to your lean six Sigma, we've got enough islanders' of despair been going on for the last 25 years in process.

Let's not create another islands in our organizations because we will risk failure if we don't actually find ways of working together complementing each other.

So as you move on to your next steps, my suggestions also identify all the groups within your organization, currently analyzed process.

Get everyone together as to how you might do that.

Ask line and executive management, what insights current BI tools fails gives them because I think you'll find the current tools fails. It gives them a lot of insights that they need if you can capture what they're missing and that's going to help build your business case.

Identify those key business outcomes, assess how process mining might help. Don't assume that it will, not laxatives, looking for some way to happen.

Evaluate where and how the various process, mining processes, challenges that just might fit into your current tool sets.

Maybe they've got partnership's, maybe their relationships. Maybe they do replace, it's your choice.

Question whether your processes that you're interested in or focusing on really do exist within a single system, or whether they span multiple systems.

And then use that as a reference point.

When you're talking to vendors or doing proof of concepts or looking for demonstrations, I suggest that you get all those things together.

We consider all of the potential use cases before you purchase any tool and you will find it.

You make different decisions. Trust me. When you look at all the use cases, you'll likely have a different shortlist of vendors that you might have if you're just focused on one particular tool.

Then, to my point, about the collaborations, you know, make sure that you're working on a rollout plan to make sure that the tool you choose is delivering value every day.

In closing, so here's a book some of you may have read by Bright Guy, JV Simons, and getting to why is my variant of it?

Yeah, It's about why not what that uncovers the how.

Sometimes with process mining, we get so hooked into focusing on the wall. We get to ask about the why.

I think vendors taking a more case based approach, roll them up linear process based approach, I have a much broader understanding of helped me look up the wise, so that you can get to the correct house.

With that, I'm going to stop sharing and invite Jose to join us again for some questions.

What I'm What a Masterclass mark on the, On the theory and practice of so many really tools and applications a year process intelligent process Mining in the URL operating so much. Really great overview. And the insights, we appreciate that. So several questions came up during your presentation.

Our very first question is maybe four That, as you would imagine, the last, the last three days, we have dealt with a lot of different presentations, very interesting, exciting presentations, and different approaches on the process, mining, process, intelligence, discovery, identification, of root cause and addressing those.

So, if we, if we back up, and a lot of, of our participants are somewhat new into the field, and they are trying to think about how to get started, What is your best advice for someone who has not made commitments to any of this stuff yet? And they're starting to think about, how can process mining helped me here? How can process intelligence help me here?

What would you, what would be your suggestions for them to get started?

Yeah.

So I think that, hey, if they haven't watched all the presentations over the last three days, that would be my starting point.

Like, just like you, I would focus on the end user presentations first, because these, particularly with those people that were kind enough to say, And by the way, if I were doing it, again, this is what I would do.

Those are the key lessons, and if they haven't done, if they haven't done that, then go back and revisit those.

Secondly, I was absolutely focused on she, it's not that I'm looking at process mining.

It's about, These are the problems that I have.

Now, let me go and see whether process mining can help me solve those problems.

And I say, you know, we see it all the time, and God bless them. Vendors are out there. They have to make it make that revenue. And support events like this, otherwise it would have.

But they're not there to help you figure out whether it's an appropriate technology for you. They're there to tell you it's an appropriate technology, because that's how they make money.

You're the one that's going to be thinking about, Gee, should I need it?

Now, if you've been doing traditional six sigma type work, and you really want some hard data and collecting numbers, my personal perspective it's I think mining is a process. Mining is a more interesting technology than something like mini tab, which was the main number crunching technology used for a long, long time. I think prices mining gives me another interesting way to get to those facts.

I would also say don't think by experimenting with low cost or free tools. That's the way to just try and see.

Don't get sucked in to going down, using a wrong technology. Stay away from the technology, focused on the use cases and the problems, and then look at G has anyone else use to solve these problems?

I love your analogy. And you did this during the presentation, as well, You know, as a leader of Lean six Sigma, multiple organizations for all my career. The analogy that you use, which I loved, was that the best process mining practitioners will not necessarily be. If the true intent is to discover for root cause, they will not be the data scientists as much as the best six Sigma leaders were not statisticians, right? And so, that's so that's very helpful analogy for a lot of people who have a background on, those on those methodologies William Fuller the asks. And this may be a tricky question, because you don't want you to sponsor any specific vendor here. But he is maybe cure is, if you can talk in non specific ways about our vendors, are their vendors.

There are, his question, is, Which vendors are offering a complete, process management toolkit, as opposed to individual tools? And maybe without naming those, can you talk a little bit about that? Is there, is there something out there that actually offers more of a complete package?

Yeah, so I think it's a great question, and it's a really useful 1 to 2 also. Yes, for me to avoid being specific.

The key to that question for me is, I've just talked about the mining and the modeling as part of managed, I didn't talk about the automation or the implementation that's related to it. Now, there is a vendor chosen, just the, best of my knowledge, that is sitting in the middle of my two circles.

That do modeling, mining, and automation.

However, caveat emptor, it may not be the strongest automation and it may be summation isn't well connected with the modeling environment. So they're all going to be vendors William, who absolutely say, hey, you should come to me because I have all of the pieces.

But, you know, even in those vendors, those pieces don't necessarily work together any better than if you took a best of breed approach because of various things.

So, there is, there is a scenario that says, yes, there all vendors have a more complete offering.

But it may be that for your particular use case, William.

But actually best of breed may be a better option. And what I would say William, is, you know, you've got my contact details if you want to reach out to me on a 1 to 1 basis.

Then, I'll have the conversation with you. But, it wouldn't be fair to those kind vendors. Sponsoring this event for me to put this on video would be out there on YouTube be, How you Tomorrow, it might get me a lot of views.

Will wieland's a great guy, and he has participated actively throughout the conference. And I'm sure he's listening to you right now, and he'll be, look, you are looking you up on LinkedIn and then making that connection. He, as a matter of fact, he has a follow up question on that.

And the question is that, And you discuss this, and he's thinking from a leadership perspective, how do you move senior management off its bias for IT lead solutions?

As opposed to business led solutions? And I'm gonna. I'm gonna add something to this, and I'm working with a lot of CEOs.

I'm not even sure if this is a fair question and because here's why, because I think a lot of CEOs, they just get fed IT based solutions constantly, constantly. And the, this business led solutions, I don't think the business does a very good job communicating to the co sometimes, and there's more attention for outside. You can blame the CEO for that, or the sea level for that. For pay more attention to what's going outside to the experts inside of the business. But, boy, that's a real struggle, how, you know, the IT world is spending billions of dollars to trying to access CEOs, Just say that this is this. We have the solution for a world hunger, and you can have it, too.

And so, so how? How do you get the CEO was to pay attention to business led solutions? Whether as opposed to IT led solutions, whether they come from inside or outside?

So I think that this is one of the reasons why it's slightly off topic.

But if you look at it, one of the reasons that RPA is the most interesting automation technology for a long time.

It can help you do the wrong things faster than ever before, And it's for the first technology that realizes. And I know some people have been using the Bill Gates quotes about computers. Like, we do the wrong things faster than ever before. But, I mean, that was business at the speed of thought in 2000, so 20 years ago that he wrote that. So it's good that we're now delivering technology to meet his vision of 20 years ago.

But putting that aside, it is the first of those technologies that really has captured the imagination of business.

So, with all its failings, I believe it has many, I have to give, kudos to say, actually, it is a business led solution.

So we have to be careful between IT lead and business lead. Because both can be automation and both could be about digitalized.

Now, interestingly enough, bringing it back on topic, the better way of looking at this is digitalization. How many of the vendors that presented over the last few days on their websites will talk about the use of process mining and digital transformation.

So I venders, I'll put a challenge out to you.

Say the only thing you're mining and things I've already digitalized. So I've already done my transformation, or you can apply mining to it.

Now, you can help transform my digital from A to B, but you can't help me digitize because if it's not digitized, there's no traces for you to follow.

So back to your question, A's.

That is business led.

Not IT lead.

I think the challenge that you may be alluding to aes, when IT goes and excites the boss about the latest, greatest, most exciting thing, and the business manager, same rule, may not be quite that simple.

That actually, we just need to change that dialog, but he should get him asking the questions. Well, that's fantastic. You can totally automate claims process. That's brilliant.

Let me just ask you, mister CEO, are you saying that we no longer wish to deal with the 85 to 90 year old people who fill our business and not technology?

Oh, no. That's not what I'm saying. Or, as one of the speakers at the last time, we were all physically together stages.

Yes, I only want those people of the digital generation, and I'm willing to let those customers go.

But, did we have that conversation with the CEO? Did he get to understand that he's making a conscious choice?

one audience, or the other audience?

Or somewhere in the middle? Because I don't think they are. I don't think they see, They don't see, because we don't tend to share the consequences.

Fantastic.

We're out of time, but I want to, I want to use my own time to finish this conference and give it to you to discuss on what you see happening the next 12 months, specifically in the marketplace, what you see happening with technology and business. What, I know that none of us can predict the future. But based on the forces that you see and the trends that are happening, what do you see as the next logical step for business, for organizations for technology in the next 12 months or so?

Yeah.

I mean, I think that into the topic that we're looking at now is mining is going to become an increasingly important, makes the jigsaw.

I've written other articles and so on. It would be wrong, I mean, science in different. say, I'm not sure it will exist as a standalone market.

Because I say that theorem, if I'm many of the examples used for process money are against sap.

OK, well, actually, a lot of SAP's customers are transitioning to S four Hana.

So could I mind my old transactions in my current essay and then look and see what I need to move forward or what I did?

Oh, yeah. That could save me millions.

Not trying to get Josie to do it my way. but actually transforming. So that's an example use case. And there are many of those other examples, but they belong to something else. They belong to ERP, they belong to content.

And so, we've seen it with the UI path acquiring process go, so the RBI even to other vendors will be adding that technology.

And that'll get harder.

And I predict the users, this is going to get even harder, because I'm not gonna know whether they've got real process mining, pretend process mining, or whether they're just saying it's process mining because it's fashionable.

But one thing we can be sure of is that, over the next 12, 18 months, two years, whether it's all PA, whether it's low code, no code, or whatever, increasingly that automation is going to come in.

I'll just throw out there that says or I'm a dinosaur not going to accuse you of being undone.

So as I were of a certain age, but I'm the daughter so I couldn't accuse you, but I'm going to say there are going to be some really big, higher profile failures where people rushed to automate various pieces of that business without going through good analysis design and thinking about the consequences. They thought it was just keep it to automate, cheaper to automate. I don't need those six Sigma Lean people figuring that stuff, like, take too long, just think about it, we're just going to do it. So, I'm Nike, I'm just gonna just do it follow.

Now, we're going to say a number of people falling because actually the consequences.

What makes and Mark, and to summarize, there was a quote that we got from a leader at the United States, Air Force, who's doing a major transformation, the United States Air Force, and he refer back to a corollary of the of the quote that you had before. And he said, the tech knowledge can make stupid happen at the speed of light, so you have to be careful. Absolutely. The best way for our audience to follow your award, kill your books, your, your, your incredible career. What is the best way of people to connect with you and follow your work?

Yeah, I would say connect with me on LinkedIn. And I would say the same thing. And, you know, particularly in the last six months, we've all been doing differently. I mean, I make no mistake, You know, I'm not doing as much work as I might otherwise have been doing.

Thanks to the current events, which means that I'm spending some, tell me too much time providing suggestions and advice to people for things they should be paying before, but hey, I love this stuff. So if I can help you, I will just reach out on LinkedIn.

All I say to people is, you may find, I come back and say, No, I'm not willing to answer that question. Because you might be a Fortune 500 company asking for some great insight that really, you should pay for. But, at an individual level, if anything, I know anything that I have, I can share. I'm always happy to share.

Fantastic.

Mark, thank you so much again for sharing your wisdom from the rest of the world. You have your time.

Hmm, hmm, hmm, hmm, hmm, hmm, thank you very much again for sharing your wisdom from Barton Birmingham, UK, to There's a global audience was very appreciative for your insights today. Thank you so much.

Ladies and gentlemen, this concludes process mining life. It's been a true pleasure and honor to be our host. We're already looking forward to the next event in our series of virtual global events and then next event will be business transformation and operational excellence in health care life.

The health care industry has been significantly disrupted and dislocated and that we're going to bring you top industry experts to talk about what they are experiencing in the industry. What adjustments they are making. What it looks going forward, what lessons we have learned, so that healthcare live sessions will be September 15th through September 17th.

If you'll be interested in learning more about that, go ahead and make sure you register so you'll have all the access for those for that conference.

As a reminder, all of the sessions are being recorded and you'll receive next week sometime, an e-mail with access to all the materials and all the session recordings that will be made available to you free of charge. And that's only possible again because of the wonderful sponsors that we have throughout this conference. I want to say a big thanks again.

UI path, Salone is Cigna, View Fortress IQ, and software AG for sponsoring this global conference for over 2500 registered participants from around the world. We could not do this without their support. So, we're very thankful for that.

A big thanks also to Bryan, a raffle who is digital conference director and brings it all together and makes it happen. Without Brian, we wouldn't be enjoying this con.

This this level of content globally so, very appreciative for, for his work And VJ Bourgeois, who is the CEO of ... Digital, and provides the leadership, and the platform for us to share and learn together. Together, we learn, we adapt, and we create a better future. I'm again, just that Paris, CEO of global excellence and innovation will continue our conversation on LinkedIn just lookup lookup my name. And you see that there is a lot going on related to updates. So, this conference on the on the posting related to this conference. So, thank you again for your participation and engagement throughout the three days. It has been fantastic. We have made many new colleagues and the great leaders from around the world who are part of this community and are part of this journey. Thank you very much. Have a great rest of your week, and we'll see you back soon.