Process optimization: Mining for process efficiency

These are uncertain times. When leaders are uneasy about the future, they start to look at ways to drive efficiency and cut costs to prepare for what might lurk around the corner.

Most organizations know they can optimize processes, but they struggle to pinpoint where and how. ServiceNow customers are doing this by creating low-code apps using our App Engine solution. But launching a product, technology, or app without monitoring its effectiveness or adjusting for performance as the environment evolves is a recipe for suboptimal performance. Process Optimization for App Engine can help.

What is Process Optimization for App Engine?

A real-time digital process X-ray, Process Optimization for App Engine shows how digital processes automated with App Engine are running so users can quickly identify areas ripe for improvement. After you’ve built a digital workflow with App Engine, you can perform real-time discovery of how that process is working using visual process maps that are 100% data-driven and factual.

You’ll be able to quickly find answers to questions such as:

• Where is unnecessary rework happening when users interact with the app?

• Which teams involved with the app workflow are performing slower than the rest and why?

• Where do process bottlenecks exist?

• Does the process follow initial workflow expectations?

• Which channels, vendors, and/or locations can be improved?

• Can a root cause analysis help eliminate slow-performing steps?

Helping process owners and citizen developers

If you’re a process owner who’s accountable for designing effective and efficient processes to deliver quality outcomes, you can now extend data-driven process improvement to low-code apps built with App Engine. Friction points and efficiencies are highlighted for further automation and improvement with in-platform process mining.

For example, employees interacting with a purchase approval app might find the process gets stuck at the second line of approval. They typically email or call the approver outside the app to expedite the purchase. With Process Optimization for App Engine, process owners can quickly identify where approvals get stuck and why. Is that second approval even necessary, or can it be eliminated?

If you’re a citizen developer who designed and built a low-code app with App Engine, you can mine that app to see exactly how it performs in real-life conditions. Does actual user behavior match the initial process design flow?

For example, you may have designed an app before the pandemic, when most users were in the office. Now, with most employees working from home, their interactions with the app may no longer be suited to their environment and may be inefficient. As improvements are made, the intended design becomes stronger, and efficiency is optimized.

Closed-loop continuous improvement on one platform

The American Society for Quality (ASQ) defines continuous improvement as “the ongoing improvement of products, services, or processes through incremental and breakthrough improvements.” With Process Optimization for App Engine, process owners and citizen developers can continuously optimize their custom workflows on a single platform for hyperautomation.

Process anomalies and bottlenecks within custom workflows can be detected and analyzed to find the root cause, allowing them to be eliminated through continued digitization with App Engine. This is not a one-and-done flow, though. With continued monitoring for incremental automation improvements, the custom app will become more efficient and optimized.

Automation ideas can then be sent to Automation Center to track and rank each improvement candidate based on time and cost savings for greatest impact.

Since all of this is natively built on the Now Platform, efficiency gains can be identified in minutes. The continuous improvement loop drives more efficiency with each turn.

Find out more about how ServiceNow hyperautomation and low-code help work flow freely and efficiently—and processes run optimally.

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