What's new for Process Mining in the Zurich release

[dangrady510]

For every ServiceNow release, I like to explore the city the release is named after, learn a little, and then draw some parallels to our ServiceNow Process Mining solution.  Zurich presented a number of interesting opportunities, but I landed on this.

This Swiss are known for their master watchmakers who sweat the smallest details to make timepieces that run flawlessly, organizations can use process mining to take apart and fine-tune their workflows with the same precision.

The city also has a number of hidden tunnels which are a great reminder that beneath the surface of our operations there are often unseen twists, detours, and inefficiencies. On the ServiceNow AI Platform, process mining is your watchmaker’s loupe (this is that funky magnifying glass watchmakers wear on their head) — it helps to improve our visibility into how work actually flows, uncovers those hidden gaps, and points to opportunities to simplify and speed things up. The payoff is tangible: less wasted time, smoother operations, and a measurable lift in productivity.

In the Zurich release we’ve introduced a number of enhancements that make it easier than ever to see those hidden paths, measure their impact, and fine-tune your processes so they run as precisely as a Swiss timepiece.

Let’s run through the enhancements.

We are always focused on accelerating our customers' time to value with Process Mining.  One of the key aspects of the solution that supports this mission is the rule based and automated Improvement Opportunities that surface things like process bottlenecks, rework, and non-conformant scenarios. You can learn more about in Improvement Opportunities here.    With every Process Mining project, we generate a list of potential opportunities on and provide details about the magnitude of the potential opportunity to help process stakeholders prioritize which opportunities to focus on first.

Sample list of Improvement Opportunities on a Process Mining project Summary and Insights page

In Zurich we’ve provide an Improvement Opportunities details page that packages up all of the information related to that opportunity into an easy to digest dashboard that brings together key metrics like durations, touchpoints, variants, and more.

Improvement Opportunities Details Page showing trends, metrics, and other contextual information related to the process improvement opportunity

Not everyone in the organization is a process analyst who is comfortable slicing and dicing a visualized process map.  These new Improvement Opportunities details pages are designed to help bring Process Mining insights to more people in the organization and accelerate our time to improvement.

Under that same umbrella of bringing more people into the fold and accelerating time to improvement we’ve added another AI powered enhancement to Process Mining in Zurich.  Improvement Opportunity Highlights.  

The AI powered Highlights capability quickly summarizes opportunities to improve the proces

Improvement Opportunity Highlights summarizes key findings within an Improvement Opportunity transforming data into actionable guidance for quick, informed process improvement decisions.

This Highlights capability is big help because we’ve added even more insightful process metrics to the mix in Zurich to help us surface process inefficiencies and improvement opportunities. 

The first new metric is Idle Time.  Idle time refers to moments when resources are not being used.   We should always be looking for ways to reduce idle time within our processes and ensure we are maximizing all of our resources.  One of the big benefits of deploying AI agents is that they don’t have a backlog or take coffee breaks. When work comes in, they act on it, essentially eliminating idle time from an activity.  In order, to eliminate idle time it helps to know where it is occurring.   In Zurich the idle time metric is available as part of the Improvement Opportunities details page, the breakdown panel in the Analyst Workbench and in the Assignment Group view of a visualized process map.

Example of a visualized process map looking at how work is moving from group to group.  The idle time metric is available on the group pop-up to help us understand how much time work is spending in that group without it being assigned.

The second new metric added in Zurich is touchpoints.  The touchpoint metric helps us identify steps of the process that high volumes of manual activity.  These manual tasks result in increased processing times, excessive human effort, and unnecessary workload for teams. The inefficiencies not only strain internal operations but also negatively impact customer satisfaction by causing delays and reducing service quality. 

Example showing the the touchpoint metrics for the CS -User Experience group.  The histogram view would help us focus in in on the work items with the higher volumes of touchpoints.

Just like the idle time metric the touchpoint metric is available via the Improvement Opportunity details page, the breakdown panel, and on arcs and nodes on the map.  

Touchpoints can be configured to be based on work notes, additional comments, assignment changes. 

High touchpoint process steps are full of automation and integration opportunities that ultimately can become tools we supply to our AI Agents.  Those same agents that help us eliminate idle time.

In order to activate these new metrics, you will need to update the Process Configuration records for the associated tables.  You can learn more about Process Configuration records here.

While these new metrics are focused on actions that are primarily taken within ServiceNow there are situations where frontline employees are performing tasks on their workstations as part of a process.  How do we get visibility into that next level of detail? 

This is where Task Mining comes to the rescue.  Task Mining is an exciting new addition to the ServiceNow AI Platform in the Zurich release.

Task mining gives us visibility into workstation level, the tasks that are being performed in applications outside of the platform itself.

Tasks like sending emails to a supplier, looking something up in a spreadsheet, searching a supplier or vendor portal and then taking any of that information and updating in SAP or Oracle.   These are all activities that probably could be automated as part of a workflow, streamlined into a single experience using a playbook, or orchestrated by an AI Agent.

Task mining helps us understand who is doing what, in what applications, in what order, and how long is it taking people to do those things.

Example of a dashboard view showing different aspect of the task level data captured by Task Mining

With Task Mining a new set and depth of questions are able to be answered:

• Which applications are people spending the most time and how often are they using those applications?
• Which applications can we decommission?
• Which teams or agents are using those applications most efficiently?
• Are there training opportunities or opportunities to automate?
• Or streamline into a unified experience using a playbook or orchestrated by an AI Agent? 

There is so much opportunity to get better out there in every organization we just need this depth of visibility into the reality of how things are being done, and we need it fast so we can continue to improve on a regular basis.  If you want to learn more about Task Mining check out this Process Mining Academy session for a deep dive and live demonstration.

Sticking with the theme of digitizing and streamlining work that is potentially happening outside of the ServiceNow AI Platform, we have another new AI based enhancement for Process Mining in Zurich that is probably best utilized in in these scenarios.   That enhancement is Playbook generation.  ServiceNow’s Playbook capability provides guided, step-by-step workflows that help users follow best practices, accelerate task completion, and ensure consistent process execution.

Example of a Playbook for a Health and Safety incident.

In Zurich, we’ve added the ability to generate a Playbook directly from the Process Mining Analyst Workbench based on the steps in the visualized process map.

Example of hiring process data that has been visualized with process mining.  With the ideal path identified we can generate a Playbook right from the Process Mining Analyst Workbench

Imagine a scenario, where you’ve imported some process data from an application (Not ServiceNow).  You’ve visualized and explored that process data within the Process Mining Workspace and have identified the ideal path that people should be taking to complete that process.  Now in a couple clicks you can create a Playbook based on that ideal path.

AI generated Playbook initiated from Process Mining

This new capability will significantly accelerate your ability to reimagine processes and experiences.

Those are some of the major enhancements to be excited about even if you are completely new to ServiceNow’s Process Mining offering.  

The next few items will probably be more exciting to those who have a little more experience with ServiceNow Process Mining.  (Many of them have been driven by their feedback).

The first is the ability to apply multiple activity definition in a single process map view.  In the Xanadu release we introduced the concept of views.  Views allow us to consolidate multiple Activity Definitions (like State, Assignment Group, Priority) into a single map and then allow us to toggle different “Views” of that map on and off accelerate our time to improvement by allowing us to surface more Improvement Opportunities and process insights from a single project.  This in turn will reduce the number of projects needed per process and help us better govern and scale Process Mining in our organizations.    In previous releases, could only select one view at a time in the Analyst Workbench.  Now in Zurich you can select multiple views allowing us to do more advanced analysis. 

In this exampled we have chosen to use only the State and Priority views on the map and have excluded the Assignment Group view

Another change worth noting is the ability to use ‘string’ fields as breakdowns.  Why am I calling this out?  It is a very useful in digging into tasks that are associated to Service Catalog items.

Multidimensional map showing the relationship between a catalog item and the associated tasks.  Using Short Description as a breakdown for the sc_tasks table is very useful.

For Service Catalog items that have multiple tasks associated to them using the Short Descriptions of those tasks as a breakdown helps us better identify which part of the process is the bottleneck and where there might be integration and automation opportunities.

Other enhancements include tighter integration with the Continual Improvement Management application, a Private Projects setting to prevent others with access to a project from seeing the data within the project, a unified project link to always provide the most recent project version, and more.

If you've read this far you already know there is a lot to unpack for Process Mining in the Zurich release.  We’ll be doing a deeper dive and live demos of these enhancements in an upcoming Process Mining Academy session.  You can register here.

Just as Zurich’s watchmakers obsess over the tiny details to create timepieces that run flawlessly, organizations should be doing the same with their operations.  With all of these enhancements for Process Mining (and now Task Mining) in the Zurich release we are continuing to make it easier to uncover process improvement opportunities, boost productivity, and ensure organizations never miss a beat.

Have you tried Process Mining in your own instance yet?  Check out the Process Mining Evaluation Projects.

Are you or someone at your organization discussing AI Agents?  Of course you are.  This post details how Process Mining can help you optimize those agents every step of the way. 

Fun Fact: The Zurich release is our 10th Process Mining release.

Here is some additional Process Mining content that you might want to check out next:

• Guide to getting started with Process Mining
• What workflows (ITSM, CSM, HR, etc) is Process Mining available for? (Spoiler, ALL OF THEM)
• How to create your first Process Mining project
• Planning your ServiceNow Process Mining program
• How to use Process Mining to identify process improvement opportunities
• Process Mining FAQ
• Am I ready for Process Mining?
• Benefits of running Process Mining in a production environment
• Why behind the KPI:  How Process Mining complements Performance Analytics
• Process Mining for external process data
• Automated Findings