Location, Location, Location
I’m sure many of you are familiar with that refrain. In real estate that mantra means that even if homes are the same size and have many of the same (or identical features) their value may vary greatly depending on where they are located.
The same holds true with software solutions like ServiceNow’s Process Mining.
Occasionally, I’m asked “should we run Process Mining in our production instance?”
The answer is most definitely YES!
The primary driver of this question is performance related.
Process Mining has been designed to cause no observable performance impact
Process Mining starts with the mining of audit trail data from sys_audit logs - which happens in small batch processes (the audit log query is broken up into 900 record chunks).
Once the audit data is extracted, we use Predictive Intelligence (ServiceNow ML infrastructure) to train the process model so that it does not consume any CPU, Memory on your local instance. Read more about the specifics here.
Now that we’ve got that concern out of the way let’s look at some of the value-added capabilities that come with running the solution in your production instance that you don’t benefit from if you are running Process Mining in a lower environment.
- Direct connection with Continual Improvement Management and/or Automation Center. When you start digging in to process data with Process Mining you are going to find many opportunities to improve, you won’t be able to act on them all at once. Continual Improvement Management and Automation Center are applications on the ServiceNow platform that allow you to capture, track and prioritize improvement initiatives and automation opportunities. Being able to create new or link to existing initiatives in these applications directly from the Process Mining Analyst Workbench helps creates a more closed loop continual improvement experience for your organization and helps drive accountability and action. These are applications you’ll be running in your production instance not in lower environments. You can learn more about these solutions in this Process Mining Academy Session.
Direct connection to Continual Improvement Management and Automation Center within the Analyst Workbench
- One-Click Mining from Performance Analytics KPIs and Dashboards. Performance Analytics and Process Mining are very complementary solutions. Performance Analytics allows us to track how our KPIs are trending over time – essentially answer questions about “What” has happened. Process Mining helps us answer next level questions about “Why” we are seeing certain trends and patterns with our KPIs. For example, if we see a rise in our resolution or closure times in a given month Process Mining can help us get a better understanding of where that increase is coming from. Where is the process getting stuck? Is it caused by some form of rework? Is there a delay in assignment time? Are we going back and forth with the caller more for a certain type of ticket? These are all questions that Process Mining can help us answer. There is a direct connection from Performance Analytics KPIs that creates a project and initiates a mining job which streamlines the process of asking and answering these next level questions. The dashboards that are home to these Performance Analytics KPIs will be consumed by stakeholders in your production instance – they’ll want this ability to answer the follow up “Why” questions in that environment as well. This Process Mining Academy session covers this connection in more detail.
Link directly to Process Mining from Analytics Hub and KPI Details.
- One-Click Mining from List Views. Like the above connection with Performance Analytics you have the same one-click mining option from list views within the platform. So as stakeholders are drilling in to reports that list work that has met a certain criteria and they want to get a better understanding of the process path that those records took they will have an option to generate a Process Mining project in a single click from that list. This Process Mining Academy session covers this connection in more detail.
Create a Process Mining project directly from a list view
- Comparing different Process Mining project versions. As your organization evolves or as you make changes to your process you will want to get an understanding of the impact of those changes. With Process Mining you can compare different versions of a Process Mining project so you can do things like month over month analysis or pre and post change analysis. This type of version comparison will not be available in lower environments.
Compare different versions of a Process Mining project to see the impact of process changes
- Process Map on stakeholder dashboards. Starting in the Vancouver release there is a process map component that can be incorporated into persona-based dashboards customers create on their own. Business users will now be able to get a complete view of their process KPIs, operational data, and process performance in a single view, enabling them to make quicker decisions about where to make people and process adjustments. These dashboards will be used by stakeholders in a production environment. You can learn more about this capability in this Process Mining Academy session.
Add a Process Map to an existing dashboard to provide the stakeholder with process level visibility
- Process Mining output embedded in other solutions like Workforce Optimization and the Vendor Management Workspace. Improvement opportunities powered by Process Mining are embedded in other applications you may be using on the ServiceNow platform like Workforce Optimization, the ITSM Success Dashboard, and the Vendor Management Workspace. (you can learn more about the connection with Workforce Optimization in this Process Mining Academy session). To get the full value out of these other applications you’ll want to be running Process Mining in the same environment.
- Access to secure and up to date detailed records. There are several advantages to taking an in-platform approach to process mining. One of them is the ability to get down to the detailed records as you are doing your analysis. By running Process Mining in your production environment, you ensure that the person doing the analysis has access to the most up to date information when they dig into the details. Speaking of access another benefit of staying in-platform is that you leverage all the existing ACL security rules you’ve put in place to protect the details in those records. That same security model may not exist in a lower environment.
So, as you can see even with software solutions its still - Location, Location, Location
With this better understanding of some of the reasons to be conducting your Process Mining activities in your production environment you might be trying to figure out what use case to start with. The Process Mining Use Case Series might help you generate some ideas.
Interested in learning more about in-platform process mining check out the FAQ
See Process Mining in action - check out this post which includes a live DEMO
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