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Report highlights growth of process intelligence use
A new report examines the growth of process intelligence use by enterprise leaders. Learn practical and actionable tips for a successful implementation.
Imagine all the processes in your organization -- finance, accounting, IT, supply chain, HR and customer service. The sheer number of business tasks is daunting.
While you want to improve your operations continuously, how can you do it at scale? Interviewing hundreds of people, manually documenting workflows and monitoring employees are inefficient and not comprehensive. As a result, enterprise-wide process transparency has remained virtually impossible. To gain more visibility, enterprise leaders are turning to process intelligence as a means of optimizing business operations, reducing costs, improving efficiencies and enhancing the customer experience.
At its core, process intelligence uses automated tools to analyze operational data at scale -- every action, keystroke and mouse click -- untangling operational complexities to identify the who, what, where, when and why of process inefficiencies.
For example, a leading data analytics consulting firm used process intelligence to discover that turning draft invoices into delivered invoices took, on average, 36 days. The consequence of this inefficiency meant $60 to $70 million in unbilled revenue.
And there are many more similar use cases. Because of process intelligence's value, the technology has emerged as the leading tech investment among global enterprises, according to data by HFS Research.
Genpact partnered with HFS to interview over 400 senior global leaders on process intelligence -- gathering their insights, best practices and lessons on process intelligence.
Growth of process intelligence use
Although still in its infancy, enterprises and service providers are betting on the rise of process intelligence.
Many organizations have plans in motion and high expectations for the technology, according to "The meteoric rise of process intelligence: Connecting people, processes, and data to transform businesses," a recent study from Genpact and HFS. Following are some of the findings:
- Business value: 91% of respondents say process intelligence drives significant business value.
- Return on investment: More than 90% of senior executives believe it will take less than three years to reap the benefits from process intelligence investments.
- Knowledge gap: 67% of respondents say a significant challenge is a lack of knowledge about which processes would benefit from process intelligence.
- Burgeoning growth: Enterprises have only scaled 29% of process intelligence projects.
Jump-starting the process intelligence journey
Executives who are new to process intelligence often wonder where to begin. Most organizations' biggest demand for process intelligence comes from finance and accounting (F&A) and IT and digital departments. For instance, back-office functions, where process silos and disconnected data sources are often the norm, are prime candidates.
After identifying areas of improvement, enterprise leaders should consider using a combination of process mining (analyzing transactional data and event logs) and process discovery tools (analyzing individual employee activities) to get a holistic view of their operations.
And for those who have already embarked on their process intelligence journey, there's still scope for expansion to identify new efficiencies.
Consider the following tips for success from our report:
- Focus on the human experience. Process intelligence is more than just enhancing productivity. Enterprise leaders must recognize the importance of customer and employee experiences, which are the ultimate measures of how well an organization runs its business.
- Develop a culture of innovation. In large transformation programs, the biggest challenge isn't the technology or the project management; it's making the change stick. Breaking change into actionable, bite-sized chunks allows for a more agile approach to innovation.
- Fully embed process intelligence. Enterprise leaders should consider partnering with a services provider to establish a center of excellence, advancing strategic planning, decision-making and broad adoption of process intelligence.
The quest toward process excellence
From our work running thousands of processes for S&P 500 companies, we see process intelligence already driving business value for our clients.
With data at the heart of every decision, enterprise leaders can analyze, improve and transform end-to-end operations -- no matter how complex. As teams move away from subjective and arduous methods and toward more effective workflows, process excellence is on the horizon.
Amaresh Tripathy is the business leader of analytics at Genpact, a global professional services firm delivering outcomes that transform clients' businesses. He leads an extensive global team of analytics experts covering data engineering, data insights, AI and machine learning. Apart from growing the company's analytics business, he's responsible for increasing the data fluency of Genpact's 115,000+ employees worldwide.
