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How can SAP's Signavio acquisition help companies?
Learn about process mining's capabilities and how Rise with SAP users could potentially benefit from the company acquiring process mining company Signavio.
Earlier this year, SAP's service Rise with SAP arrived alongside the news that SAP had acquired process mining company Signavio. Rise with SAP's process mining capabilities from Signavio could help users better assess their business processes.
Potentially improved processes include order-to-cash (O2C) and the customer experience, among others.
Here's a look at how process mining works and how these capabilities could help companies.
What is process mining?
Process mining software automates event log data collection in transactional systems like ERP software, then uses analytics to map an organization's business processes and identify potential areas for improvement.
The concept of process mining isn't new, but analytics' growing capabilities have brought it to the forefront.
SAP users and process mining
Signavio's process mining is a central element of the Rise with SAP service, which is part of SAP's attempt to persuade users to move to S/4HANA and which the company bills as "business transformation as a service."
One series of events that process mining could improve is an O2C process, in which a customer places an order, then their credit is verified. The company fulfills the order and issues an invoice, then the customer pays.
Process mining could discover bottlenecks or other areas that need improvement. For example, if a company's credit verification process causes delays, the company might decide to redesign the process or even create a way to bypass the credit verification in special cases.
Process mining could also potentially improve a company's overall customer experience, which begins with a consumer's initial awareness and research and extends through the purchasing process and post-sales support. Process mining can discover and map these consumer decision paths using data from clickstream analytics, among other potential sources.