Adoption, use and management of process mining in practice

Abstract

PurposeThis study explores how process managers perceive the adoption, use and management of process mining in practice. While research in process mining predominantly focuses on the technical aspects, our work highlights organizational and managerial implications.Design/methodology/approachWe report on a focus group study conducted with process managers from various industries in Central Europe. This setting allowed us to gain diverse and in-depth insights about the needs and expectations of practitioners in relation to the adoption, use and management of process mining.FindingsWe find that process managers face four central challenges. These challenges are largely related to four stages; (1) planning and business case calculation, (2) process selection, (3) implementation, and (4) process mining use.Research limitations/implicationsWe point to research opportunities in relation to the adoption, use and management of process mining. We suggest that future research should apply interdisciplinary study designs to better understand the managerial and organizational implications of process mining.Practical implicationsThe reported challenges have various practical implications at the organizational and managerial level. We explore how existing BPM frameworks can be extended to meet these challenges.Originality/valueThis study is among the first attempts to explore process mining from the perspective of process managers. It clarifies important challenges and points to avenues for future research.

No Longer Out of Sight, No Longer Out of Mind? How Organizations Engage with Process Mining-Induced Transparency to Achieve Increased Process Awareness

“…Instead, organizations still struggle to employ the mechanisms to leverage transparency for process awareness. This observation resonates with recent research that highlights the need to understand how organizations act upon the pervasive transparency created through process mining (Grisold et al 2020;Mendling et al 2020) and how they leverage the transparency to benefit from increased process awareness (Eggers and Hein 2020). As process awareness consists of a multi-layered construct that requires a firm to develop a shared process language and understanding (Christiansson and Rentzhog 2019), achieving it with the help of technology should not only be investigated as a merely technical question but instead as a socio-technological phenomenon (Sarker et al 2019).…”

“…We, therefore, considered a qualitative case study approach to be particularly suitable for investigating such a novel and complex phenomenon (Dubé and Paré 2003;Yin 2014). In particular, we chose an exploratory, multiple case study research approach aimed at building theory (Eisenhardt 1989) since we still lack an understanding of how organizations engage with transparency through process mining to achieve process awareness (Grisold et al 2020). To develop a theory of how organizations create process awareness from process mining, we entered the field with no prior theory and hypotheses to avoid bias and limiting the findings (Eisenhardt 1989).…”

“…Only recently, the first studies emerged to shed light on the sociotechnical implications of process mining, such as the necessary organizational antecedents, for example, a structured project management approach (Mans et al 2013) and collaborative practices to evaluate the data and analyses (Eggers and Hein 2020), as well as potential managerial challenges (Grisold et al 2020) when implementing the technology. Yet, these studies are but the beginning as the implications of the pervasive transparency created from process mining still remain unclear (Grisold et al 2020), in particular in the light of emerging challenges, such as the fear of control and privacy loss (Grisold et al 2020;Mendling et al 2020).…”

“…With the advent of automated, evidence-based process discovery techniques, such as process mining, the opportunity emerges to create organizational process awareness that is no longer dependent on individual perceptions (Mendling et al 2020). However, we still lack an understanding of how organizations engage with the transparency created from process mining (Grisold et al 2020) and how the technology facilitates the emergence of process awareness (Eggers and Hein 2020).…”

“…It is a phenomenon that consists of a technical component, such as the process mining tool, and the social component, such as the organization's individuals and collectives and their relationships and interactions (Sarker et al 2019) that are inextricably interwoven while achieving technology-enabled process awareness. Nevertheless, thus far, research on process mining has mainly focused on advancing the technological basis (Grisold et al 2020), while its sociotechnical implications remain largely unknown. We, therefore, set out to study process mining in its sociotechnical context to shed light on how firms engage with the process transparency created from process mining to achieve increased process awareness.…”