As a developer, I manage a process mining team and have a development team reporting to me.
We use UiPath Process Mining for over-the-counter, code-to-invoice, and purchase-to-pay processes.
In over-the-counter processing, there is a process called accounts payable. Within accounts payable, there is a process called three-way matching. Three-way matching involves matching three things: the purchase order number, quantity, and price; the goods receipt quantity and price; and the invoice quantity and price. These three things must be matched based on a set of rules. We were able to identify areas where all three-way matching could be automated using process mining. This significantly reduced our lead time by around four to five hours.
We wanted transparency in our development process. Our large organization is spread across 18 different regions, and each region performs the same process in its own way. UiPath Process Mining gives us transparency into how these processes perform. We can also compare each region to the others. The level of transparency is very high with this tool. This helps us to identify and implement best practices. For example, if EMEA performs better than APAC one week, we can replicate its practices in APAC. UiPath Process Mining can help us achieve transparency and identify best practices.
From a development perspective, UiPath provides connectors that allow us to connect to source systems, such as SAP and Salesforce. UiPath Process Mining also provides certain connectors, which are essentially customized API configurations. Once we connect a source system directly to UiPath Process Mining, all of the necessary configuration is automatically imported, so minimal development is required.
The end-to-end visibility is great. When we connect to UiPath Process Mining, we can use the dashboards to see a process map that is readily available. We have multiple data sets that are actually stored in another room. Once we connect all of the digital footprints to UiPath Process Mining, provided they have the necessary connectors, we can see the complete process map in a list format. We can also immediately see certain analyses that have been automatically generated, such as the lead time, where the lead time is high, which vendors are causing the high lead time, and which customers are using the process. This information is populated automatically when we connect to UiPath Process Mining. This is one of the strengths of UiPath Process Mining.
UiPath Process Mining can help us turn raw data into actionable information for standard systems. However, it can be difficult to use for systems that require customization, due to the lack of connectors.
It helps us identify and remove bottlenecks in a wide range of processes. Its transparency gives us visibility into where bottlenecks occur in the process, and we can see the lead times for each step. This allows us to immediately focus our efforts on reducing lead times, whether at the auto management stage, factory, warehouse, or last-mile delivery. Once we have a complete process map, we can clearly see where our efforts need to be directed to reduce overall lead times. We can achieve this through automation, following best practices, or training users to follow certain protocols to prevent spills or core leakage in the process. UiPath Process Mining makes all of this possible to some extent.
We have actually achieved hard savings of approximately two million euros this year, exclusively using UiPath Process Mining for the O2C process alone. However, this is just for O2C. There is still a lot of room for improvement. We could actually save much more. The technology itself is great, so there is a lot of potential for savings, both hard savings and soft savings. As of now, we have actually saved two million euros for O2C. For B2B, the approval process is still ongoing, so I cannot provide an update on the numbers. I really don't know the numbers right now, but it will also be close to one million euros. So we can conservatively estimate that we have saved around three million euros using UiPath Process Mining this year alone.
UiPath Process Mining empowers employee decision-making based on each person's role. For example, it gives other managers access to data so they can clearly understand what is going wrong. We also talk to them and provide them with information on the hub feed, allowing them to see which hubs are performing much better than theirs. They have the same data, regardless of their management group or product. We also provide them with the product category, and we bucket products together. For example, we bucket MR machines and CD machines together. We do this by setting criteria. We also see how well the computers are performing and how well we are giving orders at the right time. UiPath Process Mining helps us make informed decisions based on this data.
The savings we predicted of three million euros were primarily in FTEs. We were able to reduce a large number of FTEs using UiPath Process Mining. This is a double-edged sword because we can either free up FTEs for other tasks or remove employees from the organization altogether. In our organization, we have chosen to free up approximately 200 FTEs in the Latin America region. None of these FTEs were terminated; they were instead reassigned to other useful tasks. UiPath Process Mining has therefore been very helpful.