Our organization has applied UiPath Process Mining to automate and streamline key business processes such as Purchase to Pay and Sales to Order.
Utilizing Process Mining for streamlining processes is relatively straightforward. While it does require an initial time investment, once you've spent some time with it, you gain a better understanding of the system, making your use of it more effective.
The end-to-end visibility provided by Process Mining through its dashboards is highly beneficial, and I find it very user-friendly. Designing dashboards is a straightforward process, and the clarity they offer is exceptional. While there could be room for improvements, such as expanding the design options, overall, it's easy to create dashboards according to your specific needs.
It aids us in transforming raw data into actionable information.
The disability of Process Mining is significant because, in vast amounts of raw data and numerous events, it adds value by making this data more meaningful. We don't lose valuable insights within the event logs, allowing us to trace and comprehend the data, and enabling informed decision-making. This is a major advantage as it empowers everyone, regardless of technical expertise or educational background, to grasp the insights derived from the data. Process Mining plays a crucial role in democratizing understanding and making it accessible to individuals with varying levels of technical or educational backgrounds.
The overall transparency provided by Process Mining to our end-to-end processes is evident and has proven to be helpful. I can confidently state that the clarity it offers has led to tangible outcomes.
We have integrated Process Mining with various systems, specifically for importing data from SAP. The integration was facilitated through a connector provided by the tool. Additionally, our RPA department is utilizing Process Mining, but at present, there are no integrations with other systems beyond SAP. For instance, we currently lack integration with Salesforce.
I find it quite satisfying as the process of exporting data from SAP using Process Mining has been remarkably easy and efficient. We quickly completed the integration, thanks to the clear and well-designed connectors provided by the tool. Furthermore, the flexibility to add tables from SAP, including those outside the standard set, has been beneficial. This allows us to incorporate specific tables that may be developed within SAP for our analysis.
The empowering ability of Process Mining for employee decision-making is apparent, though our department hasn't fully utilized it due to time constraints. There is potential for improvement, especially through the integration of AI. By leveraging AI capabilities, the tool could go beyond presenting data and diagrams, offering proactive suggestions to guide decision-making.
It has allowed us to allocate our employees' time more efficiently, freeing them up for other tasks or projects. By identifying variations in our processes, we've pinpointed areas where significant time was being spent. Subsequently, we undertook several RPA projects to address these inefficiencies, and the results were notable. In total, we completed around six to eight projects, leading to a reduction in time spent of approximately three FTE hours.
The time to realize value with Process Mining varies, and from my perspective, I recognized its value from the outset of our project. However, for our company, the overall time to derive value took approximately four to six months. This duration includes the development phase, along with the time required for people to understand, wait for results, and manage various aspects of the implementation.
Automating and streamlining processes is cost-effective, considering the adage "time is money." Saving time equates to saving money. With the introduction of robots or automation tools, people realize they have more time for meaningful and impactful tasks. This increased availability can boost motivation, encouraging employees to engage in research, negotiations, or other value-added activities. For instance, in departments like Purchase to Pay, automation can empower employees to focus on strategic aspects rather than repetitive tasks.
One of the most valuable aspects of using UiPath Process Mining for our ERP, specifically SAP, is the comprehensive overview it provides. This tool allows us to visualize the entire process landscape, highlighting various process variations within the project. It proves beneficial for comparing our initial documentation, outlining steps like purchase requisitions, approvals, and process diagrams, with the actual occurrences in the SAP system. The comparison capability enables us to identify critical variations and discrepancies between our designed processes and real-world system executions. It empowers our team to address these variations, ensuring that our processes align with the intended design. Furthermore, the feature of tagging compliance issues has been instrumental for us. We've defined specific tags to flag instances where, for example, a single individual both requests and approves a purchase. Such deviations from the established processes trigger alerts, allowing us to address these issues promptly. In the course of our ERP project, we identified and documented thirty-eight audit topics. Utilizing UiPath Process Mining, we focused on twenty of these topics, implementing necessary design changes and conditions in the ERP system to prevent their recurrence. This has been crucial in enhancing our system's compliance and preventing undesirable scenarios from reoccurring.
The inability of Process Mining to address bottlenecks across a variety of processes suggests potential for improvement. While the tool provides details at the bottom of the page that can be adjusted for more or less granularity, there is room for enhancement. It would be beneficial if the program incorporated AI suggestions, such as recommending decreases in certain approval points. By leveraging advanced AI algorithms, Process Mining tools could potentially offer proactive insights and recommendations for optimizing processes, contributing to further improvement in their capabilities.
While exploring other Process Mining tools, I found that most of them effectively handle processes like Purchase to Pay and Sales Order, but they lack features related to manufacturing or production processes. Specifically, there is a need for connectors that can integrate with production parts. This gap represents a valuable opportunity for improvement in these tools.
Improvements could be made in educating a new support team for enhanced efficiency and effectiveness.
We have been working with it for two years now.
We engaged with tech support during the initiation of the Process Mining project. While occasional queries on specific topics may arise, particularly in complex areas, we generally do not require ongoing assistance. Notably, we faced no issues with data exporting or transferring throughout the process. While the services provided are satisfactory, there is a notable shortage of technicians. I would rate it eight out of ten.
Although we haven't engaged in projects with other tools, we did conduct a Proof of Concept to compare them with UiPath. These alternative tools demonstrated their competence, but our familiarity with UiPath and its integration into our system provides more advantages at present.
We continuously evaluate other tools, engaging in discussions and negotiations to explore potential benefits and assess if there are compelling reasons to consider alternatives or potentially transition from UiPath in the future.
Overall, I would rate it nine out of ten.