It’s safe to say that the notion of automation is getting a lot of enterprises excited despite it being an area fraught with challenges. For example, according to Deloitte’s Global Robotics Report 2018, while 80% of organisations implementing RPA were happy with the results, only 1% of them were able to scale considerably in the year previous (50+ bots in a year).
One of the primary reasons for this challenge is the inability to identify the right use cases for automation. Lack of end-to-end visibility in complex and large processes further adds to this problem.
But Infor, the software provider, and Signavio, the business process management firm, want to change this trajectory. Today, they announced a strategic partnership focused on delivering stronger implementation accelerators to Infor customers around the globe. Another core goal of the partnership is to help customers understand and improve processes to enable automation.
“Process management is a critical, yet often elusive, component for businesses navigating digital transformation,” said Dr Gero Decker, CEO at Signavio. “Ultimately, we believe customers can benefit from Signavio’s powerful process mining and process management capabilities, combined with Infor’s Implementation Accelerators, which can help enable smarter and more informed decisions across a variety of business functions.”
What is process mining, and why does it matter to automation?
Process mining tools help to visualise all the possible paths of doing a process using event logs created by information systems. It builds the exact as-is flow of the current state and aids in a detailed analysis of the process.
But what does this mean for automation?
Speaking at a presentation at the Infor Inforum 2019 event in New Orleans earlier today, Decker explained that when it comes to automating processes “while it’s important to have a strong technical foundation, it’s also important, on the business side, to be able to identify what the automation opportunities are in the first place, and to be able to assess them quickly.”
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Process mining tools observe how the process is executed, how much time it takes to complete, which steps are repeated, and what can be automated. It also helps to build an automation roadmap based on empirical data.
All these insights help in qualifying processes for automation, which are not obvious choices otherwise. These tools also help in measuring the benefits of ongoing automation, as it can breakdown any process and identify the magnitude of automation for individual sub-processes.
Industry-specific benefits
The collaboration between Infor and Signavio is also anticipated to add value in how both companies deliver solutions and services to organisations seeking to replace their existing enterprise resource planning (ERP) solutions with new, modern, industry-specific applications.
Implementation Accelerators are pre-configured solutions based on the latest version of applicable Infor application suites. They are designed to deliver certain core industry application processes and to assist with reduced implementation times, risks and costs for customers in specific industries. Now powered by Signavio, a web-based business process modelling and intelligence tool, Infor customers utilising an Implementation Accelerator can promptly be put on the path to enhanced business excellence. Part of the Signavio Business Transformation Suite, the Process Manager and Process Intelligence are designed to capture, connect, and communicate how work is done and where decisions are made, and deliver that information to Signavio Collaboration Hub.
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Having visible processes across an organisation can help users make better decisions, faster.
“As organisations face continued pressure to operate faster and more efficiently, we believe upgrading to modern, industry-specific ERP technology that provides the benefits of cloud computing, big data and artificial intelligence, is paramount to success,” said Soma Somasundaram, Infor president of products and CTO. “Signavio’s process mining and intelligence technology can provide Infor customers the platform to support the alignment of suggested practices and business processes delivered by our Industry Implementation Accelerators against real-time transactional data generated by Infor suite of applications, which can be used to help companies identify and resolve deviations from such practices and can assist and support organisations in improving business performance, based on real data.”
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