Traditionally, transformation was an initiative or a project taken up by the CXO organization, led by a group of Quality or Six Sigma consultants. If you were also looking at outsourcing some of your processes, your BPO service provider brought in transformation somewhere along the Lift-shift-transform, Transform-lift-shift, or Lift-transform-shift lifecycle.

When you got down to the brass tacks, it involved a one-time process shadowing, or deep dive discussions, and lengthy interviews with subject matter experts (SME). Often, this was subjective, partial, and with increase in scale and complexity, drawn out and costly.

But we still pressed on, brought in the organizational changes, the process improvements and technology – hoping for business benefits, which were not easily monitored or reported.

Gartner says, “Many BPO companies lose money, time and customer confidence on disappointing slow starts to BPO contracted engagements because the clients do not have sufficient levels of detailed insight into the actual work being conducted.”^[1]

But “Process Transformation” has itself (thankfully) followed Ray Kurzweil’s “Law of Accelerating Returns”, according to which, the rate of change in a wide variety of technologies tends to increase exponentially. In the case of process transformation, the paradigm shift is brought in by a tech concoction of Knowledge Management tools, robotic process automation, and artificial intelligence.

In this article, we will focus on a relatively new entrant - process discovery or process mining technology.

Everest Group defines process mining as any software product or solution to examine and analyze process-related information that is captured in event logs generated by enterprise systems such as ERP, CRM, and SCM to discover processes and generate process maps.^[2]

How does process mining drive digital transformation?

Process mining brings in a data-driven, objective, enterprise wide view of the processes in real time. In the hands of a transformation consultant, the tool provides endless possibilities to collect, discover, improve and monitor processes. The process view is no longer a snapshot, but a see-as-it-happens view and this allows the consultant to understand how to make discrete parts of the business more efficient, and how to calibrate the individual components to optimize the whole for specific outcomes.

Figure 1 shows how we have been adopting process mining at different stages on the BPO project lifecycle to accelerate transformation outcomes:

1. BPO Solutioning / Consulting
2. Smart / Remote Transitions
3. Driving Operational Excellence
4. Automation Assessments

Accelerate transformation outcomes

Figure 1: Process mining at different stages of BPO project lifecycle to accelerate transformation

Digital transformation is being turbocharged by shared services, which creates an environment that is conducive for rapid adoption of digital capabilities.

Shared Service Centers (SSCs) and Global In-house Centers (GICs) are the catalysts for driving transformational changes. With a structured approach to transformation and a data-driven approach to continuous process discovery and transformation, it provides value-add, which is a win-win for both service providers and the internal stakeholders (See Figure 2). Some of the key benefits are:

1. Time to Value improvement leading to significant cash flow impact due to reducing cost of transformation and better opportunity identification
2. Standardized approach to process due diligence reduces the need for higher governance layers
3. Process mining exposes not just process variations but also system variations, leading to data driven IT standardization
4. Better benchmarking, leading to accurate baseline assessments and sharper commercials

Unlock Business value

Figure 2: Benefits of process mining in typical BPO engagement

“When digital transformation is done right, it’s like a caterpillar turning into a butterfly, but when done wrong, all you have is a really fast caterpillar.”
— George Westerman, MIT Sloan Initiative on the Digital Economy

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References

1. Gartner - Differentiate BPO Via Advanced Process Capture Published: 20 August 2019
2. Everest Group – Process Mining State of the Market Report 2020

Manoj K Bhat

Digital Operations & Platforms, Enterprise Operations Transformation, Wipro

Manoj Bhat has over 16 years of professional services experience in various roles in consulting, IT led transformation, pre sales, solutions architect across process automation, platform solutions, ERP and BPM packages. He has worked with large global enterprise clients in shared services, GIC, captive and outsourced models in their transformation journey.

You can reach Manoj @ Manoj.bhat5@wipro.com