Forbes: Process Mining: From Analytics to Action

One challenge for the business process movement has always been the tradeoff between deep analysis and improvement-oriented actions. Process analysis—understanding and measuring a process and the resources it consumes—is important and valuable because it provides insights on whether and how the process needs improvement. It also provides a baseline for comparison of an existing process versus a reengineered or improved one. But it’s an impatient world we live in—perhaps getting more so all the time—and so many organizations aren’t interested in doing detailed process analysis. They just want improvement. Even Six Sigma’s DMAIC method has “measure” and “analyze” steps (the M and A in DMAIC, of course), but many companies de-emphasize them in favor of “improve.”

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Written By Tom Davenport

Tom Davenport is the President's Distinguished Professor of IT and Management of Babson College, a Digital Fellow at the MIT Initiative on the Digital Economy, and a Senior Advisor to Deloitte's Analytics and Cognitive practice. He has been a professor at several universities (Harvard, University of Chicago, University of Texas) and a consultant or partner at several leading consulting firms (McKinsey, EY, Accenture). Tom teaches, researches, writes, and speaks about the impacts of information technology on people and organizations.