Process Intelligence is crucial for the success of Business Process optimisation

Documenting operational processes can take a huge amount of effort at the outset and often businesses underestimate the on-going maintenance requirements. Those that don't try to map processes can never really say that all of their risks are identified and controlled, which in turn can lead to regulatory challenges.

Process Intelligence is the answer to these challenges. Taking data from the core business systems and using it to map out actual process/transaction flows, means that businesses are no longer solely reliant on the collective knowledge of their staff sitting in a room and white-boarding what they think happens. With the best intention in the world, this approach won't identify all of the transactional variants and is open to human error. 

There are significant differences when looking at the results of human versus data driven process mapping. Hence why Robotic Process Automation (RPA) is playing a more important role than ever before. With RPA, robots automate repetitive, manual tasks that a human user used to do to. The Robots are software workflow tools armed with business rules, automating tasks and routing the output to the next step in the process. The result is processing without human intervention. 

But for RPA to work you have to address both the process and automation together. With data driven process mapping you notice 3 key results:

Efficiency and smart investing.

Process intelligence not only identifies deviations from core processes but also gives insights into the time taken for each process step to be completed (at a staff level) and the number of people involved in a process. Both of these give valuable insights for businesses looking to increase their operational efficiency (which should be everyone). With most businesses starting to invest in robotics and artificial intelligence the insights from Process Intelligence allows smarter investment, using data to identify the areas with the highest return on investment.

Point in time compliance.

Control steps being bypassed and processes not being fully mapped is the kind of stuff keeping CFO’s, Compliance Officers and Senior Management Function holders awake at night. Using Process Intelligence allows businesses to validate that their Client Assets Sourcebook (CASS) and wider operational control frameworks are complete and robust, and if not, to take swift action to address this.

Ongoing compliance and efficiency.

Having a robust control framework at a point in time is only half the battle. The other half is maintaining this for both intended and unintended process changes, for example, resulting from defective system changes. Once Process Intelligence has been rolled out, this can be run relatively simply on an ongoing basis, helping to identify changes to processes which can then be addressed appropriately. This also has a huge benefit in cost saving, eliminating the need to continually refresh manually mapped out process documentation - a risky and expensive business.