Loraine Lawson
This is Loraine Lawson, associate editor with Bank Automation News. Recently, I spoke with Alex Day, the senior vice president of sales at Signavio, a business process management solution that was recently acquired by SAP. I asked Day to explain what process mining is and how it relates to automation.Loraine Lawson
What is process mining? What does that mean?Alex Day
Yeah. So process mining is really kind of the idea of walking backwards a little bit from looking at this, the idea of all the processes that are really important in the business. So every business is made up of processes, right, some are more complex, some are less complex, some are exclusively carried out by human workers. And some are now kind of automated. And a lot of them work today with a combination of automation and some sort of human support. And all processes and banks typically are supported by software and IP systems, and they leave behind these digital traces. So for process mining, really, what that means is, it’s a software that applies AI to go in and see are the processes that you have set up that are either being worked by the human, by the software, or by the combination, are those running efficiently and smoothly, the way that you want them to write because banks and a lot of different organizations can have 1000s and 1000s, and hundreds of 1000s of processes happening at once. Unless we have a way to go in and really monitor this. There’s really no way for us to understand from just a human level, which one of these are being effective, which ones are not, and which ones we need to continually monitor and see if we need to adapt and make changes.Loraine Lawson
Okay. And how does that all relate to automation? loosens things up as well process over automation with?Alex Day
Yeah, so I think I wouldn’t necessarily call it focusing on process for automation. I think the two though, go hand in hand, I think where you see, oftentimes banks and other institutions make mistakes, is when they only focus on the automation part. Right? So do you look at how banks have automated just over the past one and a decade or so right here, we all got what like a, like, I can go to an ATM key dos or on my phone to 98% of what I could do if I were at the bank in person. So automation is really important for banking, especially in the digital age. If you are automating bad processes, or processes that are broken, all you’re doing is making a broken process. work a little faster. Right so I think the look at we look at it like this, there are always going to be process that require human oversight and intervention. And so, automation connecting with that human process is really, really important. But we have to go and make sure that those things are working in sync. And so if you are able to do that with mining, right, you can go in and make sure that the two things are aligned perfectly, and that all the processes you have in place, are the right ones, and that they’re working effectively for not only internally at the bank, but also for the end customer.Loraine Lawson
So what what mistake Do you see banks doing with this? I mean, do they really automate the process without examining it?Alex Day
Well, yeah, I mean, oftentimes, right? So the big buzzword, and really any digital transformation right now, but especially for banks is is RPA. And that’s, you know, placing a bot to automate something that typically would take time and effort for a human to do. And so we see a lot of banks that let’s just take a standard process, which is the loan application process. Right? The second that a customer fills out the loan application process that triggers an internal process at the bank or sued, right, if your bank is somewhat automated. And what happens is that oftentimes people will look at processes like that, or they will look at compliance related process and say, Oh, these these processes, you know, we can we can take out 50% of the human interaction there and just automate them. And the temptation is to put a bot on these an RPA bot without examining our the processes that we have in place right now. Really the best processes to be automating? Or should we go back to the drawing board and say, if we are going to automate something, let’s remodel this to make sure that every process we have in place is the correct one. So that we’re not automating things, things where humans typically make mistakes. And then instead of having the human there with verification, now automating a process, it’s mistake prone, and I have no way of catching that. Right, which is going to disrupt everything else in the process. That’s the kind of a sample of what we see. Yeah, go ahead.

Loraine Lawson
Do you have any examples around it?

Alex Day
Yeah, I mean, so for an example, you know, compliance has paid maybe another one as well, some of the mortgage, mortgage compliances, that banks have to deal with. Those are very heavy on regulation. And they require specific processes, inside those regulation departments at the bank, to me in order for this to be executed in the proper way, so that they don’t get fined. So a human may be doing a lot of the the ground level work at the bank, to make sure that that regulation is being filled out, like maybe some of the paperwork of this in the right way. And some of that paperwork is very manual that comes to do with that regulation. So a lot of banks will look at that and say, okay, we can we can automate that, right, a lot of the information that’s spilled out there is the same every time, we can automate that we can put a bot to do that. But oftentimes, in that regulation, there is error that happens with the information that comes in because it’s some other part of that process or the informations coming in from the regulatory item. Maybe somebody messed it up and having a human there has verification to make sure that that’s getting filled out. But if you automate that and put a bot on it, now, we have no way of doing that. So automation is important, but we have to make sure that the right steps are in place before we automate that. And I know that’s, that’s a little bit more high level. But hopefully, that gives you a little more clarity on where this can really be important.

Loraine Lawson
I guess what are the critical issues for business to be aware of then when they’re looking at automation and looking at processes and how should they start so that they don’t make these kinds of mistakes

Alex Day
Yeah, I mean, I think there’s really four kind of key things that when a bank is looking at not only process and automation, if they’re really examining those, those three things together, they’re gonna want to look at the process mining component and then start looking at process mining is, like I said, there’s four things that really help with it. I think one is leading organizational and process complexity. So as part of understanding kind of end to end business processes, what the mining allows banks to do is to view multiple systems, and multiple processes in those systems as a cohesive whole. So the overarching vision means that banks now have information that they need to identify opportunities, then to refine really standardizes processes. So mining allows them to uncover in depth, actionable information about the way those processes actually run. So I think it’s kind of just the first thing I would say is if they’re looking to do this, and they’re going to implement mining as a part of it, but they have to understand that it’s really going to help from the entire organizational view, it’s really not just for one specific process, that you want it to be an organizational change. I think we talked about this a little bit. But the second thing I would say, Orin is that it’s going to help with improving compliance. We talked about how that is maybe an in specific example. But it really just allow you to see the way that processes actually unfold. And so it’s going to give them and the idea that if we’re any point where a complex compliance response is actually required, it’s going to be generated automatically. So banks are going to be able to ensure that they act in accordance with all the regulations, and then speed things up like reporting suspicious transactions or, you know, reducing overall potential for error, which kind of gave you an example earlier. And then I think one of the third thing there is, it’s used to really strategically manage change in banks, in thinking about all the change that’s happened with COVID. In the past year, where a lot of these people that were handling highly complex regulated issues within banks are now all working from home, they’re not able to collaborate in the same way that they once were, for really important issues. And if we have people in individual silos, working on processes that are meant to be joined together, but they don’t have that ability anymore, that’s really going to be ineffective from managing all the chains that you have to manage as part of that. So process mining allows us to go back and keep continually look at what is happening with all these changes that are coming in the bank, and are they being followed, you know, even from a human level, the correct way they should. And I think the fourth part of this, I would say that when banks are looking at, you know, their processes and automation and considering something like process mining, they have to understand that at the end result, and this is going to be how’s it affecting the customer. So anytime we have an internal process that is broken, and we don’t fix that, or we don’t have the ability to identify that, that ultimately is going to end up affecting the customer, whether it be a commercial client or an individual client. If we’re working on things that are affecting that end customer that’s going to that’s going to affect our net results and continue to serve them in a way we want to in the banking industry. So that’s why it’s so important to have this constant view of what’s broken internally what we need to fix, and then how that’s affecting the customer in real time.

Loraine Lawson
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