They say that everything we do
online leaves a digital footprint.
Where in the world of business,
all the workflows you do are expressed
as your digital twin.
Hello, my name is Jamil Spain,
Developer Advocate with the IBM Cloud.
And when it comes to defining
what your digital twin is,
it comes to a process called process mining.
Not a process called process mining.
But we want to break that down.
Process naturally refers to
a business function,
a particular workflow that you
actually do, and the mining
naturally means getting some
information. If you've probably
typed that in a search bar.
I'm sure it'll lead you down a
rabbit hole straight to a
lot of crypto, but we're
really talking about something
more specific here,
and it's all
the actions that a business does.
They have, they work with different
enterprise corporate IT systems,
whether it's your SAPs,
your Oracles,
legacy systems, or
any kind of CRM,
ERP.
That's all the acronyms that I have
there, but the goal here is that
each system that you use
naturally has logs
that are generated from the actions
that you do inside the systems.
Now when I think about process mining,
we're going to put this in the context,
but let's think for a second what it is not.
And something else that's very
popular that comes to mind.
I can say it's been a buzz word of
yet that we all know about is
data mining.
So let's take a second to draw some
distinction actually between the two.
So they both involve
clearly probably make a connection
with getting data.
But for me, data mining,
DM, means really reading a
lot of raw data from logs,
and I'm really trying to make a
pattern there.
So I'm looking for the patterns.
But that's about where it ends.
From there, I have to make a lot
of the intelligence or analyze
patterns, or theories
from there about what does it mean,
what is all the data mean?
What is really the value?
What does it give me? That's what
I'm looking for, the value that it
actually gives me out of there.
But when we get to building that
digital twin for a business,
it's really about two things.
It really involves that the most
smallest perspective, it's
task mining.
And there's really a hierarchy here,
I naturally have a process overall.
Let's say that that process is
setting up an account at a bank,
or handling a customer service call,
or a supplier ordering from a manufacturer.
All right, the many different use
cases that come here.
So that particular process, let's
say that it's setting up a new
account. You know, there's different
tasks that are associated with
that. Well, we can actually get
information back, as we collectively
say each task that's there.
Let's say this was a three step process.
All right, and that collectively
equals the process of making
it an account.
So step one, two and three.
I want to get information back on
each of those and that collectively
gives me insight to what
this process kind of means and that
i.e. is process mining.
But how does this magically occur?
All right. Let's get it a little
more into how
these particular things occur.
So the first is it is
three stages that we want to go
through.
The first is,
discovery.
So, I'm going to take actual
inventory on everything that's
occurring.
If it's my actual systems,
I want to look at all the log data
from these IT systems.
And I also want to look at the other
steps that happened in between.
Maybe me getting that account data,
maybe a form that comes in the
email, and I may be kind of pasting
that email into another system
to work with it.
All that stuff I want to record,
all the interaction that happens.
Now there's actually software that
goes on your desktop that's able
to record all these actions,
and collectively, it gives me
all the connections that are there.
So when I think through this, I
have a system CRM
and it's going to generate some log
data.
And then I have also what happens
at my desktop,
and I'm going to do the record
to actually get all those actions
that are occurring.
Now, those collectively
I'm going to do, leads me to my
second phase.
All right, which is the monitoring.
And then the monitoring phase, I'm
going to take all these actions
that I have, and my goal here is
to really make my...
find out how do I digitally
represent this process
that I'm actually going through, and
this is the actual end to end
visibility of what's actually
occurring.
So a lot of times one of the
benefits of process mining, why
it is important is because you
actually get to associate
actions to a particular workflow.
Some of those are happy paths,
and some of those can be those
ones that take you out in the left
field that you spent a lot of time
doing. But the most important
thing is that you get to actually
physically represent this along
with metrics that go along with
it to know.
The next step is
the optimization.
Now, in this step in
this phase, rather,
I'll have the visibility of
having a self service
dashboard.
And it will give me the ability to
oversee this process, get
particular metrics that I can really
start to understand, how am I
performing?
All right. Another great benefit of
this is this is really where you
start to bring in can really
take on the early beginnings, the
foundations of automation.
What they like to call intelligent
automation, where I can use
many different types of technology
to look at this, this that I had
this path and how could I make
each one of those efficient?
Now, if you were coming to this
brand new, process mining
is your path to know where to start
first.
Naturally, just having a process
that you are going through,
it may be a little difficult.
It will be difficult to know where
to start from.
This gives you an entry point
and metrics to know when I am
getting something, making it very
efficient. And the fact that I
have access that I'm using
with my IT systems,
along with the actual raw data
of every task that everybody is
doing.
Everyone does in his workflow.
It really gives me the, not
only the, I
have the end-to-end invisibility,
but now I also have the fact based
insights.
I no longer get to make assumptions
about what's
occurring, how long it takes, I have
the raw data to back it up and it
gives me decisions to understand
why we do things a certain way, why
we're going to improve it, why it
should be function that way
to run.
So naturally, you can do
a lot of things with
where it feels like tasking mining
could work on your own.
But having process mining
the overall architecture of what
you're trying to improve,
along with the individual tasks that
are a part of this along with the
systems that you're interacting
with, really gives you something
powerful. You can really get started
to really improve your business.
Most importantly, identify
weaknesses and
parts you can improve on.
And really have a once you go
through your first experience,
imagine in an enterprise
that you're able to, or startup, you
know, either one can work
where you're actually able to model
all the actions you do.
Maybe from, I know a lot of times
we have sales teams, so imagine
from having a opportunity
call come in to the time to closing
the deal.
If I'm able to identify all those
steps, that gives me places I
know, "hey, we need to respond back
to demo request faster"
or "those contact forms,
it takes us a long time to actually
respond." That data gets lost in a
database, does not get to someone
fast enough.
So again, getting these
visibilities, I can have a really
composite view of my
whole enterprise or my whole focuses
it all my business does.
And really be able to start
to, now that I had this kind of
closed loop that I can keep
reiterating through.
Now that I have the optimization, I
can really go back and discover
more, monitor it, improve
these paths and then go back
and keep viewing the inputs
there to go.
Now again, as I said and in closing
that this is really the early starts
of getting into intelligent
automation, using many different
technologies.
For instance, if there was a
particular task that's done on a
desktop, I could deploy something
like RPA to do that actual
tasks, you know.
If it's maybe putting data into a
form for a legacy system.
That's something I can get a bot to
actually do for me in that place.
So this is just the beginning of
unraveling the amazing
part of building your digital twin.
All your processes, having something
technically that resembles that
and also being able to optimize
that, and hereby make
things much easier and efficient.
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