For years, Decisions has been solving hard business problems for our customers, but our involvement has traditionally stopped there. Last week, Decisions announced the acquisition of Process Diamond and the introduction of the first Intelligent Process Automation (IPA) platform.
We may be automation experts, but we’re not experts on every process from every customer we help. How do we as an automation platform help to not only automate, but also improve processes that we are not familiar with?
Process mining + process automation
This is where process mining brings IPA to life. Now we have a complementary tool that allows us to easily analyze a process. We can quickly identify slow points, rework, non-conforming processes, or areas of a process that are ripe for additional automation. Process automation combined with process mining creates a complete feedback loop for analyzing a process, identifying areas of improvement, automating, and then reanalyzing to continue the ongoing optimization cycle.
Intelligent process automation not only allows people the ability to automate a process, but also reveals valuable insights into where that automation will provide the most value.
Our technical perspective
I’m the Senior Solutions Architect for our Professional Services team. My job involves meeting with our customers to help them document and design the application they need. In this role, I design systems in Decisions that automate processes as described by our customers. But I have very little ability to understand and advise them on how to improve the process prior to automating it. Automating a bad process doesn’t make that process better, it just allows you to run a bad process faster.
IPA provides the ability to analyze the process before designing a solution to not only automate, but also make the process better along the way. With process mining, I can make informed choices on which areas of applications require additional refinement, automation, or deeper analysis from the business experts that know them best.
