Vanguard Magazine

USING PROCESS MINING, YOU CAN MAKE POWERFUL USE OF YOUR DATA TO SIMPLIFY SOME OF THE COMPLEXITY OF YOUR S/4HANA MIGRATION. www.vanguardcanada.com AUGUST/SEPTEMBER 2021 35 Sponsored Content or bottlenecks keeping them from being efficient. This real-time transparency can eliminate subjectivity in planning your S/4HANA migration. • Execution: During the execution phase, you can use process mining insights to help with benchmarking and the analy- sis of change impacts related to your key business processes. This can provide you with measurable proof of the value of specific changes. You can also extend the power of benchmarking by compar- ing business units to find out which ones are most efficient so that you can capture learnings to help the rest of your organi- zation. • Monitoring and continuous improve- ment: During the monitoring and con- tinuous improvement phase, you can use process mining to monitor for adher- ence to key processes on a forward-look- ing basis. This can help you understand how your business processes are working against your identified target plan over time so that you can make adjustments quickly if needed. Furthermore, you can use process mining to continually moni- tor and measure the attainment of your business case objectives, especially as they relate to calculating ROI. Key insights from one public sector process mining project Recently, we've been working with a large public sector organization to conduct a process mining proof-of-concept to sup- port their migration to S/4HANA. As a part of the project, we helped the orga- nization set up and use process mining to define two connected processes related to supply chain management. During the project, the organization learned a lot about the value of process mining—including benefits they didn't anticipate. When asked about the initia- tive, the project sponsor was happy to share insights that could help other or- ganizations undertaking transformation projects, including federal departments embarking on their own S/4HANA mi- grations. Key insights coming out of our discussion included: 1. There's nothing more powerful than data The organization's process mining activi- ties gave stakeholders exceptional visibility into, and a 3D picture of, key processes from different perspectives (e.g., procure- ment, warehousing, materials manage- ment). The project sponsor emphasized just how powerful this view can be—not only for project and transformation work, but also for day-to-day compliance and continuous improvement—because it leaves little up for debate and allows stake- holders to focus on addressing issues, gaps, and areas of improvement. 2. The transparent view provided by process mining can help you prioritize change efforts The organization expected that opera- tional differences between two warehous- es would be a major challenge they would need to overcome during the transforma- tion. Process mining showed that while the warehouses were different on paper, they were doing things very similarly at the process level. "I saw the process mining tool as an accelerator and a way of doing things much more precisely," the project sponsor said, highlighting that their orga- nization will now be able to move ahead with changes more quickly as a result of the new insights. 3. Using process mining can help you understand what you don't know Over the course of the project, the orga- nization learned that specific data they thought they were capturing as part of a given process wasn't actually being cap- tured, or wasn't accurate or consistent. "One of the positive outcomes of going through this process is that we've identi- fied what data we aren't able to capture," the project sponsor shared. "That's really informing what we want to do in our fu- ture state design." 4. Process mining can give you a bench- mark for measuring change impacts One benefit the organization realized dur- ing the proof-of-concept—and that it now touts as a selling point to other public sec- tor organizations—is that by undertaking process mining before beginning to trans- form their processes, they gained a bench- mark for accurately measuring change im- pacts. "As we integrate pieces of automation and transform our warehousing and distri- bution, we can look at the effect specific changes have on the end-to-end process and we can compare them over time," the project sponsor said. "We didn't realize how easy or powerful that part [of process mining] could be and how easy it would be to show the ROI." 5. Process mining will force you to ask tough questions—in a positive way The organization found that process min- ing not only resulted in valuable deliverable outcomes, but it also forced the organiza- tion to ask tough questions, such as around alignment, governance, and ownership of transactional and master data. These dis- cussions sparked awareness and interest from the organization's senior leaders. This kind of leadership engagement is critical for leveraging process mining to its fullest extent. Breaking through the complex- ity to achieve transformation success Almost all public sector executives today are challenged by a lack of resources with the skill-sets required to support major transformation activities. These resource constraints are a real challenge—and not one that will be solved quickly given the degree of changes that will be required over the next five years as the federal gov- ernment migrates to S/4HANA. Using process mining, you can make powerful use of your data to simplify some of the complexity of your S/4HANA mi- gration. You can use it to create a transpar- ent and accurate picture of your key pro- cesses, develop a targeted change strategy, measure the impact of changes and foster the leadership and stakeholder buy-in you need to achieve success—all while focusing your limited resources where they matter most. With all federal government departments slated to make the transition to S/4HANA, there is also an unparalleled opportunity to work together—sharing process mining data analytics and leveraging lessons learned to save even more time and money along this ambitious transformational journey. PERSPECTIVE

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