The Problem
The global leading manufacturing company faced a significant process mining challenge in the Purchase Orders (PO) segment of the procurement. Previous attempts by multiple vendors had failed to solve the visibility problem of the end-toend PO process. ProcessMaker's Process Intelligence process intelligence platform was able to successfully tackle this ultimate challenge and lead the game thanks to its agility, speed of execution, and innovative approach.
The case company is a global manufacturing enterprise that operates in almost 100 countries and serves customers with solutions mainly in the infrastructure, utility, and industry sectors. Their primary objective was to streamline PO creation process that could potentially lead to higher process efficiency and cost savings.
The case company’s main challenge was to get full visibility over the PO creation process across different regions and geographies that use different versions of SAP. They had assumptions that problems with supplier master data were causing issues with process execution and creating a lot of variances, but they couldn’t quantify it or find the root causes. Achieving a holistic view of the end-to-end process would allow the identification of bottlenecks in the current process and the discovery of improvement opportunities.
The case company knew the problem very well, had well-defined success criteria, and knew exactly what it was looking for in a vendor, making the challenge clear but complex.
Some of the main challenges were: automatically identifying and visualizing the different paths taken during the PO creation process, comparing and benchmarking between different locations and buyers, and finding the shadow tools used in the PO creation process. That’s when the client heard of ProcessMaker's Process Intelligence innovative way of capturing and analyzing the data.
The Solution
Through the innovative hybrid process intelligence method, ProcessMaker's Process Intelligence quickly captured and analyzed the PO data. Its unique approach eliminates the need to access system event logs that are hard to get or sometimes even non-existent. Instead, locally installed agents collect the process data from the user interfaces based on the pre-defined rules specified by the customers. The data is collected on a team level to ensure the privacy and security of individuals’ data.
From the collected data, ProcessMakerPI generates the enriched event logs that are cleaned locally and are then sent to the cloud, where they’re analyzed to transform the collected data into operational insights. This analysis includes process mining, task mining, and other algorithms and calculations that transform the collected data into operational insights. All of the above steps are done automatically and don't require any manual efforts.
Visibility you get with traditional methods
Visibility you get with ProcessMaker's Process Intelligence innovative approach
The Value Created
Unlike other vendors that attempted the challenge previously, ProcessMaker's Process Intelligence was able to meet success criteria and map the end-to-end PO creation process. Here are some of the success criteria presented by the case company that ProcessMaker's Process Intelligence was able to accomplish.
- Visualizing different process paths within the PO creation process.
- Recognizing the common path and how often it was followed.
- Identifying the throughput time of the process paths and the concrete steps that make up those paths.
- Discovering the additional apps and documents that are involved in the PO creation process and identifying how and when they are used.
- Finding automation opportunities.
- Analyzing the data and identifying the patterns regarding the same materials or suppliers.
- Capturing manual field changes in SAP and their impact on the PO process.
This case demonstrates ProcessMaker's Process Intelligence ability to overcome the challenges associated with PO creation through its agile and innovative approach. By providing comprehensive visibility, analysis, and automation opportunities, ProcessMaker's Process Intelligence was positioned as the preferred process intelligence solution for the client company, resulting in a successful partnership.
