What is process mining? Why it matters & how to get started | ARIS
The data-driven method that reveals how your business actually runs, exposing bottlenecks and opportunities to optimize your operations.
What is process mining?
Process mining is an analytical method that reads your existing system data – from SAP, Salesforce and beyond – to create a real-time, fact-based map of how your business processes run. Not how you think they run: how they actually run.
That gap between assumed performance and actual execution is not a minor inconvenience, it is a business risk. Process mining takes the ‘gut feel’ inaccuracies out of measuring the effectiveness of your operating procedures by providing a real-time, data-driven map of how your processes are working. According to Deloitte’s Global Process Mining Survey 2025, 80% of current users agree that process mining delivers added value, and 59% now expect measurable cost savings, up from 46% just two years ago.
By extracting event logs from the systems your teams are using, process mining automatically reconstructs every step of every process into an objective, visual picture of your operations. This shows where work flows smoothly, where it stalls, and where it deviates from the plan entirely.
Process mining benefits
Process mining is what turns your digital twin from a static model into a living intelligence hub. We use process mining in our platform to strengthen every stage of the ARIS process intelligence journey:
Create.
Turn your process models into a dynamic digital twin.
Process mining continuously enriches your designed processes with real execution data, giving you a live, fact-based view of operations that updates as your business moves.
Discover.
Connect to real process execution across your systems.
Pull event log data directly from SAP, Salesforce, ServiceNow and more, so your process intelligence reflects what is actually happening, not what was planned.
Transform.
See how work flows across systems, people, and agents.
Visualize every path a process can take, where handoffs break down, where time is lost, and where AI agents can step in to improve outcomes without introducing risk.
“The deciding factors in adopting ARIS Process Mining were its high flexibility, including the possibility to use data from proprietary systems, and the ability to freely set up and analyze system modifications, decommission, and introduce new cutoffs in-house. The new ERP system allows us to visualize business operations and involve users in business improvement efforts”
Susumu Osanai
Manager, Group IT Strategy Department
Nippon Signal Co. Ltd.
Key Features of a Process Mining Tool
A modern process mining platform does six things that manual process analysis cannot:
- Automated process discovery: Builds a full process map from system event logs without requiring interviews.
- Conformance checking: Compares how processes run, against the approved design, flagging every deviation.
- Performance analysis: Quantifies cycle times, bottleneck frequencies, and rework rates across every case.
- Root cause analysis: Drills down into which systems, teams, or conditions drive that most variation.
- Enables process simulation: Business process mining provides accurate ‘as is’ maps that form the basis of simulation models to test optimizations before they go live. Read more about process mining vs process modeling.
Want to accelerate your process mining projects? Activate ARIS Process Mining Fast Track services. For more information on choosing the right process mining tool for you.
How does process mining work?
Every digital system (your ERP, your CRM, your service management platform) generates a continuous stream of time-stamped event data as work moves through it, from purchase orders raised, to invoices approved and support tickets escalated. The basic concept is that process mining collects these event logs and uses algorithms to reconstruct the actual flow of work at scale, step-by-step, case-by-case, to produce a process graph. This often takes the form of a visual, interactive map that shows every path a process can take, how often each path occurs, where time is lost, and where the process deviates from the intended design.
Below is a demonstrative example of the impact process mining can have in a typical order-to-cash (O2C) scenario.
|
KPI |
Impact |
|
|
Unshipped Orders |
40% Improvement in visibility and monitoring |
Unbilled orders are shipments that have been completed but not invoiced in the ERP. |
|
Unbilled Orders |
40% Improvement in visibility and monitoring |
This delays revenue recognition, worsens Days Sales Outstanding (DSO), and creates a risk of revenue leakage if orders are never billed correctly. |
|
Late Deliveries |
10% – 15% Improvement in visibility and monitoring |
Late deliveries occur when shipments fail to reach the customer on the promised date. Causes include transport delays, poor planning, inventory shortages, or manual errors. This directly impacts OTIF performance, leads to SLA penalties, and damages customer trust. |
|
Open Order Processing |
40% Improvement in visibility and monitoring |
Open orders are orders that have been created but remain incomplete or stuck without supplier or internal updates. They inflate backlog figures, complicate demand planning, and may lead to missed revenue recognition if not resolved. |
That kind of precision is possible because process mining works from system data, not from what people remember or report
The growing demand for process mining techniques that work at scale
As processes grow in complexity, a single-case view of the data has limits. Standard process mining analyzes one case type, one flow.
Object-centric process mining (OCPM) is the next-generation approach that improves on traditional mining techniques by going further, modelling multiple interacting objects – orders, invoices, deliveries – simultaneously within a single process view, rather than forcing everything into an artificial, single-case flow. This is the default for anyone purchasing ARIS process mining solution today.
For complex processes like order-to-cash or procure-to-pay, where multiple entities move through a system in parallel and influence one another, this produces a significantly more accurate picture of how operations work.
It is the foundation for any digital transformation, increasingly powered by AI or automation deployment. This accuracy matters more than ever because you can’t effectively automate a process you haven’t accurately mapped.
To get started with your first process mining projects, try the ARIS Process Mining Fast Track services.
Measuring process mining benefits for your business
The value of process mining is measurable, compounding, and increasingly well-documented. According to Deloitte’s Global Process Mining Survey 2025, 46% of organizations report reduced throughput times, 41% report reduced manual effort, and 59% now expect cost savings. As a strategic capability, worker productivity (36%) and customer satisfaction (28%) are rising priorities for organizations that have moved beyond initial pilots.
All of this makes for a compelling business case, with the benefits falling into four interconnected areas:
1. Faster, cheaper process discovery
Traditional process discovery (interviews, workshops, documentation reviews) takes months and produces models that reflect how people think work happens, not how it actually happens. Process mining replaces this with a data-driven approach.
Alicorp is a Latin American consumer goods company with 12,000+ employees and $3bn in revenue. ARIS process mining tools and techniques helped Alicorp to reduce the order-to-cash (O2C) cycle time on processes by 5.5 days across 60+ processes spanning five departments, integrated seamlessly with their SAP S/4HANA environment.
2. Continuous conformance
Once a process is mined, conformance checking allows you to compare how the process actually runs against how it was designed to run, in real time, on an ongoing basis. This means deviations surface automatically rather than waiting for a quarterly audit cycle to catch them.
But conformance checking is only as strong as the process model it checks against. A world-class business process management (BPM) repository – one that is governed, versioned, and kept current — is what makes the comparison meaningful. If the designed process is outdated, incomplete, or undocumented, you are measuring execution against a fiction. ARIS gives you both sides of that equation: the live execution data from process mining, and the governed process design to measure it against, in a single integrated environment. Find out more about BPM, or explore ARIS Fast Track BPM Service.
The value of continuous conformance extends beyond operations. The EU AI Act (full applicability August 2026) and DORA both require organizations to demonstrate, on an ongoing basis, that their processes execute as approved. Conformance checking is the mechanism that makes that evidence available automatically, rather than assembled retrospectively before an audit. And when regulators ask for proof, the quality of your process repository determines the quality of your answer. Watch our demo on how to utilize process mining tools to streamline and automate process simulation.
3. AI and automation ROI
Process mining is increasingly recognized as the context layer that makes AI agents effective. AI systems need to understand the rules, the dependencies, and the real-world variations in your processes before they can make decisions that hold up under live conditions. And process mining provides that understanding automatically, from system data.
Without this business context, AI deployments underperform or cause damage when they go rogue. With it, organizations gain a clear line of sight from process insight to automation outcome. At ARIS, we believe process mining is critical to any enterprise AI adoption and deployment strategy.
4. Operational resilience
By combining process mining with simulation, you can model the impact of proposed changes before they go live. Whether it’s the implementation of new technology, compliance with regulatory requirements, organizational restructuring, and so on, simulation de-risks the decision, replacing gut feel with data.
The benefits of process mining compound when it is combined with business process management (BPM). Where process mining reveals the actual state of operations, BPM provides the framework for governance, standardization, and continuous improvement. Together, they create a closed loop: discover, redesign, deploy, monitor, improve. Read more about process mining and BPM.
Sipho Ditshetelo
Head of Service Management
Standard Bank
See how ARIS process mining tools can be used to improve banking process and governance resilience and build stronger manufacturing operations.
Process mining in action: Use cases across the enterprise
Process mining has moved well beyond finance and operations. It is now applied across every major business domain where system data exists and process performance matters, which in practice means almost everywhere.
|
Use case |
Business problem |
What process mining reveals |
Real outcome |
|
Order-to-Cash / Finance |
O2C cycles take longer than planned; cash flow is constrained by invisible delays. |
Bottlenecks across handoffs, approval loops, and system exceptions in 60+ sub-processes. |
Alicorp: 5.5-day reduction in O2C cycle time, seamlessly integrated with SAP S/4HANA migration.Read the Alicorp process mining case study |
|
Sales Pipeline / CRM |
Leads stalling at unpredictable points; conversion rates below target. |
Precise timing windows where fast follow-up has disproportionate impact on qualification rates. |
ARIS internal: 20% uplift in lead-to-opportunity conversions; 39% faster MQL-to-SQL handling, equivalent to three working days. |
|
Banking & Customer Experience |
Customer-facing process failures are only identified after complaints or SLA breaches. |
Integration of CX-SLA data with process event logs to predict poor customer experiences before they occur.Read more about process mining in banking |
Standard Bank: Shifted from assumed process performance to live, measurable insight into customer experience quality.Read the Standard Bank process mining case study |
|
Supply Chain & Manufacturing |
Supply chain disruptions are difficult to anticipate and slow to diagnose. |
End-to-end visibility of supplier, logistics, and inventory flows across complex multi-party processes. |
Siemens AG: “ARIS is a reliable, stable process management application and values its latest developments in process mining.” Stephan Schwandner, Corporate Development IT Partner.Read the Siemens AG process mining case study |
|
Compliance & Risk |
Compliance depends on manual spot-checks; regulators increasingly expect continuous evidence. |
Real-time conformance checking against approved process models, with timestamped audit trails |
Organizations using ARIS gain explainability and evidence trails required for EU AI Act and DORA compliance. |
Why process mining is the foundation for deploying AI agents
While organizations around the world are investing heavily in AI, the vast majority are not yet seeing the returns they expect. Research from McKinsey & Company finds that over 80% of companies report no material earnings from generative AI investments, while SiliconANGLE reports that just 11% of companies are getting any type of measurable benefit from AI.
The reason is not the technology but the process layer beneath it.AI needs business context about what has happened in your current operational state to make decisions that hold up under real-world conditions. Without that context, AI systems make plausible-looking decisions that frequently fail when they encounter the complexity of live operations, because they are missing this real-world data that needs to be acquired through process mining.
Process mining is how you give AI that context, automatically, from the system data you already have. Read more about how the use of digital twins – digital representations of a real-world system – is evolving in conjunction with process mining techniques.
But agentic AI without process intelligence is high-risk. Only 43% of businesses currently have an AI governance policy, meaning the majority are deploying AI into processes they do not fully understand, without the audit trails regulators are beginning to require.
Process mining deviations are identified, which powers AI to propose improvements and validated against the process model before they are deployed.
Here is where ARIS is uniquely positioned to help. We integrate BPM, process mining and AI capabilities in a single environment, meaning the process foundation and the AI readiness layer are built, governed, and improved together. This is what provides the foundation for AI that actually works and delivers ROI.
Build your AI foundation with ARIS
Process mining for compliance: continuous conformance in a regulated world
In a compliance environment built around annual audits and manual spot-checks, the standard approach to process governance is already under pressure. Upcoming regulatory deadlines are about to make it untenable.
What is conformance checking?
Conformance checking is the process of automatically comparing how your business processes actually execute (as recorded in system event logs) against how they were designed and approved to run. Every deviation is surfaced, timestamped, and traceable to the specific case, step, and system involved. Where traditional compliance relies on sampling and periodic review, conformance checking is continuous. Deviations don’t wait for the next audit cycle to be caught. They surface the moment they occur.
EU AI Act: August 2026 compliance deadline
The EU AI Act reaches full applicability on 2 August 2026, bringing with it requirements for explainability, audit trails, and human oversight of AI systems used in regulated contexts. For organizations using AI in their processes (which increasingly means most large enterprises) this is not a future consideration. It is an immediate compliance requirement.
Process mining generates exactly the evidence the EU AI Act demands: timestamped, system-logged records of how AI-assisted processes actually executed, where human oversight occurred, and where the process deviated from its approved design. The legislation states that non-compliance carries fines of up to €35 million or 7% of global annual turnover.
DORA: Financial services process monitoring
For financial services organizations, the Digital Operational Resilience Act (DORA) requires ongoing monitoring of critical ICT processes, with documented evidence of resilience and recovery capability. Process mining supports DORA compliance by creating continuous, auditable maps of critical operational processes, surfacing disruptions and dependencies that manual approaches routinely miss.
Read more about how process mining and intelligence can help you meet DORA compliance requirements
From audit readiness to continuous compliance
The shift from point-in-time audits to continuous compliance is not just a regulatory requirement. It is a competitive advantage. Organizations that continuously monitor their processes know, whether they are compliant and can respond to regulatory enquiries with evidence rather than estimates.
“ Who would have thought compliance could be this simple? With ARIS we’ve adapted existing processes to new regulations — seamlessly. And user adoption is higher than ever.”
Delphine Daggfeldt
Process Management & Automation
SEB
Process mining vs task mining: What’s the difference?
While they sound similar and do have complementary capabilities, process mining and task mining are different things that answer different questions about operational performance. Understanding both, and how they work together, is essential for organizations building a comprehensive process intelligence capability.
|
Dimension |
Process mining |
Task mining |
Combined |
|
Data source |
System event logs (ERP, CRM, ITSM, etc.) |
Desktop activity data, user interaction recordings |
System logs + desktop activity |
|
Level of analysis |
End-to-end process flows across systems |
Individual user task execution within applications |
Full picture: process flow AND task-level behavior |
|
Best for |
Process discovery, conformance checking, bottleneck analysis, ERP/CRM optimization |
RPA/automation identification, task standardization, training improvement |
Comprehensive operational insight; RPA business case development |
|
ARIS capability |
ARIS Fast Track Process Mining: full process discovery, conformance, and simulation |
ARIS Fast Track Task Mining: desktop-level task capture and analysis |
Activate ARIS Process Mining + Task Mining Fast Track |
Used together, process mining and task mining give organizations what Deloitte and PEX Network both describe as a “360-degree view” of operations: the macro picture of how processes flow across systems, combined with the micro picture of how people interact with those systems to get work done. This combination is the emerging standard for organizations looking to leverage automation and AI readiness.
Read more about getting the most from both process mining and task mining.
Process mining tools and software: choosing the right solution
The process mining market has grown rapidly. Gartner’s 2026 Magic Quadrant for Process Mining Platforms identifies five primary adoption drivers: process analysis and optimization, digital transformation, AI and GenAI readiness, sustainability, and operational resilience. The right platform for your organization should address the drivers that matter most to you, not just the ones a vendor has prioritized.
What to evaluate
|
Evaluation dimension |
What to ask |
The ARIS advantage |
|
Integration depth |
Does it connect natively to the systems you actually use, or does it require complex custom connectors? |
Native connectors for SAP, Oracle, Salesforce, and Microsoft with real-time data ingestion. |
|
Ease of use |
Can it handle enterprise-scale data volumes across global, multi-departmental operations? |
Built to handle billions of rows of data across global, multi-departmental operations. |
|
Deployment flexibility |
Does it support your data sovereignty requirements, or is it cloud-only? |
Available as SaaS, Private Cloud, or on-premise to meet strict data sovereignty requirements. |
|
AI readiness |
Does the platform go beyond discovery to support AI agent deployment? |
Provides the process context layer AI agents need to operate reliably in live operations. |
|
BPM integration |
Can you move from process insight to redesign and governance in the same environment? |
Unique integration with the ARIS Suite, linking mining insights directly to BPM, strategy, and risk management. |
|
Task mining |
Is task mining integrated, or does it require a separate third-party tool? |
Integrated task mining combines process-level data with granular user behavior in a single view. |
|
Simulation capability |
Can you model the impact of proposed changes before they go live? |
Built-in simulation allows teams to validate process changes before deployment |
In Gartner’s 2026 Magic Quadrant for Process Mining Platforms, ARIS was recognized as a leader for the third year running.
What makes us special is that ARIS is the only process intelligence platform that integrates BPM, process mining, and AI capabilities into a single-unified environment. Where standalone process mining tools require separate investments in process governance, redesign tooling, and AI infrastructure, ARIS provides a single platform from process discovery to AI-ready operations.
According to Deloitte, management support remains the number one barrier to process mining adoption, with 41% of respondents saying so. If building internal buy-in is your challenge, ARIS Fast Track services are designed to address it directly: structured, low-risk programs that deliver a measurable first project in weeks, with the evidence base you need to scale.
Frequently Asked Questions
What is process mining in simple terms?
Process mining is an analytical method that reads the event data your IT systems already generate (from SAP, Salesforce, Oracle and others) to create an accurate, real-time map of how your business processes actually run. It removes guesswork from process analysis by working from system facts rather than interviews or documented assumptions.
How does process mining work?
Process mining extracts time-stamped event logs from your existing systems. It then uses algorithms to reconstruct the actual flow of work, step by step, case by case, and visualizes it as a process graph. The result shows every path a process can take, how often each path occurs, where time is lost, and where the process deviates from its intended design.
What are the main benefits of process mining?
The four primary benefits are: (1) faster, more accurate process discovery, replacing months of workshops with days of data-driven analysis; (2) continuous conformance checking, detecting process deviations in real time rather than at periodic audits; (3) AI and automation ROI, providing the process context that makes AI agents effective; and (4) operational resilience, enabling simulation of process changes before they go live. According to Deloitte’s 2025 survey, 59% of organizations expect cost savings from process mining, up from 46% two years prior.
What is the difference between process mining and task mining?
Process mining analyses end-to-end process flows using system event logs, showing how work moves across systems and departments. Task mining analyzes individual user behavior at the desktop level, showing how people interact with applications to complete tasks. Used together, they provide a complete picture of operational performance: the macro flow and the micro execution.
What is conformance checking?
Conformance checking is the automated comparison of how a business process actually executes (as recorded in system event logs) against how it was designed and approved to run. Every deviation is surfaced, timestamped, and traceable. It replaces point-in-time manual audits with continuous, automated process governance.
How does process mining support AI and automation?
AI agents need to understand the rules, dependencies, and real-world variations in your processes to make decisions that hold up under live conditions. Process mining provides this context automatically, from your existing system data. Without it, AI systems frequently underperform because they are operating in processes they do not accurately understand.
What is object-centric process mining (OCPM)?
Object-centric process mining (OCPM) extends traditional process mining to model how multiple objects (orders, invoices, deliveries, customers) interact and influence each other simultaneously within the same process. Rather than viewing a process from a single case perspective, OCPM reflects the real complexity of multi-party or multi-system operations.
How does process mining support EU AI Act compliance?
The EU AI Act (full applicability August 2026) requires explainability, audit trails, and human oversight for AI systems used in regulated contexts. Process mining generates exactly this evidence: timestamped, system-logged records of how AI-assisted processes executed, where oversight occurred, and where deviations arose. This documentation is produced continuously and automatically, not assembled retrospectively before an audit.
What makes ARIS different from other process mining tools?
ARIS is the only platform that integrates BPM, Process Mining, AI capabilities, and simulation in a single unified environment. Where standalone tools require separate investments in process governance and AI infrastructure, ARIS provides a complete platform from process discovery to AI-ready operations. ARIS is also a Gartner Magic Quadrant Leader for Process Mining Platforms 2025.
How quickly can we get started with process mining?
ARIS offers a Process Mining Fast Track solution designed to deliver a measurable first process mining project in weeks, with structured programs and defined outcomes that build the internal business case for broader rollout. This addresses the number one barrier to adoption identified by Deloitte’s 2025 survey: management support. Fast Track gives teams the evidence they need to scale.
See, decide & act with ARIS
Unlock the power of process excellence with ARIS