The Future of Process Discovery in 2022 and Beyond

According to a recent research report executed by Blueprint, there’s substantial evidence of the tangible returns organizations see from their process discovery software efforts.

Yet, even with those strong realized benefits and outcomes, the research has also uncovered considerable challenges with task mining tools and gaps in functionality, begging the question, what comes next?

Will companies invest more into process discovery in RPA to amplify their ROI?

Which parts of the organizations will they look to apply it to next?

Or will they pull back as a result of the pain points they’ve experienced?

In this article, we briefly answer those questions with what was reported in our survey, but for the full rundown and much more, be sure to download your free copy of the entire report here.

Process Discovery: Future Investment

Regardless of the challenges process discovery adopters have encountered and the functional limitations they’ve reported, the returns have been so positive that the vast majority plan to increase their application and investment for process discovery.

In the research Blueprint commissioned, we asked 400 business leaders from the USA and the United Kingdom what their future plans with process discovery were. Here’s what we found about process discovery in RPA.

Process Discovery Investment

A whopping 82% reported that they planned to increase their investment in process discovery technology. What’s more, not a single respondent claimed that they would eliminate their use of process discovery tools in the near future, indicating that the results have been so positive that pouring more resources into this digital transformation driver is warranted.

Process Discovery Management

Connected to future plans for process discovery investment, is how the technology and its implementation and application are being managed. In the next 6-12 months, 56% of organizations already using task mining tools plan to increase the size of teams managing process discovery within their organizations, again, indicating a desire to magnify the returns companies are seeing across the entire organization.

Process Discovery Application

In terms of application, more than half of the business leaders surveyed plan to apply process discovery software to more areas of their organizations based on the outcomes they’ve realized to date. To see the top departments companies plan to use process discovery to next, download your free copy of the State of Process Discovery 2021 report here.

In line with this application, 37% of respondents are looking to improve their automation efforts with process discovery by using these tools to better identify and prioritize RPA opportunities. Interestingly, this was the top priority for respondents in the Healthcare, Life Sciences, and Pharmaceutical verticals, highlighting their objectives to automate claims processing, patient processing, and reduce front- and back-office overhead through automation for increased efficiency and a better patient experience.

Even with these plans for increased growth of process discovery application, the undeniable challenges that were reported will definitely impact the types of tools organizations will turn to, to discover and capture the tasks and processes that define their business.

How Process Discovery’s Challenges Will Impact Future Investment

Due to the challenges with task mining tools that have been highlighted through our research, we believe there will be a shift in tooling. This shift will come in the way of companies prioritizing task capture solutions to meet their process discovery efforts.

Task capture solves a lot of the challenges the market has reported with machine-based process discovery tools like process and task mining solutions, and most importantly, at a much smaller price-point.

Instead of dropping agents on a computer that leads to overwhelming data and security/privacy concerns, task capture tools are manually triggered by employees, recording every mouse-click, hotkey, and keyboard interaction, taking screenshots at every step, and mapping that into a process editor where it can be further modified and optimized

They’re also much better at identifying and feeding automation candidates to RPA CoE’s (Center of Excellence) while providing all the low-level details needed for automation development.

For more in-depth information on process discovery’s state of adoption, the benefits being realized, where the biggest returns are, and what the future holds, download your copy of the State of Process Discovery 2021 report.