What is Microsoft Power Automate Process Mining?

Artificial intelligence (AI) dominated the narrative at this year’s Microsoft Inspire Conference, and that isn’t much of a surprise. The development of generative AI and AI feature sets being baked into solutions is saturating the tech space and lately, even this blog.

For those entrenched in the automation space, one of the biggest takeaways and announcements at Microsoft Inspire 2023 – which took place virtually July 18-19 – was the addition of AI to Microsoft Power Automate Process Mining.

In this article, we cover what Microsoft Power Automate Process Mining is, how the inclusion of AI will bolster the solution, and how it can help you better identify automation candidates to boost returns from your RPA practice.

What is Microsoft Power Automate Process Mining?

Microsoft Power Automate Process Mining is a solution that helps you understand how work is being done at your company by uncovering and identifying the processes being executed and performed in your organization. The main benefit of process mining technology is to easily obtain the information needed to make better, more informed business decisions and become more efficient from an operational standpoint.

Specifically, Microsoft Power Automate’s process mining capability works with the Microsoft ecosystem to present your organization’s business processes so you can address inefficiencies, eliminate bottlenecks, and unearth viable automation candidates.

With the inclusion of next-generation AI in Microsoft Power Automate Process Mining, not only will users be able to better understand how work is being performed at their organization with profound insight, but they will also get recommendations on how to improve their processes, reduce process complexity, and when to automate or transform them with lo-code/no-code solutions to reduce costs and become more efficient.

How Does Microsoft Power Automate Process Mining Work?

From a distance, Microsoft’s process mining solution works like any other process mining technology. Process mining tools scour an organization’s mountain of data by investigating their event logs. That’s where the technology’s namesake comes from—event logs are mined for processes.

Event logs are basically banks of data that store information like logins to software in an organization’s tech stack, the interactions in that software, etc.

Process mining solutions like Microsoft Power Automate Process Mining identify patterns in those event logs and present end-to-end business processes, including common variants of those processes that might be introducing errors or inefficiencies.

One of Microsoft’s differentiators, particularly with the inclusion of AI, is that users will get out-of-the-box suggestions on how to optimize those processes or transform them with automation in Power Automate or even a business application built in Power Apps.

Microsoft’s process mining technology is also particularly adept at producing transformative process insights from common business applications like SAP. However, it also naturally works seamlessly with the rest of the Microsoft stack, like Power Automate, Power Apps, Power Virtual Agents, and Azure.

What are the Benefits of Using Microsoft Power Automate Process Mining?

Microsoft Power Automate Process Mining is being billed as a particularly strong solution to identify and visualize finance, sales, and HR processes which are coincidentally the same departments that drive a high volume of automation use cases.

Without focusing on specific departments, here are the process mining benefits your entire organization can realize by using Microsoft Power Automate Process Mining:

Easily identify automation candidates to accelerate RPA at scale

Organizations have realized substantial returns from the automation practice they’ve established and fostered. However, scale has not been an easy feat to achieve.

One of the barriers to scale is automating the wrong processes. Another is ineffective and slow methods to identify good automation candidates that aren’t prone to breaks and promise high returns.

Microsoft Power Automate Process Mining both discovers and recommends business processes where automation is the most optimal transformation strategy to nurture and promote RPA at scale for greater returns.

Increase operational efficiency

Because it’s powered by AI, Power Automate Process Mining can be used to apply recommended KPIs to pinpoint where process inefficiencies exist so they can be re-engineered and eliminated.

It also offers avenues for accelerated time-to-value with department-specific templates. For example, there are finance templates that include order-to-cash, peer-to-peer pay, and supply chain use cases that stakeholders can quickly leverage.

Implement continuous process improvement

Microsoft’s process mining technology also enables organizations to easily implement continuous process improvement strategies through constant process monitoring.

You can effortlessly identify process variance or set up alerts via Microsoft Teams or Outlook when defined process KPIs are not met.

Ensure compliance

One of process mining’s big benefits as a technology, in general, is identifying processes that aren’t compliant. For enterprises operating in heavily regulated industries, a solution like Microsoft’s is paramount to ensure that processes being executed – whether they involve handling sensitive data or must adhere to data retention policies – remain compliant and risk-free.

Conclusion

Microsoft Power Automate Process Mining was widely considered one of the highlight announcements of the recent Microsoft Inspire Conference and it’s easy to see why. Whether an organization is interested in fueling their digital transformation, becoming more efficient and removing wasteful processes, or scaling their automation practice, Power Automate Process Mining offers the intelligence, ease-of-use, and promise of high returns to entice any business leader.

Lucky for them, Microsoft Power Automate Process Mining becomes generally available on August 1, 2023.

For more insight on identifying and validating automation candidates with a practical job aid you can start using today, download Blueprint's RPA Process Assessment and Candidate Checklist.