How to flatten the application user adoption curve through process mining

Every large IT rollout has an elephant in the room: user adoption. There are some great applications out there, from the smallest server closet to the mightiest cloud. However, every one of them, either database infrastructure, ERP implementations, or even the simplest of CRM system, has a learning curve.

This matters because no application succeeds without getting the people who will use it on board. Organizations need to show them how it will make their work easier, their day less frustrating and their daily tasks less likely to drop their employee satisfaction. User adoption is not easy and in fact, it is the reason why eight out of 10 large rollouts fail.

This blog post from process mining experts at Mavim outlines three key steps to increase user adoption through process mining for large IT rollouts ahead of their session at PEX Live: Process Mining 2021, taking place online next week.

Make processes part of everyone’s life

Businesses are a mass of interlocking, interacting processes. You could even say those processes are the organization because the way they transform inputs into outcomes are the whole reason the organization exists, and is the source of all competitive advantage and weakness. Yet it is surprising how few companies understand their processes in detail.

Mapping out those processes and how they interact so people can understand how their actions affect the broader flow of business and hopefully work together to improve them. Mavim is cloud-based, on Microsoft’s Azure platform and teams with other Microsoft applications such as Visio. That is the first phase of its attack on the user adoption curve: work with applications employees use already. It means process mining has a user base, even if they do not know it yet.

Using Microsoft business intelligence to start process mining implementation

Familiar tools is the first goal in driving the adoption that makes your rollout a success, but it does not mean doing things the way they have always been done. In fact, you need to innovate harder. Mavim makes use of Microsoft business intelligence (BI), the application that is in the stratosphere of innovation, at the upper right of Gartner’s “Magic Quadrant” of products poised for major growth to answer market conditions.

With so many companies on Microsoft platforms and even more moving to the cloud, Microsoft BI ensures a fast startup for any process mining implementation. In Mavim’s case, that means more than mapping processes; it means seeing them in situ, connecting to actual transactions within the business in real time. It will create a living, pulsing network as opposed to a static map.

Digital twin organization as a what-if to your heart’s content

While it is great to be in the Magic Quadrant, it can be lonely at the top and solving this is Mavim’s main show. When you can see how transactions really happen within your organization, you can plan improvement, using your process map as a “digital twin” of your organization, with all your ideas and what-if scenarios factored in to see how efficiently you could be working. It gives you a target operational model to work toward.

It is how you see where variants of a process should be streamlined into one, or a process with too many steps cut down to size, or one successful process rolled out more widely. These innovations deliver that data in familiar formats such as applications your people use already, like Visio, as opposed to arcane custom software used by few and understood by fewer. That is where the strongest user adoption happens.

Conclusion: the best innovation happens on a solid base

This blog post explained how you make process mining a success, by getting everyone onboard. Doing it involves innovation in the user experience, not just the feature set. That is where Azure-based Mavim scores for over 1,000 global customers, it lets them use the apps they already know, from Excel and Visio to Microsoft BI. Learn more about how process mining can make your strategy a reality at Mavim’s session at PEX Live: Process Mining 2021 next week.