Process mining: get your processes out of the black box

Jan Claes, Mieke Jans
The Internal Auditor Compass, IIA Belgium Magazine, 2012

Abstract. Organizations often construct business process models to document how they think processes are executed (as-is) or should be executed (to-be). But are these models accurate? Do they represent real process execution or do they only reflect people's perceptions about processes? - Typically, an auditor has to pick samples to verify certain regulations. These sample cases are mostly selected rather randomly. But isn't it possible to use a technique that directs you quickly to suspicious cases? Wouldn't it be interesting to be able to focus on exceptional cases right from the start? - Process mining helps you with that. It is an umbrella term for dozens of techniques that derive interesting information from historical process data that can be found in so called log files of your software systems. This will empower an auditor with the tools to focus on real process execution and to quickly jump to exceptional behavior.