In this article, you’ll read our top 7 picks of process mining software in 2024 and learn more about process mining as a whole.
In its essence, Process Mining is a process management technique that enables companies to evaluate their business processes based on digital IT traces. With the help of various process mining tools, managers can reconstruct processes and review event logs, this gaining insights into complex business processes to evaluate conformance with predefined processes and have the ability to take measures and make decisions as part of transformation as well as automation projects.
This helps to provide the necessary insights into business processes to better manage, control and improve them. Therefore, it’s essential to turn to process mining if we’re looking to bring the digital transformation of the business world closer to reality.
For many entrepreneurs, however, this important part of the automation process remains a mystery. So in today’s article we’ve decided to take a closer look at the digital solution available on the market that help to provide a clearer vision into the process automation.
Process Mining: Definition
Every process step you take leaves digital traces (log data) in the system. Process mining extracts these digital traces and makes meaningful connections to help entrepreneurs understand their businesses better. Essentially, process mining helps to get an in-depth look at the business processes of the company.
Process mining is a process management technique that aims to discover, monitor and improve process flows by extracting already available knowledge from the event logs of information systems.
It provides companies with complete visibility into the reality of their operations. Using these insights, businesses can then identify opportunities for process optimization.
In simple terms, process mining technique can be views as an MRI technology, which collects information from the body's cells to create an image, only in a business environment. Doctors use MRI image to diagnose health conditions, while companies can use the picture assembled by process mining tools to diagnose the state of their workflows.
The Importance of Process Mining
Process mining reveals the actual state of business processes in the company, and it can also then help managers change these processes for the better.
Many businesses don’t realize how variable their processes are, and the impact that variability has on everything. Entrepreneurs are often shocked to see how the processes in their companies flow in real life compared to how they should flow in theory.
This discrepancy has become a part of the great disconnect at the heart of many organizations – different departments struggle to communicate, various systems don’t work well together, and, subsequently, processes go haywire. It all leads to lost value, low efficiency, unmet customer needs, and overall environmental and resource burdens.
Business owners can’t fix what they can’t see, and most executives aren’t seeing the full picture of how everything’s actually getting done across programs, systems, and departments.
Process mining solves this issue by acting as a much-needed link between systems, programs, processes and people, providing better visibility into the inner workings of businesses so everything and everyone can work together more efficiently.
To actually enable change, businesses are missing an understanding of how things actually run – what’s going well, what needs improvement, where true value is hidden, and, ultimately, how everything can work better in conjunction for the business. Process mining makes work processes transparent, and that is why it’s increasingly becoming a business necessity.
Process Mining Software Must-Haves
There are numerous process mining solutions currently available on the market, all of which cater to different types of organizations of different sizes and with different clients.
No matter what the specific needs of your company are, it’s good to keep in mind some key areas to consider. The software of your choosing should adhere to the following parameters:
- Ease of use – process mining software should be easy to use and navigate.
- Configurability – it should be kept in mind that some process mining solutions require significant effort to configure or only cater to specific use cases.
- Analytics and reporting – especially if you’re looking for enterprise-grade process mining, you’ll need the software of your choosing to have advanced analytics and reporting capabilities.
- End-to-end visibility – with more work becoming digitalized, you’ll need full E2E visibility of the entire process journey across different tools and systems in your company.
- Level of support – whether it’s your first time turning to process mining or you already are an experienced process architect you’ll likely have certain needs for support and onboarding that will need to be met by the software developers.
Things to Consider When Choosing the Process Mining Solution
When selecting process mining software, there is a number of major considerations that you should take into account when deciding on what software to choose for your business.
- Scope of analysis. The software you choose should be able to provide a comprehensive analysis of the process data, taking into account both current data it gathers and historical data it stores.
- Granularity of insights. The process mining tool should be able to provide accurate insights into inefficiencies and bottlenecks, offering an easy-to-use interface to identify and assess new and existing processes with no hassle.
- Integration needs. Many process mining solutions require access to event logs from different source systems. If you have a fragmented enterprise software landscape, you'll need to consider how much integration effort will be required to data mine key processes.
- On-premise or cloud requirements. While most process mining software today is offered in the form of SaaS (software-as-a-service), some organizations may require on-premise solutions.
- Total cost of ownership. While every organization has different resources to implement a process mining tool, you should consider the total cost of implementation, which includes both the price and the resources required to achieve necessary results.
Top 7 Process Mining Software of 2024
Below, you’ll find the overview of the most important Process Mining tools we’ve compiled through extensive market research and personal inquiries. Once again, as with any lists we’ve provided in the past, this is our own (albeit professional) opinion, and we don’t claim it to be exhaustive.
1. Kickidler
Kickidler is a comprehensive software with powerful functionality and user-friendly interface, which can be introduced in companies with any number of employees. In 2020, Kickidler was one of the top 10 most popular employee monitoring software in the world, and in May of that same year it also became the second most rapidly growing in popularity software.
Useful Features:
- Online monitoring of PCs
- Monitoring employee efficiency & analyzing the tasks performed during the workday
- Tracking opened apps and visited sites with the option of automatic filtering
- Continuous video recording of employee screens
- Logging all keystrokes pressed during the workday
- Providing trustworthy insights into workplace environment with its all-encompassing analytical and reporting options
2024 Update! Project & Task Monitoring with Kickidler
In early 2024, Kickidler developers announced a set of new features you can use with the tool to enhance project monitoring experience, that include progress tracking, time & focus monitoring, as well as workload & productivity tracking.
Pricing Options:
The cost of Kickidler’s Employee Monitoring pricing plan is just $5.5 per user per month when billed annually. You can learn more about the software’s pricing plans here.
The software also has a free 2-week trial period that allows you to form your own unbiased opinion on its functionality.
Kickidler video overview:
2. Celonis Process Mining
Celonis is one of the first commercially available solutions on the market that offers a full range of process discovery, analytics, conformance checking and process improvement solutions. In addition to traditional process mining functionality, its Execution Management System (EMS) platform offers a cloud-based solution for real-time data extraction and analysis, as well as task mining functionality.
Useful Features:
- Process modeling and process simulation functionality
- Wide array of customization features
- Broad user community
Pricing Options:
Celonis doesn’t publicly confirm their pricing. The cost of Celonis depends on your needs and the scope of its implementation. There may also be different pricing options available depending if you’re buying direct or through an authorized partner. The solution also offers a free plan with limited functionality.
Celonis Process Mining video overview:
3. SAP Signavio Process Intelligence
SAP Signavio is a cloud-based process transformation suite that provides organizations with the ability to understand, improve and transform all their end-to-end business processes, fast and at scale across SAP and non-SAP solutions. It combines process analysis and mining with process and journey modeling, helping users to understand how an organization’s processes function and where they can be improved.
Useful Features:
- Document Generation
- Process Design
- Process Repository
- No-Code App Development
- Low-Code App Development
Pricing Options:
The software doesn’t have any information on its pricing plans available on the web. Pricing details can be provided upon request. The solution also offers a 30-day free trial period.
SAP Signavio Process Intelligence video overview:
4. IBM Process Mining
IBM Process Mining is a powerful solution that enables companies to identify the business processes that may benefit most from automation by using system data to create and visualize an E2E process to uncover bottlenecks and inefficiencies that are hidden in business processes. The solution provides its users with an objective view into business processes and helps to identify areas to focus automation initiatives on and create what-if scenarios on prioritizing automation projects.
Useful Features:
- Process Library
- Execution Management
- Real-Time Process Analysis
- Process Notation
- Process Mapping
Pricing Options:
IBM Process Mining is offered on a SaaS basis, starting with a price of more than $3 thousand per month for one analyst user. The software also offers consumption-based pricing and on-premise pricing options, the overall pricing may also depend on the number of users and the software implementation scope.
IBM Process Mining video overview:
5. Microsoft Power Automate
Microsoft Power Automate is a powerful process mining tool with advanced process improvement features, such as hierarchical visualization, simulation of “what-if” scenarios, and interactive Qlik-based dashboards. The software offers a user-friendly interface.
Useful Features:
- Out-of-the-box templates that offer faster-than-average process mining implementation through its ready-made integration
- Easy to buy through Microsoft’s extensive sales network
- Integration into Microsoft ecosystem with its intelligent automation capabilities
Pricing Options:
Its Power Automate Premium pricing plan comes at $15 per user per month, and it enables licensed users to automate modern applications via API-based digital process automation (cloud flows) and legacy applications via UI-based robotic process automation (desktop flows) in attended mode.
Microsoft Power Automate video overview:
6. ARIS Process Mining
ARIS is a solution developed by Software AG, an enterprise software vendor founded in Germany in 1969. The software was one of the first commercial process mining tools. Its core advantage is deep integration with enterprise architecture design. In addition to process mining functionality, the product suite includes process modeling, customer journey modeling, task discovery and RPA functionality.
Useful Features:
- Automated interactive root cause mining and insights
- Process modeling and analysis that can be enhanced by real performance measures
- Process Performance Management (PPM) tool to manage business processes based on process mining and analytics insights
Pricing Options:
The entry-level version of ARIS for business process management is ARIS Basic that starts at $116, with all the necessary features for process design, sharing, and optimization available. It also offers 4 other more advanced plans, as well as a 30-day free trial option.
ARIS Process Mining video overview:
7. ABBYY Timeline
ABBYY Timeline is a tool that focuses on key areas of process discovery, diverse analytics, real-time robotic monitoring, and neural network predictive and alerting capabilities. Not only does it look at current processes digitally, but it also predicts the future performance of those processes, giving organizations the ability to improve their BPM. This intelligent solution includes features such as a transparent pricing process, analytics, data integration, and the ability to scale quickly.
Useful Features:
- Advanced process discovery functionality to capture task and process information from unstructured or semi-structured data
- Complimentary task automation functionality within its broader platform
- Forecasting functionality that can be used in process simulation
Pricing Options:
Its pricing generally starts at $1 thousand per month. While there is no free version of the software that provides its basic features, the solution does provide a demo and offers a free trial.
ABBYY Timeline video overview:
In Lieu of a Conclusion
It is impossible to answer the question of what process mining tool is simply the best since the authoritative basis for such decision lies in each company’s specific requirements.
The software the company chooses should provide the features the company needs to implement its prioritized processes. Therefore, the organization must first determine the specific use cases for which the software will be used. What’s more, special attention when selecting the right process mining software is required in relation to its features and integrations.
Nevertheless, we hope our list will be of help for anyone who wants to dip their toes into the abundant waters of process automation and digital process management tools.