Process Mining as a Driver for Business Process Management: The Case of the Enervie Group

(a) Situation faced: At the end of an unsuccessful BPM initiative, Enervie had the opposite of a process mindset. Any endeavor in BPM was seen as a waste of resources and business departments were reluctant to discuss their processes. Therefore, Enervie’s BPM capabilities were poorly developed and there was no transparency regarding their existing processes. As a result, problems frequently arose during process execution and the source of these issues would remain unknown, allowing them to recur constantly. (b) Action taken: To uncover the issues’ root causes, the company decided to implement process mining (PM) in its most critical end-to-end processes. Due to the general aversion to BPM in the organization, they did so without developing any other areas of BPM. The introduction of PM started as a pilot project in the purchase-to-pay process. The further rollout of PM continued in different processes or departments, specifically the meter-to-cash process, the accounts receivable process, and the controlling department. (c) Results achieved: This approach enabled Enervie to restart its BPM initiative and build corresponding capabilities. The PM implementation was perceived as successful and further improvement initiatives were started. This included a permanent center of excellence for PM. During the project, the company rapidly built its BPM capabilities. The involvement of employees from all levels led to the continuous development of additional ideas for use cases. The concrete data gathered using PM gave the initiative credibility and enabled the PM team to overcome the negative BPM mindset. The project’s success has, thereby, motivated staff to acquire further BPM capabilities. (d) Lessons learned: PM on its own can be used to launch BPM initiatives. The objective data and insight into end-to-end processes gathered using PM give credibility to BPM initiatives. Due to this, even small-scale experiments – like the optimization of one end-to-end process – can drive large-scale organizational change. Last, an agile approach drives the organizational culture toward the acceptance of BPM initiatives.