Process mining is the method of extracting insights from system logs to map how business processes actually happen in real life—not how people think they happen. It highlights inefficiencies, roadblocks, and automation opportunities hiding in your workflows.
Process mining is like putting your business under a microscope (but less gross). It uses actual event log data—pulled from systems like your CRM, ERP, or ticketing software—to reconstruct a visual map of how a process plays out, step by step. This isn’t theory or tribal knowledge. It’s factual evidence of what people are really doing, in what order, and how long it takes.
With this x-ray view, business leaders can identify inefficiencies they didn’t know existed, uncover automation candidates, and figure out where manual work is quietly draining hours and profits. It’s especially useful when workflows have evolved accidentally over the years (translation: most businesses).
Too many organizations chase AI, automation, or optimization without knowing what their actual processes look like. That’s like adding a turbocharger to a car with no wheels. Process mining gives you the map before you attempt the road trip.
Consider this: According to a 2024 BCG study, 74% of companies struggle to realize AI value. Nearly 70% of that failure comes down to poorly defined or outdated processes—not tech.
Here’s how it can help specific functions:
Here’s a typical scenario with mid-size SaaS and marketing agencies run by sharp folks juggling way too much:
They’ve built their workflow on tools like HubSpot, ClickUp, Google Sheets, and Slack. But the sales process “lives in everyone’s heads.” Leads come in, someone follows up (maybe), proposal templates sit in a cluttered GDrive folder, and onboarding starts when someone “gets around to it.”
That’s the sweet spot: data-backed decisions that shrink lead time, reduce error rates, and create a process you can actually afford to scale.
At Timebender, we help service-based teams create workflows that make sense and scale. Process mining is often where we start—because until you know what’s really happening inside your business, automation is just a gamble with expensive tools.
We teach your team how to use process insights paired with prompt engineering principles to plan smart automations. Whether it’s shortening your onboarding cycle, wrangling a rogue sales process, or getting your ops workflows out of spreadsheet jail—we help you make it efficient, repeatable, and AI-ready.
Want to see what your actual workflows look like—and fix what’s slowing you down? Book a Workflow Optimization Session and we’ll walk through it, step by (real) step.
BCG, "AI Adoption in 2024 (October 2024)"
