Process mining is a set of techniques that enable enterprises to understand the actual processes that are followed in organizations. Most end users visualize these processes as simple workflow diagrams. The reality is that the actual processes being followed by people on the ground are much more complex. Process mining helps you visualize and analyze these complex processes.

While we do RPA, we usually come back from looking at end users with simple workflows. We discover the complexity of the process as we progress through the automation. End users point out the branches that have been missed, one by one. Process complexity and identifying processes for automation and prioritizing them are some of the challenges for RPA.

Process mining and process discovery come to the rescue here. We can now add process mining with RPA. Both UiPath and Automation Anywhere have their own offerings in this area that can be used. There are also dedicated process mining vendors who have tailored their offerings to help with RPA process discovery and prioritization. You can also analyze and track the impact of your RPA automation.

Like RPA, process mining vendors have been adding more features as there is increasing interest and investments coming into this space as well. Some of the process discovery tools even allow you to generate an RPA Process Definition Document (PDD) automatically. Some of the RPA vendors claim that process mining or discovery can generate and provide you with skeleton RPA code that you can customize. This is an evolving field and some analysts are predicting that with more data, we will see that the creation of Bot scripts can be automated to a large extent.