Organizations know they need to improve efficiency, reduce costs, and prepare for AI-driven transformation, yet many struggle to know where to start. Rather than relying on assumptions or isolated improvement efforts, leading organizations use process mining to uncover hidden bottlenecks, visualize how work is performed, and prioritize changes that deliver the greatest business impact. Learn why process mining is the foundation of operational transformation and how Infor Velocity Suite helps organizations turn insights into action.
Key Takeaways
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Process mining replaces assumptions with evidence. Rather than relying on documented procedures or stakeholder interviews, process mining uses system-generated event logs to show exactly how work flows through your business—revealing bottlenecks, rework, and variations that traditional reporting misses.
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Continuous improvement is built in. Process mining doesn’t stop after the first fix—it keeps monitoring performance, uncovering new opportunities, and validating the impact of changes to sustain operational efficiency.
Introduction
Every organization wants to operate more efficiently. Whether the goal is to reduce costs, improve customer experience, increase productivity, or prepare for AI, leaders are asking the same question:
Where should you start?
The challenge isn’t a lack of ideas; it’s a lack of visibility. Without understanding how business processes operate today, improvement initiatives often focus on the wrong priorities or fail to deliver lasting results.
This is where process mining changes the conversation.
Why Do Operational Improvement Efforts Often Stall?
Operational improvement efforts often stall due to one of the following reasons:
Lack of process visibility. Many organizations rely on documented procedures or stakeholder interviews to understand how work gets done. Unfortunately, these often reflect how processes are intended to operate rather than how they run day to day. Variations, bottlenecks, rework, and unnecessary steps remain hidden, making it difficult to identify the root causes of poor performance. Without objective visibility into actual process execution, improvement efforts are often based on assumptions rather than evidence.
Manual processes lead to time-consuming analysis and user error. Gathering data from multiple ERP systems, spreadsheets, emails, and reporting tools is often a manual process that consumes significant time and effort. Teams spend weeks collecting, cleansing, and reconciling information before meaningful analysis can even begin. This not only slows decision-making but also introduces the risk of inconsistent data and human error. By the time insights are available, the business may have already moved on, making the findings less relevant.
Insufficient resource allocation. Continuous improvement initiatives compete with day-to-day operational priorities. Teams responsible for delivering products, serving customers, or managing financial operations rarely have dedicated time to investigate process inefficiencies in depth. Limited budgets and competing priorities often delay, narrow, or abandon improvement projects. Without clear evidence of where the greatest value lies, it becomes difficult to justify investment or secure executive support.
Risk of process conformance and compliance issues. As organizations grow, processes naturally evolve. Over time, different business units, locations, or individuals develop their own ways of performing the same activities. While some variation is expected, excessive deviation can introduce operational risk, compliance concerns, and inconsistent customer experiences. Identifying where processes no longer follow defined standards is challenging without the ability to compare actual execution with expected process models.
Ineffective change management processes. Even when improvement opportunities are identified, achieving sustainable change requires more than implementing a new workflow or technology. Organizations need confidence that changes are delivering the intended outcomes and that employees consistently adopt new ways of working. Without measurable insights into process performance before and after changes are introduced, it becomes difficult to track progress, demonstrate business value, or continuously refine improvements.
These challenges explain why many operational improvement initiatives struggle to deliver lasting results. The good news is that they all stem from a common underlying issue: a lack of reliable, data-driven insight into how business processes operate. Process mining addresses this issue by providing an objective view of end-to-end process execution, enabling organizations to identifyopportunities for business process optimization based on facts rather than assumptions.
What Is Process Mining?
Infor Process Mining is a powerful, AI-enhanced solution that enables organizations to visualize, analyze, and optimize real-world business processes using system-generated event logs. Embedded in Infor CloudSuite, it delivers industry-specific insights by mapping process flows, identifying inefficiencies, and uncovering root causes. Process mining lets you benchmark your internal processes against APQC industry standards. With integrated GenAI capabilities, users can ask natural-language questions, receive instant summaries, and access intelligent guidance. This helps to transform complex data into actionable insights without requiring technical expertise.
What does this mean in practice? Simply put, process mining gives you a clear picture of how work flows through your business. Instead of relying on assumptions, workshops, or process maps that may no longer reflect reality, it uses the digital footprints in your business systems to show exactly what happens, where delays occur, where work is repeated, and where opportunities for improvement exist.
The result is a fact-based view of your operations which is a core component of process intelligence. Rather than asking teams where they think the problems are, you can see them firsthand, prioritize improvements with confidence, and focus your efforts where they’ll have the greatest impact on your business.
Why Process Mining Is the First Step Towards AI and Automation
AI and automation can transform the way businesses operate, but only when applied to the right processes. If you automate an already inefficient process, you’re simply making the inefficiency happen faster. Before investing in AI for business operations, organizations need a clear understanding of how work flows through the business.
This is where process mining becomes foundational. It provides a data-driven view of your processes, revealing how work is performed across systems rather than how it’s assumed to happen. It quickly highlights bottlenecks, manual activities, unnecessary process variations, and compliance risks that are often difficult to identify through traditional reporting or workshops.
With this visibility, organizations can make informed decisions based on facts rather than assumptions. They can prioritize the processes that will deliver the greatest return on automation, standardize processes before introducing AI, and integrate insights from multiple business systems into a single view of operations.
Think of process mining as the “diagnose before you prescribe” phase of digital transformation. Once you understand where delays occur, why they happen, and which processes are ready for change, you can confidently introduce automation, AI, and workflow improvements that solve real business problems and deliver measurable outcomes.
How Infor Velocity Suite Accelerates the Journey
Knowing where your process problems lie is only half the battle. The next challenge is deciding what to fix first, implementing improvements quickly, and measuring whether those changes delivered results.
This is where Infor Velocity Suite comes in.
Rather than treating process mining as a standalone analytics tool, Velocity Suite connects the entire improvement journey. It follows a simple, proven approach: Diagnose, Automate, and Optimize. Process Mining identifies bottlenecks, inefficiencies, and process variations using real operational data. From there, organizations can leverage pre-built Infor Value+ automations, AI capabilities, and industry-specific use cases to address those issues without starting from scratch.
The result is a much faster path from insight to action. Instead of spending months identifying problems, designing solutions, and building custom automations, customers can leverage technologies already integrated with their Infor CloudSuite. This reduces implementation time, lowers risk, and helps organizations realize business value sooner.
Perhaps most importantly, Velocity Suite doesn’t stop after the first improvement. As processes evolve, Process Mining continues to monitor performance, uncover new opportunities, and validate the impact of changes. This creates a cycle of continuous improvement that helps organizations build momentum and maximize the value of their CloudSuite investment, which can drive lasting operational efficiency.
Why the Right Partner Matters
Technology can reveal where opportunities exist, but turning those insights into measurable business results requires the right strategy, expertise, and execution. That’s where Argano can help. As a global specialist consultancy focused on high-performance business operations, Argano combines deep Infor expertise with industry knowledge and an AI-forward approach to help organizations move beyond identifying problems to solving them.
With experience spanning strategy, implementation, automation, AI, and ongoing optimization, Argano helps organizations determine where to focus, identify the right opportunities for transformation, and put Infor technologies, including Velocity Suite, to work to support business priorities. The goal isn’t to adopt technology for technology’s sake; it’s to create smarter, more efficient operations that deliver measurable value today and continue improving over time.