For companies interested in automating highly manual tasks through robotic process automation (RPA) software, one of the fundamental questions they must address is “What processes within my organization are the best candidates for RPA?” The technique of applying algorithms to review data logs and identify trends, patterns and details that make a process ripe for automation is called “process mining.”
While process mining as a popular tool to assist in the digital transformation of businesses began early this decade (the technique’s first evangelist, Dutch technology professor Wil van der Aalst, published Process Mining: Data Science in Action, its first bible, in 2011), it is only now experiencing its first mentions in the wider business media. Last week, Bloomberg new published an article focused on a new offering from McKinsey specifically designed to identify RPA opportunities.
McKinsey, which consults with major companies trying to implement RPA, has developed a bot it is calling RPA for RPA. AutoMate runs on the computers of human workers tracking their activity, analyzing it and making recommendations on task that can be automated using RPA. In the Bloomberg report, Pascal Bornet, a McKinsey associate partner based in Singapore, said 80 percent of all work worldwide is non-industrial and ripe for automation.
McKinsey says its research and work with AutoMate indicate that the accommodation and food service industry has the highest share of employee time spent on activities with potential for automation (75 percent), followed by technology, media and telecom (51 percent).