CEO James Henderson delivered the mindzie point of view and answers to the top 5 buyer questions for the Process Mining Battleground taking place on July 31.
Henderson touched on prevalent process mining use cases among customers, macroeconomic considerations, the company’s key differentiators including its focus on artificial intelligence (AI), and how top executives are looking to capitalize on process mining.
Below are highlights of Henderson’s discussion with Tom Smith:
Highlights
Prevalent Customer Use Cases and Industries
01:10 — Customer interest in mindzie is driven by the organization’s overall focus on “financial improvement.” That broad term means it’s using process mining to look at areas of the business that it thinks can have a significant financial return by driving new efficiencies: order management, customer support, customer success, service deployments, and more.
02:02 — A multibillion-dollar customer applied process mining to sales order processing and took its sales processing from 14 days to 11 days, which may not seem like a huge amount until you consider its impact across billions of dollars in orders. “It is very easy for any executive to generate significant ROI on that type of result,” Henderson says.
02:39 — Henderson characterizes the company’s customer base as “industry agnostic”: It’s being used in manufacturing, telecom, software, utilities, and oil and gas companies.
How mindzie Supports Shifting Priorities and Macroeconomic Conditions
03:45 — Henderson makes the case that business priorities really haven’t shifted even though executive-level conversations focus on the macro challenges. “If you look at the best-run organizations across the globe,” he says, “they have reached that status simply because they have always had a focus on driving operational excellence and efficiency.” There will always be ebbs and flows based on macroeconomic conditions, but the top performers maintain a consistent focus. Therefore, mindzie hasn’t seen a significant shift.
04:50 — Yet as conditions grow tougher, more organizations tend to shift their focus inward, he says. If they can’t overcome challenges through sales growth, they have to figure out other ways to make the business run better. They feel the need to become more efficient, more nimble, and make data-driven decisions to get the best returns. “Process mining really has bubbled up to be at these executive-level conversations because it’s providing that new layer of insight that allows them to make these informed decisions.”
Top Differentiators
06:21 — Since its launch, mindzie’s “North Star” has been democratizing process mining technology — that is, putting it in the hands of a lot more people so they can utilize that to improve their business operations. “In doing so, we really launched our platform to be focused more on operational intelligence. How do we enable business analysts that every organization has to become a process analyst?”
07:40 — The company offers a complete platform that includes automated actions and now employees can go from interest to insight all the way through to action. This approach ensures “that significant return on investment that organizations are looking for.”
Making It Easier to Adopt Process Mining, Plus Customer Examples
08:39 — The company has aimed from its inception to make process mining more accessible and to build a platform that delivers a high return on investment (ROI). Mindzie focuses on working with customers to address a specific area of the business and specific objectives. Results are rising up to the executive level with the C-suite now saying, “Where else can we use this technology to make us better?” As a result, mindzie hasn’t had to shift in terms of focus, packaging, or anything else.
10:10 — Mindzie has customers that range from mid-enterprise all the way up to Fortune 500 and the latter start with a single department or single process, but now a number are expanding into four, five, six different departments based on the results they’ve seen from their initial project.
AI’s Role in the Product Roadmap
11:17 — Mindzie believes that AI is fundamentally changing how people interact with systems (think Siri, Alexa). Mindzie was the first in the industry to fully embed generative AI technology into the platform at a production level, Henderson says.
11:50 — You now have a new layer of people, from business and process analysts up to executives that can interact with the platform without needing to know how to use it. Henderson cites the example of a struggling CFO that was interested in its platform but couldn’t get “over the hump.” When that CFO saw the generative AI interface, that overcome the issue of lacking the people and skillsets needed to use process mining. “The idea that my people can simply ask business questions and gain insight into how we operate changes the entire landscape,” the CFO said.
12:48 — Mindzie will continue to invest heavily in AI and generative AI for interacting with the tool, as well as predictive analytics.
