Introduction to AppOne

Introduction

Process Mining uses data to visualize and analyze the actual end-to-end processes, with all variants and relevant key performance indicators. AppOne consists of multiple dashboards, visualizing different parts of the input data.

Traditional Process Mining focuses on analyses to find process improvements. In AppOne it is also possible to constantly monitor your processes after these improvements.

Roles

There are two roles available in AppOne:

Monitoring User
Analyst

When you log in to AppOne for the first time, you will have the Monitoring Role assigned.

Role specific dashboards

Certain dashboards in the Overview menu are related to the specific role that you have in AppOne.

All other dashboards available for both roles.

Why monitor?

Monitoring is the act of checking the progress and quality of a process on a regular basis. The goal of monitoring is to determine if everything is going as expected. If deviations are found, action can be taken to improve or change a process.

While monitoring, no detailed analysis of a process is done; instead, you look at the so-called KPIs and Tags.

KPI’s and tags

KPIs are measurable values used to gauge performance of specific properties over time. KPI is an abbreviation for Key Performance Indicator.

In AppOne, there are also Tags to monitor your process. Tags are properties of cases that are important for this process. These Tags are typically defined in the implementation phase by process analysts in your organization.

KPIs and Tags support a method for organizations to get everyone on the same page. It is good to involve people by having them monitor their own contribution to the process. It enables the ones who are most invested to look for ways to improve.

It also ensures that the improvements have a high buy-in from the people who must implement them.

Why analyze?

Analyzing is the act of examining the process methodically and in detail.

The goal is to either, gain a better overall understanding of the process, or to answer a specific question about the process.

The initial analysis

Typically, this first analysis is done when the process data is being connected to the platform. The process is then analyzed to understand what is really going on and to identify certain aspects of the process.

Important steps in the first analysis:

Identify and define KPIs and Tags
Categorize data and identify attributes (case types, customer types, etc.)
Investigate completeness and correctness of data
Filter incomplete or unwanted data

To do this successfully, one needs to understand the process completely.

The purpose of this first analysis is to make future analysis easier and less error-prone. It allows others to monitor or analyze the data, and to make their analysis experience better.

Goal driven analysis

There are multiple reasons to start a specific analysis. Typical examples are:

A request to produce a specific number: “What was our throughput times for the last month?”
A monitoring user signals unwanted trends: “My dashboards show that the throughput time KPI is going up for my team, can you help me look for the causes?”
A business problem calls for analysis: “We get more complaints about our customer response times for these tickets, are there possibilities to improve that?”

Although the goal of such an analysis is to answer the question, it is not always possible to do this in the first attempt. Sometimes, new data needs to be added, to allow more detailed analysis to be done. It is important to consider whether adding this new data is worth the effort.

An alternative method could be to change KPIs and/or Tags. This could lead to new insights and improve the monitoring experience.

A common pitfall when analyzing is to get distracted from the original analysis goal. During goal driven analysis, often new process problems or questions arise, that are tempting to dive in immediately. It is a skill to focus on answering the most important questions and spend time later to answer other questions.

Who is involved?

Process monitoring and analysis can be performed by various roles.

Who is involved?	Role in AppOne	Description
Manager, Team lead	Analyst	Monitoring users who want to find out more about their KPIs and Tags.
Data analysts, data scientists, process analysts, or process owners	Analyst	Identify the correct KPIs and Tags and to have a complete understanding of the process. Perform Goal driven analysis to give the process owner and/or Monitoring user answers or solutions to their issues.
Process analyst, Manager, Team lead etc.	Monitoring User	Everyone has access to the same KPIs and Tags of a process, but it is also possible that there are specific KPIs which are only interesting for a specific role. For instance, a sales department may use a KPI related to customer acquisition while an IT department would choose a KPI which considers their downtime.

Depending on which role is selected in AppOne the Monitoring or Analyzing dashboards will be shown containing role specific information about the closed or open cases in a certain selected period.