What are digital twins?

A digital twin is a virtual model - or replica - of an actual process, service, or product that allows the builder to simulate, test and various scenarios in a virtual, zero-risk environment. Originally developed in manufacturing settings to help engineers test and refine physical assets such as engines and turbines, with the help of AI-powered process mining tools, organizations can now build digital twins of business processes. 

Also known as “process simulations,” digital twins not only model business processes, but allow the user to test new procedures, inputs and other variables to see how they impact process performance. Digitally mature organizations that implement process mining and digital twin technology on a large scale eventually build what’s known as a digital twin of an organization (DTO). DTOs are virtual models of the entire business - the processes, physical assets, interactions, and data storage structures of an organization - that can be manipulated to test how changes in one area impact the entire ecosystem. 

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Process Mining For Digital Transfomation

2 Hour Virtual Event // August 16, 2022

How are digital twins created?

Simply put, the four steps of digital twin creation are mine, visualize, analyze and simulate. 

To elaborate, the first step for building digital twins is process mining, a collection of methods that extract operational data (date, time, user, activity, object, etc.) from the event logs of IT systems and transform it into visual representations of business processes. 

While, technically speaking, process mining can be performed manually, it is incredibly time consuming and, given the level of precision it requires, difficult. As such, organizations are embracing process mining software solutions, suites of technology that, at the very least, automate data extraction and analyses. Increasingly though, process mining and virtual twins have become so synonymous that many tools facilitate the entire end-to-end digital twin creation process.  

Not only do these automated tools acquire, cleanse and validate data, they can also automate process discovery, the identification of business processes.

The second step? Process visualization. As it's often said, pictures speak louder than words. Though the process mining process alone can certainly deliver some key insights, by creating a visual representation of process flow, process visualization can provide you with a more in depth understanding of process performance. 

Using the process data extracted from the mining process, organizations can model, map out and visualize complex business processes. Furthermore, using automated analysis methods (i.e. target-actual comparison, root cause analysis, etc.) organizations can identify areas of improvement and as well as validate new ways to optimize and digitize them. 

The final step is simulation. Using the data collected via process mining, users can test process changes and adaptations in a risk-free virtual environment before they implement them in the real-world. Mature organizations that have built DTOs can even see how one small change to a single process can impact the entire ecosystem.

The Benefits

The benefits of using process mining to create digital twins of business processes are far ranging and highly consequential. In fact, given the potential of process mining tools to dramatically transform operational performance, organizations are racing to adopt them. As such, the digital twin market is expected to grow to  over 36 billion dollars by 2025 at a CAGR of 38%. 

Top benefits include:

• Automated process discovery. Using process mining tools, organizations can accelerate the identification new processes to automate
• By centralizing process intelligence into one central dashboard, process mining enables cross-functional collaboration and communication
• Promotes experimentation while also reducing risk (both financial and regulatory) by allowing users to test process changes in a safe virtual environment before implementing in the real world

Case in point, Credem Bank used process mining to build digital twins of their back office (BO) process and, as a result, were able to automate 90% of BO processes using RPA. After the automation, the bank managed to save BO costs up to 85%.

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Process Mining For Digital Transfomation

2 Hour Virtual Event // August 16, 2022