What are business bottlenecks and how to get rid of them

Today companies face many challenges: growing competition, pressure on efficiency, cost reduction. At the same time, “bottlenecks” are often hidden inside the processes themselves – points where time, resources and money are lost. How to find and eliminate them using Process Mining and Task Mining?

What is a bottleneck?

A bottleneck is a section of the business process that limits the speed and efficiency of the entire chain. For example, the company approves contracts for a long time – the lawyer is loaded, he keeps the documents for several days, and the transactions are delayed. This is the bottleneck.

Reasons for bottlenecks

Most often, bottlenecks are a consequence of accumulated structural, organizational or technical problems within the company. Let’s consider the main reasons:

Lack of resources. One of the most common reasons is a lack of key resources: employees, equipment, technology or materials. For example, if just two specialists work in the order processing department, and the volume of incoming applications increases, the speed of completing tasks inevitably decreases.
Mismanagement. Misallocation of responsibilities, duplication of functions or lack of clear procedures overload individual employees or departments, while others remain unused. This creates an imbalance and reduces the speed of processes.
Departmental inconsistency. Most often, the most important business processes are end-to-end, that is, they pass through several departments/services. It is important that the interaction between them is clear and coordinated, otherwise problems may arise at the stage of transferring information, waiting for approvals or performing interdependent tasks. For example, if accounting delays payment processing, it can stop the delivery process.
Excessive bureaucracy. Various complex approvals, multiple approval stages and strict “monolithic” regulations make it difficult to make decisions quickly. The more formal procedures required to complete a task, the greater the likelihood of problems.
Using legacy. Slow, outdated or overloaded software solutions often become a deterrent. For example, if a CRM or ERP system processes data slowly or often crashes, it can significantly slow down the entire company.
Incorrect load planning and distribution. If quantities or seasonal fluctuations in demand are incorrectly estimated, there may be overloads in certain areas. For example, during peak periods, logistics companies face a shortage of transport, that creates delivery problems.
Human factor. Insufficient qualification of employees, errors in the performance of tasks, low motivation can also significantly slow down the processes.

Digital diagnostics

The first step to eliminating bottlenecks is understanding how processes really work within the company. Not in theory, not in the regulations, but in fact. For this, Process Mining and Task Mining technologies are used today:

Process Mining analyzes data from IT systems (CRM, ERP, etc.) to build a real process model.
Task Mining shows what employees are really busy with – what actions they perform, where time is lost.

Both technologies are based on real data, not on subjective assessments. This allows to identify problems accurately, find duplicate transactions, and make decisions based on facts. The result is complete transparency of processes, the ability to respond quickly to problems and implement changes pointwise.

For example, recently an interesting case on the use of new technologies was presented at MMK Group of Companies. An internal SSC dedicated to tax and accounting Task Mining and a digital twin to improve decision accuracy, reduce transaction costs and free up resources for important tasks. One of the results of the case is a transparent system for calculating the cost of accounting and financial services based on the actually incurred labor costs.

Real cases

If earlier the use of technologies was in the format of single cases, now the number of implementations has grown tenfold.

Rosselkhozbank (RSHB)

RSHB is actively involved in Process and Task Mining projects within the bank. Many of the most important processes have been digitized – from issuing consumer loans to performing operations with units of mutual investment funds. For some of them, areas for improvement have already been identified, and the implementation of only part of the optimization actions can bring more than 400 million rubles of economic effect.

VSK Insurance House

One of the first projects in the VSK Insurance House was launched to optimize the process of settling losses under VHI. As a result, it was possible to achieve significant labor savings – 15 thousand man-hours per year by automating operations, eliminating repeated copying of data, automatically downloading files and recognizing information from PDF. In addition, the company managed to transform the process of quality control of technical support. The result is 100% of the sample of requests for assessing the quality of IT support in all channels.

Generium

A large Russian pharmaceutical company implemented Process Mining and Task Mining in order to investigate the actual implementation and metrics of the procurement process, as well as get a list of operations, the robotization of which will bring the greatest economic effect. The results of the project were: the ability to speed up procurement by 21% and reduce employee labor costs by 17%.

Process transparency is key to efficiency

Process Mining and Task Mining give managers a new level of control: they allow them to see the business clearly, eliminating weak links and inefficiencies. In the era of digital transformation, it is objective data that is becoming the main optimization tool.

Companies that adopt such technologies respond faster to problems, reduce costs and increase productivity. And those who continue to act on a whim – continue catching up.