What is meant by Process Monitoring?
The term "process monitoring" refers to the continuous observation, analysis, and evaluation of ongoing business processes in real-time or near real-time. The goal is to provide transparency about the current process status, efficiency, and potential disruptions. Process monitoring helps companies detect bottlenecks early, optimize workflows, and ensure compliance with service-level agreements (SLAs) and regulatory requirements.
Typical software functions in the area of "process monitoring":
- Real-Time Visualization: Display of current process states via dashboards and graphical process maps.
- KPI Monitoring: Tracking of defined performance indicators to assess process quality and efficiency.
- Alerts and Notifications: Automated warnings in the event of deviations, errors, or SLA breaches.
- Data Aggregation: Consolidation of process data from various systems for central analysis.
- Historical Analysis: Evaluation of past process executions to identify trends and areas for improvement.
- Drill-Down Functionality: In-depth analysis of individual process instances for root cause investigation.
- Anomaly Detection: Use of rules or AI algorithms to detect irregular process behavior.
- Compliance Monitoring: Verification that processes adhere to defined rules, policies, or legal regulations.
Examples of "process monitoring":
- A dashboard shows that invoice approvals are exceeding the expected time frame.
- An automated alert notifies the team that a supply chain has been disrupted due to missing inventory.
- An analysis reveals that the processing time for support tickets increases significantly outside business hours.
- Monitoring indicates that certain orders frequently require manual intervention.
- The real-time view signals that an IT service workflow consistently stalls at a particular phase.
- A report shows that an approval process repeatedly fails to meet agreed SLA targets.